Good and Perfect: Finding Rest

Like many of you, spring time is super busy for our family. I was telling Josh the other day that spring is probably the only season of the year that I don’t look forward to. I associate it with lots of busy, lots of late nights for him, lots of “I’m so over this” from me, lots of end-of-school-year things that I need to do but don’t feel like doing, lots of events for our kids, lots of nights going to bed too late and waking up feeling like I’m not quite refreshed, lots of “sorry we can’t” because our schedule is too full. I hate that feeling that my head is spinning so fast it might just fly off

I get over school and everything associated with it around two to three weeks before spring break. (Don’t tell my husband.) And don’t get me wrong, I still want my children to go to school and learn and be out of the house for a time, I just don’t want to have to sign a paper or clean out a folder or pack a lunch or snack or do homework or review anything. That’s the place I live in from March until May without any additional stressors going on.

So a month ago I took my kids to a park to kill time between a morning event and afternoon school drop off. That was a great idea until I stepped off of something wrong, rolled over on my ankle and crawled my way to a picnic bench because I wasn’t sure I could stand up. A hospital visit and some x-rays later, I was wearing an aircast for a sprained ankle and had a prescription for pain medicine that I wasn’t able to take because one week later I was scheduled to have a colonoscopy and had to be off of all medicine in preparation for that.

The colonoscopy is the third I’ve had at age 34 because a random series of events led to the discovery of a precancerous colon polyp when I was 27. You get screened for colon cancer when you are 50. I was well on my way to having full-blown colon cancer right now if not for a string of events that I never would’ve considered as God at work. By God’s grace that was discovered and taken out and now because of this history, I have to have colonoscopies every five years for the rest of my life. There were three new polyps removed this month that had to be biopsied. Even though I knew it would be okay regardless of what the results were, there is something very nerve-wracking about waiting for results. We experience this every year when Adri has an MRI or EEG. And being anxious about results is worse when you have a sprained ankle but can’t take medicine and can’t stay off of it because HELLO I HAVE FOUR KIDS. The follow-up appointment wasn’t all great news but the biopsy results came back normal, so for that I am thankful.

For Valentine’s Day, Josh and I decided to gift each other with a registration for the Goodwill Mud Run which we have done twice before. We were training (sort of) in the weeks leading up to it and then my sprained ankle had other ideas. I was planning to push through the pain until I wised up less than a week beforehand and asked my brother-in-law to run in my place. I’m thankful that we found a replacement so Josh could still run, but unfortunately he rolled over on his ankle during the race so he and I have had matching cankles for a little while.

We’ve been able to laugh through big feet and the unpleasantness of seeing a doctor who most people under 60 don’t see, but all of this definitely added a bit of stress onto our busy spring. The four kids in the house don’t stop being kids and having needs just because you can’t walk well or feel concerned about an upcoming appointment.

But the most significant event of the last four weeks was the passing of Josh’s sweet grandfather, Mr. Gene Cooper. We received a text at 11:30 on Tuesday evening that he was in ICU on a ventilator. Josh decided to drive to Gaffney to see him because he wasn’t sure what the future would hold. He returned home around 3am and went to school the next day. On Thursday evening Josh and I went back to the hospital and, upon arrival, found out that they had decided to remove life support that evening while the family was there. It was so good and so hard to be there. There are too many words and private thoughts to really express what that was like, but it was certainly not easy. The days following included family visits, preparations, visitation, a funeral, and a graveside service. Intertwined within all of that was a lot of grief and sorrow, tears from sweet memories, aching thoughts of “what if…”, sadness over the loss, and joy over his gain.

And while working through all of that, we had to lead our children through their first real experience with death. That part was easier than I expected because kids tend to be more resilient than we do. We were able to have sweet conversations about Heaven and complete healing. Emory asked us if Caca (Josh misheard “Papa” as a child and always called him Caca) would have “beternal life” now. Cooper was a little teary and mostly quiet and reflective as he tends to be. Adri’s first thought was “so he doesn’t have to have oxygen anymore, right?” And then one of my favorite moments was when the family was having dinner after the funeral. It had been a long day with the visitation and funeral and seeing lots of people and we were sitting kind of quietly, mostly from exhaustion, and Adri spoke up from the silence and said “I bet Caca’s really having a good time right now.” As a parent there are mixed emotions that come from teaching your children about death while also walking them through the hope of Heaven and eternal Peace.

But as we’ve battled bum ankles, waited on test results, and grieved the loss of the man who we named our son after, we’ve still been foster parents. We’ve still had another kid in tow. We’ve had to talk with her about death too. We’ve had to continue parenting a traumatized child who has lots of needs and doesn’t respond or behave the best under stressful situations. We’ve had to remove her from our stress as much as possible without creating some unnecessary stress for her.

And I’ll be honest, that hasn’t been easy. I’ve had many days in the last month where I wanted to throw my kids in front of a TV and sit in another room and cry. I have had very few days where I have felt emotionally “with it” and able to do the task before me. This is one of those things about being a foster parent that I hadn’t fully thought through in my mind. I knew we would be thrown curve balls from the “system” and that we could expect a range of behaviors and mood swings from the child, but I didn’t think about having to keep moving when life was throwing curve balls at us and we could barely manage our own children, much less one with even greater needs who we have been called to care for temporarily. You don’t get to call timeout and send them away until your stress is removed. You keep moving forward and you have to press on even when you feel like you just don’t have enough to give. But as a sweet and wise mentor reminded me this week, none of us ever have enough on our own. Feeling like I don’t have enough does not mean that I’m failing, it means that I’m forced to recognize my own weakness and lean on Jesus to give me what I don’t have.

It is a blessing to recognize my weaknesses in order to cling to the One who does have enough. And no matter how busy we are or how stressed we are or what my mood is like, a child is worth it. This is Kingdom work. She matters when she's fun and she matters when she's difficult and she matters when I'm not really feeling generous or patient.

We’ve had more of those exhausted days than not recently, but we are moving. We are still correcting and loving and praying and grieving and hurting and clinging. And instead of wallowing in everything negative I associate with spring, I’m holding tightly to the Truth that it represents and what I’m reminded of every time I look out the window: He makes all things new. Gene Cooper is new and whole and sick no more. L is broken and needy but God knows her and sees her and is doing a work in her heart and using our family to be part of that healing process. He is making her new in spite of us and our circumstances. This month, these weeks of stress and busyness will pass and we will look back and be thankful for the gift of being reminded that we can never do it all in our own strength.