Just Having Some Fun!

Tonight for some reason I loaded this classic song up on youtube. To be honest I don't know if it was made special for "Mary Poppins" or not but I know it was made known by "Mary Poppins." Enjoy this song! I hope you are in a crazy, happy mood when you listen to it, or at least get a crazy, happy mood after listening to it.

I Love to Laugh

Service can be rough, but always rewarding

Howdy all,

Have I got a story for you! This morning after my quiet time by the water and cleaning the house I decided to walk into Carrboro and go through the Farmer's Market. For any who have never been, the Carrboro Farmer's Market is awesome! It isn't as big in January but still impressive especially for the time of year. Anyways, in the triangle, (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill for you out-of-towners) like any city, you have panhandlers and begger's. I almost never give change to these people for obvious reasons but every now and then someone will ask you to purchase food. In these cases, and sometimes when I am asked for money, I will try to find a gas station or fast food restaurant and purchase some food for the individual. I very much recommend this if you feel comfortable speaking with the individual. This leads to witnessing opportunities and amazing gratefulness in almost all scenarios. Unfortunately this is not always the case.

That brings me to this morning when a gentleman asked me if I could buy him a sandwich or something from a small restaurant. I thought about this and decided to take him down to the gas station on the corner and buy him something from there. I told him the plan and he was very grateful. At the station I found a nice big sweet roll and a banana for him and made the purchase. Upon giving the gentleman the food he proved to not be such a gentleman at all when he started cussing at me complaining that he didn't get the right kind of food. Upon this reaction I knew the best thing to do was calmly walk away a put as much space as possible between us. As I was moving he continued to cuss and flip the bird until he finally threw the food I had purchased at me. A girl came up to the intersection around this time, having seen the end of the tirade and naturally asked what happened. She was shocked when I told her what had set off the man. I said, "most of the time the person is very grateful but every once and awhile you get a lame duck." As we crossed I thanked her for showing up and witnessing at least part of the exchange and we parted ways. As for the guy, well when someone was witnessing he let a few more F-bombs fly as he was walking away and probably went in search for someone to buy him the right food.

I don't tell this story to stop people from serving, but to warn people that service will not always end in thank yous. Sometimes it will end with simple thanklessness, other times (rare) it will end in an ungrateful tirade. No matter how your service ends always remember that your generosity and caring heart will be rewarded eventually, even if it may not be an earthly reward.

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

Luke 6:35

Psalm 23

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me besides quiet waters,

He restores my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness,

for His name sake.

Psalm 23: 2-3

Psalm 23 is such a familiar psalm that I think the words get lost in the poetry but take a minute to think about and absorb the words from these verses. How often do we try to accomplish a task only to be constantly delayed or stalled? How often does a break from that task seem to make everything better without changing anything? Is this God making us lie in green pastures and restoring our soul? Why not voluntarily "lie in green pastures?" If we did this God would not have to make us lie down. Think about these words. This passage is familiar but this week I have taken this common, under-thought Psalm to a different level. Try it, you will like what you discover.

Picture from: http://dpark.files.wordpress.com

Luke Calhoon: Son of Emily and Kevin Calhoon

Here is a situation I have been watching for almost a year now and it is great to see it going so well. His story was recently spotlighted at http://www.manyfacesofmoebiussyndrome.com/.
Person of the Month"Luke"

Luke was born at 41 1/2 weeks at 7 lbs 10 oz. He was not breathing well when he was born and so was put on a ventilator and taken up to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). He was in the NICU for 3 1/2 months while the doctors got him on the correct ventilator settings and where they clinically diagnosed him with Moebius Syndrome. Luke sees 9 specialists and has been formally diagnosed with Moebius Syndrome. There was a question that maybe there was more because of the breathing problems Luke has Moebius plus something but the specialists determined that all of Luke's symptoms fell within Moebius Syndrome. Luke's symptoms are the facial paralysis and no lateral eye movement. He does not really have a blink reflex but he does close his eyes when he sleeps. Luke has a small jaw and he didn't have a suck or swallow reflex and maybe not a gag reflex at first but now it seems like he is doing all of those at some level. We are working with a oral therapist once a week to help him improve these skills. However, we can't really try to feed him and test these reflexes until he is off the ventilator. Right now he eats through a g-tube but has no problems digesting the food and will take as much as you can give him. He has a trach and is on a ventilator because of poor muscle tone (their best hypothesis). Basically the muscles around his lungs do not allow him to take deep enough breaths to get rid of his CO2 and get enough oxygen. He general has low muscle tone has delayed a lot his gross motor skills. He started sitting up unassisted around 10 months and he is still a little shaky sometimes. It also took him to around 10 months to push up with his arms while on his stomach. He is making progress it is just on “Luke time” as his physical therapist says. He also has club feet which have been corrected with 3+ months of casting, Achilles's tendon clips and now shoes with a bar by the Ponseti method. He is now wearing the shoes and bar only 12 hours a day and has been discovering his feet, which he had not seen since he was in the NICU.

Since Luke has been home he has been getting better exponentially. He is 10 ½ months old and he weights just over 20 pounds. He is now quite a chubby boy and enjoys reading and playing. He is a pretty content baby which helps a lot with all the things he has done to him. He loves to look at his hands and has very good fine motor skills. His dad and I have a hard time copying some of his finger babbling. We have been teaching Luke sign language so that he can communicate with us easier and hopefully get less frustrated. Even this his trach he can make a lot of noise. With all the hurdles Luke has to overcome to communicate he seems to have figured it out pretty well. Luke signs “milk”, “diaper change/toilet”, “mom”, “dad”, “Luke” and I want something to put in my mouth (one he made up). We are working on “more”, “suction” (not many kids need this one but Luke seems to understand it) and “all done”.

Luke had one rough patch this fall which caused him ~1 ½ months of sickness and ended with him in the hospital for a few days to really kick it. But since he has been better he is developing exponentially. Luke was weaning off the ventilator before he got sick and was doing a great job at it. Hopefully we will begin again with the new year! We expect that Luke could be off the ventilator by this summer and are hopeful that his trach will be out soon after that.

Some days are rough dealing with Luke and all that goes with him and hurts to see him with so much life and death medical intervention but then I think that the ventilator and trach will be gone in a year or so and by the time he is ready for school we will have a lot of this behind us and he will be able to run and play with the other kids. Sometimes it is good to look at the big picture and know that Luke will probably not remember much if any of this when he is older. Yeah we will always be dealing with the Moebius issues that go with facial paralysis and eye problems but right now the breathing issues seem larger.

He is the joy of our lives and his grandparents. His grandparents that live near us know how to take care of him and love to watch him for us when my husband and I go out. He is a happy little boy and seems fairly unfazed by all the medical intervention in his life. I have learned a lot about more medical things than I knew existed but boy do I love my little boy who stares at me with his big blue eyes and smiles big smiles with them.

A great picture of me!

Hey folks, this picture was taken at Bristol Motor Speedway this past year in celebration of, go figure, Mark Martin's 1000th career NASCAR race! I am in this picture holding up one of the red signs. I am above the "The" under the upper grandstand. Pretty Cool!