I just might bend, but I won't break...

     I was listening to that song by Mercy Me, and right now, that is where we are at!  But the next part of the verse is ..."as long as I can see Your face."  Amen to that.  Seeing God's hand, for me, is KEY...is PARAMOUNT to surviving trials.

     Boochie came down with a fever Friday night, and we didn't put much stock into it at the time.  By Saturday, he had erupted into having hand-foot-mouth disease, and Sunday I discover he has thrush (from the antibiotics from a month ago) as well, his whole tongue is white.  Monday we merely confirmed all of this with the pediatrician and we are now on prescription meds.  Oh, and he has an ear infection so back on the same antibiotic that caused the thrush in the first place (pediatrician said it was necessary to treat now and not wait, or he will be even more miserable).  Poor guy can't get a break, he is always sick.  But for some reason, this one really has me by the heartstrings.  I am crying out for my poor son whose whole body is being taken over by the agony of multiple tongue lesions and he hasn't eaten more than a bite or two in days, and is drinking is sporadic at best.  Wet diapers so something is going in...  He is rejecting cold soothing yogurt, probably too acidic.  Rejecting popsicles, again, probably too acidic, and today, refused ice cream.  ICE CREAM.  We're talking heavenly custard from CHICK-FIL-A.  You know the boy is in misery :(  I laid hands on him in the middle of chick-fil-a and cried out for mercy for my son, through tears, and he finally agreed to a cup of iced tea!  Thank you Jesus!  I don't care if he asked for a tub of LARD at that point! My boy got his very first, very own cup of iced tea...of course he cried drinking that, too :(

     I think what is killing me more than the incessant crying and drooling, more than the large amounts of sleep loss on both mine, my husbands, and Boochie's part, more than the lack of eating, it would have to be the forceful administering of the medication.  My son CLEARLY lets me know that he is being violated and traumatized...and I grieve when I see how angry he is with me after we manage to get him to choke down his medication, by means of restraint and breathing restrictions (holding his nose for maybe 2 seconds)...just to get him to open his mouth.  You can't squeeze his mouth open or pry it open or anything, due to the many lesions in his cheeks, gums and tongue :(  It really is a sad pitiful sight.

     So it got me to thinking as I have been seeking the Lord on the issue of my kids and their health, as well as my sanity.  I walk away with so much rich stuff from the Lord when they go through things, I almost feel bad for benefiting from their misery.  But it must be what is propelling me forward.  Those who know us well know the struggle we went through with Beeps from infancy probably to about age 3-3.5  First was the undiagnosed and untreated reflux, which explains the misdiagnosis of "delayed colic."  Just a little knowledge into the situation (knowledge God gave me later so I was able to detect Boochie's reflux when he was just 7 days old) would have saved her and me so much grief.  But from that I had to walk away with this:  The doctor didn't know.  I didn't know.  But God knew.  And He knew what wouldn't kill Beeps would make ME stronger.  There was a breaking in me God had to do...something He is still doing today...daily, and that is breaking me of ME.  My selfishness, my motives, my everything.  I've asked the Lord to "tear this church down to its cornerstone and build me up again." (lyrics from The Waiting "I Am").  I am pretty sure I remember the pivotal point (and the spirit is showing me even now as I recall it) in my college dorm room as I poured out my all to my God, asking Him to rewire me.  I knew by the time I was 18 I was pretty messed up, and I needed Him to do this intricate work if I was ever to glorify Him.  Beeps and her reflux was a short but big part of that.

     She also had countless ear infections, and from 18 months to 2 years she was on 5 different increasingly stronger antibiotics in attempts to clear out her ears.  It's a miracle that she didn't get thrush!  I didn't even know what that WAS then.  A visit to the ENT specialist told us she should wait til she was 2 to determine if she was a candidate for tubes.  Even with that bad history of infections, the specialist wasn't comfortable performing the operation.  His exact words were, "If it were my little girl, I would wait."  If he hadn't said that, I might have pushed the issue, I was just so done with all the medicine!  Beeps wasn't even in that much pain!  But the issue was hearing/speech development.  Thank you Lord for better discernment.  The specialist was right, after age 2, her Eustachian tubes grew in, and the infections were no longer an issue!

     Then 4 years later I received what I call my 'honeymoon' child.  Now this is a family-friendly blog, so it's not what it sounds like :D  when I had Boochie, it was like a dream, a honeymoon of sorts.  He wasn't needy, didn't cry, and was a "just business" nurser, as opposed to my 3 hrs at a time nursing daughter (again, those were MY issues-not hers, God had to bring me a LONG way before I was ready for another child).

     But by and by Boochie grew to have to endure quite a few sicknesses.  When he was just 4 months old, he and his 4.5 yr old sister got pneumonia.  At Boochie's 1 year check up, his blood tests revealed that he was anemic.  I think only slightly so, but enough that the pediatrician urged me to stuff my son full of iron and to stop the milk.  Because he wasn't a very needy kid, he stopped asking for the nursing as time went by, and I stopped offering it to him.  And because I was concerned with the anemia, I didn't replace nursing with whole milk.  I figured if he acted normal, and seemed to be happy, he was fine.  By Christmas it was clear to us that Boochie had become emaciated due to his lack of fat and nutrient rich milk that he had been denied.  He was close to being completely weaned, so he lived off of Pediasure for almost 2 months, and I'd say by mid-spring we started seeing weight gain.

In the months to come, he's endured several colds, more infections, discovered an allergy to mosquito bites (and enduring an infected bite millimeters from his EYE) and now the HFMD and thrush.  To say I am stretched is an understatement, but I feel so strong that the Lord is with me, in the midst of this chaos.  It's like everything in my spirit is erupting with the knowledge that this is His work for good, not that He MADE Boochie sick, although He certainly allowed it and maybe He did cause it, but that this work was for me to completely rely on Him.  If I can't trust God for what I can't control now, it won't be a pattern to look to Him when things weight much more heavy on the scales.  Boochie's conditions (for the most part) weren't life threatening.  They seem to be increasingly grievous and painful and really break my heart as a mother, but thy are something we will pull through.  My prayer is that Boochie will learn to look to Jesus as he gets older (he is comforted by our prayers even now!!) and that the Lord will use these times of illness and sickness (and yes, the forceful administering of medication) to affirm his faith (pray Boochie even receives Jesus as soon as he is able to!  Beeps did at age 3!) and to look to Jesus as learns of and is reminded of His suffering, the price He paid so we could spend eternity with Him, in a place where there will be NO suffering...this includes starvation, pneumonia, insect bites, allergies, infections and mouth ulcers!

The previous was written around 3p.m., as of 9p.m. we believe we are starting to see a turned corner...Boochie still can't eat very much (he has been asking for granola cereal...the ONLY thing he has put in his mouth, but still mostly plays with it), but the amount of time that he screams after the medicine has shortened significantly, so we think at the VERY least, he gets that this is actually doing something beneficial for him.  To me this is a HUGE step towards healing!  Halleluja!