Miracle Monday

It's Miracle Monday time. Today I would like to talk about the miracle of Gracie Jean Lockyer.

I've posted about her many times before and asked for prayers. Today, I am posting to ask for more prayers but to also talk about the week she just went through.

On Wednesday, her parents, Todd and Amanda, were called in because the doctors thought that Gracie was about to die.

They unplugged Gracie from many of the machines keeping her alive so that Amanda could hold her and rock her as she passed away.

But as she held her, Gracie started to improve!

These are Amanda's words:

"I will never be able to describe holding my stiff, cold baby girl who’s heart is being controlled by a pacemaker and is breathing completely by ventilation. Her oxygen saturations were dropping and dropping as were her pressures.

Then out of the blue--her blood pressures spiked and she began to breathe on her own. Then, they began little by little to wean her support because that’s why they thought she was still living…but as we watched the support come down--she kept on living.

Then, a follow up echo of her heart showed BETTER FUNCTION than ever."

And this is from the latest entry in Gracies' CaringBridge journal:

"Todd and I have been called in 4 times since Wednesday and told that it looked like Gracie was going home with the Lord. He has seen fit to spare her life every time. Each time we are on an emotional roller coaster and only being able to keep it together with God’s help (the same goes for the whole family). But, His strength is perfect. We thank God for another answered prayer---

"AND THEY THAT KNOW THY NAME WILL PUT THEIR TRUST IN THEE: FOR THOU, LORD, HAST NOT FORSAKEN THEM THAT SEEK THEE.” PSALM 10:10

Lord, we will continue to seek thee for everything--we claim the above verse with all of our heart."

God continues to work miracles in Gracie. But what amazes me even more, is the faith that Todd and Amanda continue to place in God. They are such wonderful examples of trusting God with all your heart.

Please pray for them all.

If you would like to share a miracle, it's simple. Just post a miracle on your blog and link it back here using Mr. Linky below. Please mention "A Mom's Life" and my URL in your post. And if you want, you can use the Miracle Monday button in your post as well.

Have a great Miracle Monday!

This edition of Miracle Monday is now closed. Please come back next Monday if you would like to share a miracle!

My poor husband...

Today is my husband's birthday. Happy Birthday, honey!

So yesterday, in his honor, I got a pedicure.

I know. It doesn't make sense that I would give myself a present for his birthday. But that's how my mind operates.

Oh. And also tomorrow is my birthday. So really I guess the pedicure is a gift to us from me.

That makes it sound a little better. Ahem.

Anyway, as I was getting my pedicure the sweet little Vietnamese pedicurist, turned up her nose and said, "Ewwww. You feet so dry!"

Talk about horrifying.

The woman who works with dirty, scaly, stinky feet ALL. DAY. LONG. turned up her nose at MY feet.

So. Happy Birthday to my poor husband! I'm not sure how he puts up with me and my so dry feet.

If possible, this makes me love him even more.

It's for the birds!

We moved into our house in December of 2006. The builders used cheap seed when they planted the grass and it turned to seed. So last fall we hired someone to plant grass for us.

If you will remember, he said he would do his part by planting the right combination of seed but that we would need to depend on the Good Lord for lots of rain since don't have a sprinkler system.

The Good Lord did not do his part in helping me to have a beautiful, lush, green yard, as last fall was one of the driest on record in 20 years.

And it wasn't long into the summer before the crab grass and Bermuda grass started coming in, choking and killing any grass we did manage to grow. From the road we give off the appearance that we have nice,lush, green grass but in reality it is quite ugly.

So I wasn't too concerned a couple of weeks ago when Cheyanne and Sarah started sprinkling bird seed around the yard.

I wasn't even concerned when they got bored feeding the birds and dumped a whole bunch in one spot.

Until a few days later when I noticed this...

The birdseed was....growing?!

Looks like we have finally found something that will grow faster than the crab grass.

She's a sly one!

I paid .97 cents for these at Wal-Mart.

I thought it would be a fun way for me to help Sarah learn all of the letters and their sounds while Peter was at school.

I know she will be learning this at preschool but she is always asking me for something to do and I thought this would be the answer.

They were inexpensive. She would be learning something and we could do it together.

I was wrong.

After making it through the letter D, she grabbed all the cards and yelled, "I'm done playing with these!"

I was a little disappointed that we didn't make it through more letters but I figured we would have lots of fun playing with the flash cards later.

I was wrong.

This is how the box looks today.

The next day, I asked Sarah if she wanted to play with the flash cards and as I grabbed the box, I realized it was empty.

She giggled as she told me no, she did not want to play with the flash cards.

She giggled some more when she told me she hid them.

So much for my fun, affordable, learning tool. I don't even know where they are and she won't tell me.

I guess she really meant it when she said she was done playing with these!

Miracle Monday

Today, I would like to tell you about Dan's Uncle Bobby and the miracle he experienced recently.

Uncle Bobby is a priest. He married us and he baptized Peter and Sarah, so we hold a special place in our hearts for him.

He is 73 years old and he suffers from diabetes and had heart bypass surgery several years ago.

Last October, Uncle Bobby’s doctor ordered a chest X-ray. The results came back showing small spots on his lungs. The doctor was concerned about them but because of their small size decided to watch them.

He had to go back every three months for scans to check their growth. The first repeat scan showed no change.

When he went in for the second repeat scan, the technician inadvertently put him too high up on the board and they imaged not only his lungs but also his lower abdomen.

In the images inadvertently taken of the lower abdomen they saw evidence of a tumor on his pancreas and spots (which were presumed cancerous) on his liver.

Those results led to a battery of tests to further characterize what was seen on the X-ray.

They did a needle biopsy that determined that the tumor on the pancreas was malignant.

However, the spots on the liver were so small and so few and far between that they could not count on hitting one of them with a needle to determine in fact whether the tumor had metastasized to the liver.

They decided laparoscopic surgery was the best course of action. The surgeon would first go to the liver and take samples to determine if there was cancer on the liver.

The samples would be sent to the lab for analysis while Uncle Bobby was still under the anesthesia. If cancer was found on these liver spots, they would close him up and presumably tell him to put his affairs in order and enjoy what time he had left.

If no cancer was found on the liver, then the surgeon would proceed to remove the tumor on the pancreas.

The spots they found on the liver were determined to be non-cancerous “benign hematomas”.

The surgeon removed the pancreas tumor and the prognosis is excellent. Uncle Bobby will not even have to undergo chemotherapy or radiation.

So thanks to an X-Ray technician accidentally putting Uncle Bobby too high up on the X-Ray machine, the malignant tumor on his pancreas was found and removed before he even experienced any problems!

Uncle Bobby, you may be semi-retired, but I think God still has lots of work for you to do!

If you have a miracle to share, it's easy to participate.

Just post a miracle on your blog and link it back here using Mr. Linky below. Please mention "A Mom's Life" and my URL in your post. And if you want, you can use the Miracle Monday button in your post as well.

PLEASE NOTE - when linking make sure to link to your Miracle Monday post. Do not link to the front page of your blog. If you have any questions, email me and I will be glad to help you. My email address is in my profile.

Have a great Miracle Monday!

What does this one mean?

Whenever I feel like I am not prepared for something, I have a recurring dream.

It is the first day of school and I have misplaced my class schedule. It is 5 minutes before class begins and I have no idea where I'm supposed to go.

Everyone around me is scurrying to class and while I am riffling through all of my books and notebooks trying to find the misplaced schedule.

But I never do. Relief from this nightmare only comes when the alarm finally goes off.

I also have an even more horrifying version. It is opening night of the school play and I have not memorized my lines - and I'm the lead! I spend the whole dream tying in vane to memorize my lines.

But I never do. Relief from this nightmare only comes when the alarm finally goes off.

I am not a dream interpreter but even I can figure out why I have those dreams. Clearly I am not prepared for something and I need to work harder to get ready for it.

Last night I had a horrible dream and unlike my recurring dream, I have no idea what this one could possibly mean.

I dreamed my friend Tanya and I were watching my wedding video and while we were watching it, I realized that I was wearing black Aerosoles pumps with my wedding dress!

I was horrified!

I kept saying over and over, "You were my Maid of Honor! Why didn't you tell me I was wearing BLACK AEROSOLES PUMPS with my WHITE WEDDING DRESS?"

You can only imagine my relief with the alarm finally went off this morning!

So if any of you are dream interpreters or have a copy of "Your Dreams and What They Mean", please feel free to help me out with this one.

Oh, and one more thing. The whole reason that my friend was over at my house in the first place was because all of my eyelashes were falling out and she was going to help me put on fake ones!

I think I liked it better when I was trying to memorize my lines.

It's like Tom Petty said, "The way-ay-ting is the hardest part."

O Lord God, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your might. -Deuteronomy 3:24

This was the scripture verse that waited for me in my inbox on the morning of June 21st. When I read it, I got excited. Very excited!

I was excited for the day to begin so I could see what great and wonderful things God had waiting for me.

The morning started out like any other morning. I got Dan off to work. I made the kids their breakfast. Nothing great and mighty there.

So I waited.

And I waited. And I waited some more.

Nothing extra-special or out-of-the-ordinary happened that day.

Or the next.

Or the next.

And trust me, I was looking and waiting and watching. And I kept rereading that verse to make sure that I hadn't read it incorrectly the first time.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was excited. But now, it's over two months later and nothing great or mighty has happened yet.

I know you shouldn't treat Bible verses like your own personalized daily horoscope or like fortunes that you pull from a fortune cookie, but I knew this verse was written just for me, that it held special meaning just for me on that particular day.

And yes, I know that this verse was written well over 2000 years ago and has been read by millions and millions of people since then. But when I read it, it felt like it was written just for me.

I am currently entering a new season in my life. My kids are a little older and don't need me to do every little thing for them. And while this is good, it leaves me with lots of extra time on my hands - time usually spent pondering what exactly it is that I should be doing with my life.

And when I read that verse, I thought to myself, Ah ha! Today is the day God is going to let me in on his secret! Today is the day that I find out what I'm supposed to be doing with my life!

But if he told me that day or in the days immediately following, I didn't hear him.

So I started doing research about how to find God's purpose in my life.

And what I kept coming back to over and over again was prayer and study of the scripture.

"Praying and studying the scripture?"I whined to God. "But that's hard work. You know I'm lazy."

I can be such a whiner when I don't get my way. (Hmmm...now I know where my kids may get it.) I was hoping God would just speak to me in the shower like he normally does and we could get on with it.

But no. God wants me to work for it, I suppose.

So while I'm waiting and watching, I'm trying to pray more and read the Bible more and I know that He has only begun to show me his greatness and his might.

I think we have a problem.

We didn't accomplish much this weekend.

It was Labor Day weekend after all. The name itself implies lots of hard work but we all know Resting and Relaxing Day weekend would be a much better name for it.

We did manage to clean out our garage yesterday. Dan did this last year around this time, but the stack of mud laden toys and bikes and sidewalk chalk and paint were taking over, making it difficult to park our cars, so something had to be done.

We rinsed and rearranged and tossed and in addition to a dead frog that had gotten trapped under a pile of toys, we found a BLACK WIDOW SPIDER!

And after the whole garage was cleaned and straightened and swept, we found ANOTHER BLACK WIDOW SPIDER!

I guess at this point, you could say that we have a problem.

So my to-do list today looks like this:

1. Purchase spider spray.
2. Spray spider spray.
3. Frantically check the garage in 5 minute intervals for dead and dying spiders.

Good times, ya'll. Good times.

Miracle Monday - Closed For the Holiday!

Miracle Monday will be relaxing today in honor of Labor Day!

I hope you all get to enjoy a peaceful day with your family and friends.

See you back here next Monday when I'll be sharing a medical miracle that occurred recently in my family.

I hope you will all have a miracle to share as well. See you next Miracle Monday!