Follow-Up at the U of M

Thursday, Jeff, Clara, and I traveled, once again, to Ann Arbor to visit Clara's endocrinologist at The University of Michigan. My friend, Judith, came to my house with two of her kiddos to stay with our other three for the night (which they were super-excited about), and Clara looked forward to having her parents all to herself....'All Hail Queen Clara'. :-) (Or at least she likes to think of it that way.)

While our three oldest were at home renting movies, baking cookies, going to the park, and hosts of other fun things, Clara and I rode in style, as well. Jeff set up the "Bryant Limo" for our traveling pleasure. He folded the captain's chairs in the middle of the van under the floor board, put Clara's seat in the back, put a suitcase back there for me to prop my feet on, supplied blankets, and rented some movies for us to watch from Redbox. It was like our very own theater...mini-van style. :-) It did make the trip go much faster, and I got a great nap, to boot!

 Clara on her back-seat throne. :-)

Things were much less eventful than usual when we arrived at the U of M....it seems we are learning our way around...FINALLY. The only thing that scared me a little were all the "Under Renovation...Preparing for our Move" signs we saw all around the hospital, displayed by gigantic Big Birds. It seems they are moving all of Clara's doctor's offices into the actual Mott's Children's Hospital.  It looks like we'll be finding our way around again next time. :-) (I think I can I think I can.....) We did have one kind of funny thing happen when we arrived at the doctor's office. When they gave us the form to verify all of Clara's information, they had our employer listed as "Why Faction Ministries". Hee Hee...

While we did not expect conclusive answers at this visit, we did pray for some good news and positive results from Clara's additional medications these last three months. I asked the doctor a few of my questions, but it became obvious that, as usual, no one really has a whole lot of answers where Clara is concerned....yet. Not to mention, that doctor will not make eye contact with me...she always looks at Jeff. Don't get me wrong, my man is one smart man, and if you have an insurance question, he's your guy. But if you want to know something about Clara's medical history or about her day to day life, that is more my expertise. So, while her lack of eye contact with me and insistence upon asking Jeff all the questions is slightly frustrating to me, she is a very good doctor and she is great with Clara. I can't complain about that. :-) Clara had to go to the lab for a blood draw and then to radiology for an x-ray of her knee. The labs will tell us how her medication may need to be adjusted and the x-ray was to see if her bones had healed, neither of which we expected to know that day. When we were done, we left.

Clara being as sweet as sugar while she got her blood pressure taken. She was a champ, as always!

Clara and Dr. Hopwood

Waiting...

When we arrived home, we had a message from the doctor. She said that the x-rays that had been done on Clara three months ago had been lost (ugh!) and could I please send them a copy of them. Well, I must admit, this whole experience with the medical community over the last four years has made me realize how important it is to have a copy of everything for myself. I am a little reluctant to send them my only copy of her x-rays. I am going to contact her pediatrician on Tuesday to see if her has the software capability in his office to open the files on the disc and make a copy. If not, I will go from there. She did say, however, that Clara's bones are not healed and that there are still abnormalities. That was NOT what I wanted to hear. Once they have all of the information gathered, she said they would make some decisions on how to proceed. So for now, we just continue the way we have been up to this point. And we wait....some more....

I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who prayed for our family and Emilie after my last post. I cannot tell you that things were instantly better but I can absolutely tell you that I felt your prayers and experienced the peace that passes understanding. I feel like things have been a little better these last few days, so we will continue, in God's strength, to push forward and raise this sweet girl (and her three sisters) He has given us.

I pray this Memorial Day weekend is wonderful for everyone and I hope we NEVER forget the sacrifices that have been made by our brave soldiers to keep us a free country.

God Bless America!! Revive us again!

Love,
Jeannie

Days Like This

Hey Friends,

I know it has been so long...too long...since I have posted. I thought I would take a few minutes and get you all up to date.

I guess the biggest thing people want to know is, "How is Clara?"

Well, thank you for asking. :-)

Clara is doing okay. I know I shared some time ago that we had put her on a new supplement for muscle pain and taken her off of the ibuprofen. Overall that is still going pretty well. I am a bit concerned, though. There have been a few days recently where she has complained of her arms and legs hurting, and she has not complained of her arms hurting in a very long time. She has some mood/anger stuff going on, as well, and with her it is always hard to know if we are dealing with a behavior/heart issue, or if we are dealing with unmanaged pain that she doesn't know how to deal with except to be mean, grumpy, and whiny. I keep praying for wisdom....and recently, giving her ibuprofen, at least before bed. We go back to the U of M next week for our second visit with the endocrinologist. This is the first visit since her diagnosis of hypophosphatemic rickets, so I am armed with lots of questions this time. Specifically, I want to know if all of her mito symptoms can be explained with rickets. I am still struggling a bit with that one. Two weeks later we will be going back to the U of M to meet with the geneticist/bone specialist. In the midst of all of this, there is one final test that we are trying to get taken care of before we come to Georgia this summer and meet with her geneticist there. It takes 21 days for the results to come back, but so far, neither our private insurance or her supplemental insurance want to cover it. I am frustrated to say the least, as I really think we need those results before any final decisions can be made about what is really going on with our girl.

As heavy as this weighs on my heart, always, right now there is something even heavier on my heart. The people close to me know about it, but I have never shared publicly, for two reasons. The first reason is the privacy of the child involved, and the second reason is for fear of being judged. However, we are to a point where we desperately need the prayers of our praying friends. We have reached the end of our rope (which is usually the best place to be....sometimes the ONLY place to be for God to do His work and to make us realize how much we need Him.) As many of you know, we have struggled with issues with Emilie, our second-born, for years. She started out as this happy, cute, and charming little baby and toddler. When she reached the end of her 2's and entered into her early 3's, we noticed some changes. At the time, we wrote it off to "being three" (which in my opinion are WAY worse than 2's). However, as years went by, things got worse, and worse. About 3 years ago, she was officially diagnosed with ADHD. I was very, very resistant to this diagnosis. I considered it a failure on my part, despite feeling like we were doing everything humanly possible for this child in the way of love, support, and discipline. I had always been led to believe that the ADHD diagnosis was for the parents of kids who just didn't want to discipline them and wanted a quick fix. As resistant as I was to the diagnosis, I was even more resistant to the medication. However, things got so bad, and Emilie's self-esteem was plummeting so low, that we had to do something. We sought lots of council from her doctor and from people in our lives that we have great respect for the wisdom they share with us. We decided to try the meds and were absolutely amazed at the difference. This was truly not a decision about behavior, although her behavior was greatly improved. It was mostly about Emilie feeling like a loser and a failure because no matter how hard she tried, she could do nothing right and for, what was becoming more and more obvious, physiological reasons. Within weeks we saw great improvement in her concentration levels to do her schoolwork, to finish a conversation, and to remember to finish doing things like brushing her teeth without getting distracted and walking away in the middle of doing it. Not to mention, she was just more peaceful and pleasant to be around. It has to be very frustrating to not be able to concentrate on anything.

For a while, things were much better. However, about six months before we moved, Emilie came running into our room one night pale, crying, and in an absolute panic. We had already tucked everyone in bed about an hour earlier (however, one of the worst side-effects for Emilie and her ADHD medication was the inability to fall asleep at night). I asked her what was wrong and what she said still gives me chills to this day. She said, "Mommy, I need you to come to my room right now. There are three hunters outside my window shooting their guns and they are screaming at me that they are going to come into my room and kill me."

Doesn't that sound like what you want to hear from your 8 year-old daughter?

I went into her room and, of course, saw nothing outside her window. She begged me to go outside and look, so I did. I went outside, looked around and said, "Emilie, there is no one here."

I must admit that, at this point, my warped sense of humor very briefly took over. I couldn't help but think that if we were on a sit-com, that is the point where I would have been shot by the real hunters in the front yard.

However, the humor was very fleeting, and truly, I wish there had really been hunters in the front yard than for Emilie to have to deal with what she was dealing with.

I should interject here that there is a long history of mental illness in our family. I just always prayed it would miss my children somehow.

Thankfully, we had an appointment two days later with a fabulous child psychiatrist. The short version is that we couldn't afford all the testing she needed (and still needs), but he feels she definitely has a mood disorder of some sort. She is too young to know exactly which one we are dealing with, but that day, she had to go on more medication. We found out at that appointment that not only was she hearing hunters, there was someone named Ashley on our roof talking to her and someone under her bed. So as resistant as I am to medication in general, between Clara and Emilie, I have a cabinet full of it.

The new meds helped her for a while, but in the last three months, things are getting really bad again. Some days, it is like she does not even take medication. She is in counseling here and we have been referred to another child psychiatrist. It is possible that with puberty on the horizon (she is almost 10), her medication needs to be changed. Who knows. We have had it suggested multiple times by my doctor, her counselor, and friends that we are dealing with satanic warfare. I truly believe that's possible. Why in the world would satan want what we have just done...given up everything to moved 800 miles to go into full-time ministry....to be easy for us? Furthermore, the number one way our society is being destroyed is by the breaking down of our families. By God's grace, I am determined that ours will not be one of them. So, I am going to read up on the topic. I definitely believe it exists, I just don't know much about it.... my interest has definitely been peaked .

This is one of those posts where I am going to have a hard time hitting "publish post". Again, I have been so judged in the last few years. I have mistakenly shared with people I thought I could trust who have said things like,

"Jeannie, you better teach her to (fill in the blank) now because it's going to get harder as she grows".

Or

"You better do something about that now before it gets worse."

Or

"You need to (fill in the blank)." As if we have not tried everything...at least everything we have known to try.  We have always felt we were good parents. Not perfect, by ANY stretch, but good parents. If all four of our kids were this way it would be different, but it's just this one.

Or

"She needs vitamins."

Or

"You haven't spanked her long enough or hard enough."

Or

Just a judging look, like "Send her to me. I'll get that fixed."

Or

A whole host of other parenting advice that works on 'normal' (and my other three) children.


What I now know is that the people who said those things do not have a child like Emilie. They are not raising a child that it is like the main character in the movie Twenty First Dates. You make some progress one day and the next day, it's like it never happened.

Her counselor believes she has some sort of learning disorder where she does not learn from experience, and I think she might be right. I could tell story after story.

What I do know is that Emilie is fearfully and wonderfully made....God made her just the way she is and He gave her to us for a reason. I am not sure what that reason is, yet, because I can think of a hundred other people who would be more equipped to help her. But here we are, seeking wisdom and grace...and I know He will give it.  On the up side, she really can be so sweet and so generous (almost to a fault) and is the most loyal friend you would ever want. She is smart and extremely creative (and as a result, very messy). She also loves the Lord....gotta love that, too. And one of the most hopeful things....she wants to do the right thing. If she didn't care about doing the right thing we would have an even bigger problem.

We have considered the possibility that she, too, has Mito. There has been a great deal of research done on the link between Mito and Autism/Asperger's/ADHD, and what they are finding are very strong connections between them. If Clara has Mito it would make sense that another of our children could have it, but if we, in fact, find out Clara does not have Mito, there is much less likelihood that is what Emilie is dealing with.

Please pray we get some answers that do not involve more medication...real help and practical strategies. Please pray that her older (thinks-she's-perfect) sister would show her some grace and mercy and stop treating her like she belongs at the bottom of the food chain. Pray that her nasty habits would improve and that her weird and awful behavior things would not rub off on her baby sisters. Most of all, please pray for peace for Emilie. Her grandmother described it best...it's like she's tormented. She doesn't even rest peacefully.

I have never been comfortable with the idea of "airing dirty laundry", however, I believe that none of us really have a  ministry of any type until we are ready to be open and honest about our struggles. My prayer is that if someone else is dealing with these same things that they would know they are not alone. These are the kinds of things so many people struggle with silently...not exactly the kinds of things you post as a Facebook status...but they are real and they are painful. I have been writing/working on this post for well over a week. I have second-guessed myself a million times, thinking maybe I shouldn't post it. I have prayed about it A LOT, and feel no peace about deleting it. I have considered just writing another one and pretending this one does not exist....but no other ones will come. Emilie is an emotional basket case today....I would appreciate your prayers. So for whatever reason....this is me, hitting "publish post".

I pray your day is blessed!

Love,
Jeannie

Answered Prayer and Mixed Emotions

We had a big answer to prayer two days ago! It has been getting increasingly harder to go places with Clara. Not because of behavior, or anything like that, but because of her stamina. Her little legs get so tired and start hurting and she is getting heavier and heavier and harder to carry. We have an umbrella stroller from when she was little, but as you can imagine, she has outgrown that. She is almost five years-old, after all! I would put her in it but I would have to fight to keep her in it.

When we were in Georgia, we started the process of getting an adaptive stroller for her. An adaptive stroller is somewhere between a  regular stroller and a wheel chair. They are heavy duty and they are designed for older children. There are a number of different kinds, but after looking at the strollers of other people we have met, we had an idea of which one we needed. So before we moved, we started the process of getting Clara  a stroller. Her geneticist wrote the prescription for everything she needed and her physical therapist put us in contact with a representative. However, we did not have enough time to finish the process before we moved.

Once we moved to Michigan, we got another prescription from her geneticist, and once we found a doctor (which as you may remember, that took us a while) and got her started with PT here, we got in contact with another representative through her current physical therapist. After months of waiting on insurance approval and paperwork from all of her doctors, we FINALLY got Clara's stroller two days ago!

 Clara in her new, purple Convaid adaptive stroller. She got to choose her own color.

Also, notice the dandelion necklace? Grandma Jackie had just taught the girls how to make those before we met with Mr. Ken. This place has the biggest dandelions I have EVER seen!

 Clara and Mr. Ken, the representative who fit her for her stroller. 

He gives her good stickers, too! :-)

As happy as we were to finally have it and as thankful as we were for the way God provided for it (they are NOT cheap), watching my baby girl sit in it gave me a lump in my throat. That is just not the kind of thing you ever want your child to need, and it was just a very present reminder that our sweet girl has medical issues. However, I swallowed my tears.....yes, for once I did NOT cry....and just tried to focus on the answered prayer and the gratitude in my heart. Not to mention, Clara was so excited! We went to the South Bend Chocolate factory right after Mr. Ken left here (Grandma Jackie and Mr. Jim were visiting and we HAD to take them to one of our favorite places!), and that sweet girl stayed in that stroller the entire time....a feat we were unable to accomplish in the umbrella stroller because she was so uncomfortable. With summer coming, I think the timing is perfect! We are going to be able to go and do so much more than we could before and Clara will be able to use her energy for the fun things a little girl should be able to use her energy on instead of using it all up just trying to get to where she wants to go! So as sad as it makes me that she needs it, if she needs it, I am glad she has it. Make sense?

Thank You, God!!

Have a blessed day!!

Love,
Jeannie

A Much Anticipated Day

Every member of our family counted down the days until today for one reason or another.

Jeff is at a Men's Retreat at the camp. Need I say more?

This morning was the Harvest Exchange. This is the second time The Harvest Church in Granger has had an exchange where people donate whatever they would have sent somewhere else, and they invite everybody and their brother to go"shop"....but it's ALL FREE!! Alyssa went with me last time (before December), and has literally counted down the days until this one. We all found some great stuff! Plus, I got to see a lot of people I have come to like a whole lot...so that was fun!

So what, do you ask, was the find of the day? This hula skirt, found by Clara.

She wore it all day...even under the dress she wore to the next function we attended, and Kohl's after that. I just thought of it as a pink crinoline. :-)

The next part of our day we ALL looked forward to (except Jeff because he was at the previously mentioned Men's Conference and probably didn't even know what time it was all day.) The church we have been attending held a "Mommy, My Doll, and Me" tea party where all the little girls, their mothers, and their favorite dolls were supposed to dress in all their finery and eat petit fours and drink mint juleps.

Okay...no mint juleps, but we did have petit fours and lots of other good stuff.

Alyssa got to stay home, which is why she looked forward to it...PEACE for two hours (peace and quiet is a precious commodity these days.)

I looked forward to making the little ones a dress and going somewhere special with three of my girls. I will say, however, that when I thought of making the girls a dress for a tea party, I pictured sunshine, linen, brightness, and WARMTH. Therefore, I made the little ones some very cute Fancy Nancy sundresses. Yes...sundresses.... because God shows favor on Georgia at this time of the year, and I am used to sunshine, warmth and brightness. (They don't call it 'God's Country' for nothing.)

So anyway, I digress....

The other three girls were very excited for obvious reasons...boas, tiaras, lip gloss, and dressed up baby dolls (and high hopes for sugary treats of some sort.) Not to mention, brand new Fancy Nancy dresses! (I wish you could hear Megan say that.)

So, when left the house this afternoon, it was 42 degrees...yes, 42 degrees and RAINING! We didn't care. We wore our hats and sundresses anyway...with t-shirts underneath and sweaters on top. Still...very fancy.

 Emilie and her new friend. She's a very sweet girl and I am so glad they have hit it off!!

 The very elegant cupcake display.

 Cupcake wrappers turned American Girl tiaras.

 Princess Leia? 

(...and look at Clara's face. hee hee...I wonder what she is thinking?)

 A rare shot with me in it.

Tonight, it snowed. Not much, but WAY TOO MUCH for the end of April. I can honestly say that I have not felt very homesick the last few days...I am making progress....however, I could use a little help here! More snow is forecasted for Monday, so we shall see. I guess I better keep those cardigans out, because it looks like we might need them for Easter.

And somebody needs to fire that groundhog.

Many Blessings!
Jeannie

Another Exercise in Humility

One time, about five or ten years ago, I prayed for humility.

I did not pray for it repeatedly. A soon as I prayed for it, I realized what I had done and quickly decided I was not up for that challenge. I decided to, instead, pray for something much more attainable.... like world peace.

As it turns out, God has a great memory.

In the last ten years, I have been humbled in every way imaginable. Don't get me wrong....I still have my areas of pride that I have to work on continually, but they are not still there for lack of lessons on God's part. They are still there due to a hard head and slow learning on my part.

This past week, I saw some pictures of myself that were, frankly, disgusting. It took me a minute to even recognize myself. Instead of letting it depress me, I have tried to use it as motivation...new-found motivation to train for the triathlon in September (I still can't say that without laughing). One of the things that has held me back from exercising these last few years were my feet. No matter what activity I did or what shoes I wore, my feet would hurt...I mean excruciatingly so....I felt like I was being stabbed. I have been to orthopedists and podiatrists and no one had answers I could afford.

Two days ago, I decided I was going to find some shoes, no matter what. I spent hours shopping for shoes that would feel good on my too wide, very flat feet, and would also fit my budget. Without boring you with details, I will just say that I found some I was SURE would work. I did laps around the store in them (yes....it was a sight to see) with no pain, so as far as I was concerned, I was good to go!

This morning (Saturday), we woke up and decided as a family that we were going to the Y to workout. I downloaded some new music onto Jeff's MP3 that he so graciously was willing to let me use (I never did figure Alyssa's out, and she wanted it back anyway), and I was pumped and ready to go. I danced all the way out the door to the car and knew I was going to knock it out at the gym. I went in, put my new shoes on, and hopped onto the track. Two laps later, I couldn't even walk because my feet hurt so bad.
\
AAAAAGGGHHH!!!! What in the world is it going to take for me to exercise without foot pain?

So anyway, I very calmly strolled to the bike, as if that's where I was headed anyway, but that even hurt my feet. I really thought I was going to cry. I stood up and started some stretches against the wall, praying that would help.

Still no relief.

I had a decision to make. I wanted to leave. However, before we left the house today, Jeff said,

"Jeannie, do you want to drive separately? Alyssa and I are going to be working out for a good, solid hour, and last time you looked bored after about 20 minutes."

I said,

"No way, Jose. I have good shoes and good music, and you are probably going to be waiting on me!"

(See how that pride gets me in trouble?)

He reluctantly agreed, and we proceeded to the gym. So after two laps, I was not ABOUT to tell Mr. Bryant that I needed to go home, so I did the next best thing. I limped down the stairs to the front desk and whined like a baby to the lady at the front desk about how bad my feet hurt and "what in the world can I do to help my feet?"

Thankfully I have come to know her pretty well these last few months, and she was very supportive. She tried to get a personal trainer to the desk to answer some questions, but there was not one around. (They probably hid when they realized it was the crazy woman with crazy children.) While we talked, however, I did a lot of stretches (using the desk to push against), and my feet seemed to feel better. So, once again, I headed to the workout room.

Well, I still don't have my act together there, either. I hopped on that blasted elliptical that, once again, nearly killed me in the first thirty seconds. Then I realized that I had forgotten to pick up a bottle of sanitizer from the desk. I proceeded to ask the lady beside me if I could use hers. She was willing to let me use the spray, but looked at me like she was completely disgusted that I wanted to use her cloth...so I went to the desk to get her another one. At that point, she was giving me such strange looks I could not humiliate myself any further by trying to exercise beside her.

I turned around and hopped on a bike for about two seconds, but couldn't get the height adjusted correctly without looking inept. (Event though I pretty much am inept where workout equipment is concerned.)

It was then that I considered giving up.

But I looked up to the track and Jeff and Alyssa were going strong. Ugh! I could not let them see me quit...so I went to get a drink of water, found some music that would get my heart thumping, and jumped on a treadmill. I was going strong. The beat was going, I couldn't hear a thing around me, I was snapping and had a little hop in my step. I really wanted to DANCE! (However, I was sure trying to dance on a treadmill would be my most embarrassing feat yet.)

People were starting to look at me. It started out as sly, half-way, 'I'm not looking at you but I really am' kind of looks.

I just knew they were jealous...I thought, "I bet they would LOVE to know what I am listening to. I'll never tell. I'm just gonna make them wonder."

I was just a gettin' it!

But people continued to look, but in larger numbers and they were being much more obvious about it, and I was beginning to get a little self-conscious. I still wrote it off to jealousy ( as if! ), and kept on going with a big ol' smile on my face.

I knew my breathing was getting a little heavy, so I tried to slow that down, but no matter what I tried, people were still looking at me.

I was feeling the beat and felt like I was getting a real workout, but could not figure out why in the world people were staring. I had no zipper to be 'down' in my elastic waistband shorts. I knew I cleaned my mouth after breakfast, and I had not used the restroom there, so I knew there was no toilet paper hanging from my shoe.

What are they looking at????

Well, as it turns out, the beat I was feeling was not just in my music. Apparently, every time I stepped my heavy foot on that treadmill, it was going, "Bang...Bang...Bang...Bang....", and had been doing so for at least fifteen minutes. Oh, brother. I am beginning to wonder if  I will ever go to the Y without embarrassing myself.

So I slowed everything down, finished my workout, and my visions of dancing and singing on the stage of my imagination were wiped away with my sanitizing spray.

At that point Alyssa and Jeff were finished and were waiting on me, so it looked like I had actually worked out longer (only, Jeff is no dummy). I went to the restroom with Emilie so we could get our stuff. I changed back into my old shoes and turned around to find Emilie had disappeared. She had stepped around the corner to put some chap stick on before leaving the gym. She quickly reappeared with shiny lips, her purse on her bent arm, and her pink sequin scarf. At least that girl knows what her priorities are and keeps at them. :-)

And so the "get in shape" saga continues....I am sure there will be many more adventures to come. However, I am hoping they become fewer and farther between. Jeff has always said that I enter every room with a story, and it always begins with, "You will NOT believe what happened to me." It was one of the things he fell in love with, so at least I have not disappointed my man. In spite of so many other things changing in our lives, it seems this has been a constant...at least I'm consistent. :-)

And don't worry, I will NOT be praying for humility again for a VERY LONG TIME!!

Have a blessed day!!
Jeannie

A Perfect, Spring-Like Day

I am praying that today was the beginning of some fabulous weather. I have to say, "Spring-like", because there is always that chance that it will be snowing next week, but for today.....the weather here was GREAT! It stayed in the high 50's to low 60's ALL DAY and my feet were FREE!!

Clara and Megan spent some quality time soaking in the rays.

 They had a ball on the play scape.

This sweet girl is definitely building some muscles!

We played in the big field across the street.

Alyssa had a friend over, and they spent a long time walking around in the beautiful, old cemetery behind our house.

We roasted hot dogs over the fire,

and had s'mores for dessert.

We even had our very own "s'mores bartender." You could also call her our "mallow-hop". Either way, Emilie had it all laid out, making it so much easier and more fun for the rest of us.

The girls rode bikes....all of them...

 (Would someone please get this child's hair out of her face? Where is her mother??)

and played many rounds of hide-and-go-seek. (Sorry, no pictures. I thought  I might give away their hiding places if I took pictures of them hiding...and then they would be mad at me.) :-)

Overall, one fan-tabulous day!!

I hope that where ever you were today, your day was beautiful, too!

Blessings!
Jeannie

Half of a Year

I can hardly believe it, but April 4th marked exactly 6 months since we left Georgia. Can you believe we have already been here for half of a year?

In half of a year:

I have cried more than ever. I have been more homesick than I ever could have imagined was possible, but I have also seen and felt the hand of God in a way I could have never imagined. He has provided for us physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally in some ways I never would have fathomed.

I learned that winter must last almost half of a year here, because in six months, I have seen more snow than grass, but you know what? We survived!! Our first winter is behind us and my feet are almost free!!

Our family has grown in many ways....our character has grown as we have learned to live in much closer proximity to each other than we are accustomed to. We have grown closer emotionally as we have had to lean on each other more than ever. We have grown spiritually as we have had to depend on the hand of God for so many provisions.

Clara has flourished and all four girls love Michigan. There are so many fun things to do here.

We got a dog!

Despite the pain of being ripped from everything comfortable in my life and missing the people I love so dearly and deeply, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It has made me appreciate the people I love at home, and I think being ripped out of my comfort zone was the only way God could have gotten my attention to work on so many things he needed to work on in my heart. That is what it is all about...growing in my relationship with  my God I love so dearly, and hopefully shining His light to all who are around me. Not to mention, we really have met some fantastic people here and I know that as time passes, those friendships will grow deep and close like the ones we have at home. It just takes time.

We have been told it takes a year to settle in...so six months to go! The fact that we are here at all is proof of God's faithfulness and we know for certain this is where He wants us. He never promises the road will be happy or easy....but He does promise He will be with us, and He has been...and there is joy (and tears) in the journey.

I heard this song for the first time today, and I think I have already listened to it about 10 times. It is all about what we pray for and how God answers those prayers. I hope it touches your heart the way it did mine! (You will have to pause the music playing on the blog by scrolling down to the music box widget and clicking on "pause".)

Much Love!
Jeannie