Weird Week

This past week has held some crazy mixed emotions. It was filled with sadness, grief, excitement, confusion, and probably a few others that I forgot to mention. Most of them all in the same day. I obviously haven’t gotten a blog post completed yet this week. That is because it’s been a really odd week. The kids have been sick and the weather has been anything but cooperative. But, I’m back now to hopefully give everyone some encouragement on the week and looking ahead to the rest of your weekend.

I told you this week held a lot of emotions. It started off pretty normal and boring other than three of the kids were sick. Although, now that I think about it, that really isn’t that unusual for right now either! Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty much back to normal. Then Thursday came along. Thursday was the anniversary of when my Mom passed away. It’s been thirteen years since she went to Heaven, but it’s still hard every year on her anniversary. But God is gracious and is making it easier.

For the first five years or so, on her death anniversary, I would wake up at the exact time that she passed. I wouldn’t try to do that, but I would just wake up. Only on that day though. I realized a couple years ago that I hadn’t woke up at that time on the last couple anniversaries. Now, I can’t even remember what the time was. I know the general time, but I can’t remember the exact time. God is slowly letting me loosen my grasp on the hurt and start to heal. It has taken me a long time, but it’s slowly getting there. I didn’t realize until recently how much losing a parent in your teens can affect you. But God is healing me and taking care of me. I was hoping to take a trip out to the cemetery that day, but we just so happened to have a blizzard on Thursday. More on that later.

So, Thursday started off with the sadness and grief. Then came the excitement! I took Laiyla to her physical therapy appointment Thursday morning. I wasn’t sure if we were going to make the appointment or not since the blizzard was supposed to be coming in, but it hadn’t started snowing by the time we needed to leave, so away we went. And I’m so glad we were able to go! We got to the appointment and she worked with her physical therapist to see how she has progressed. They came back into the little room from the big gym area that they were working in. The physical therapist was all smiles and told me that Laiyla would not need to come back! Laiyla had improved so much that she was able to “graduate” from physical therapy!! She still has some strength to get back in certain muscles, but the physical therapist is confident that she will get that strength back once she returns to jiu-jitsu. She will hopefully be able to be back at jiu-jitsu within a month or so. Her foot is almost completely healed too!

I’m not going to lie, the tears started to well up when she told me that she was ready to be done! God has been so good to us with how she has recovered. We went from complete devastation less than six months ago to elation this week. Back at the end of September, we were told she would probably never regain use of her right arm. She couldn’t even hold a spoon in her right hand. On Thursday, I watched my little girl have the ability to do everything that the physical therapist asked her to do. She was able to do every exercise. I can’t even begin to explain the emotional rollercoaster of the last five and a half months. If any of you have children with disabilities or sickness, you would understand. But if you don’t, there really isn’t any way to explain it. Every little improvement is like Christmas morning. Every setback feels like a punch to the gut. But God has been so unbelievably faithful through this whole wild ride. I can’t even put it into words. God has answered so many prayers for my sweet girl and has allowed us to find the herbs that helped her recover. I will do another post one day on the herbs, but for today, all I can say is GOD IS GOOD!!!

Is this starting to show why this week was so crazy? It’s definitely been an interesting week! But those two things didn’t even complete the week. Those were both on Thursday. Thursday also happened to be the day that a blizzard moved into Minnesota. Yes, I said blizzard. In the middle of April. And no, I’m not talking about the ice cream treats at the Dairy Queen down the street. I wish I was.

On Wednesday night, all the schools in the area cancelled school for Thursday. I wondered about it at the time, but didn’t really mind the extra day off school. Especially since it finally lined up with my day off work. Yay for sleeping in!!

But, we waited all day for this supposed blizzard to show up. It finally came around 1:45PM. And it came with a vengeance. We went from absolutely nothing to not being able to see across the street in about one minute flat. And that is not an exaggeration. It was a mess. We had snow, sleet, rain, 50mph winds, thunder, and lightning.  By the way, there is an actual name for thunder during a snowstorm. It’s called thundersnow. Very creative, right?!

There was a running joke through Minnesota this week. Thursday was supposed to be the all-state tornado drill. It was canceled due to the blizzard. So, the meme running around Facebook was something to the effect of “Only in Minnesota would the tornado drill be canceled due to a thunderstorm in the middle of a blizzard in the middle of a flood.” Yes, we had all of that. We have been having flooding issues for quite a while now. Nothing major yet, and we are hoping it stays that way. Since it was 70 degrees this past Monday, I think it’s fairly safe to say that we have covered all seasons this week. Isn’t Minnesota grand?! Texas is looking mighty appealing right now!

But, through it all, God has been faithful. I know life isn’t always rosy, but I really have no reason to complain. I would be doing God a disservice to be complaining about anything that has happened. My family is safe and healthy. We have a roof over our heads and ways to stay warm. God is so good to us. I don’t deserve anything He has given us or done for us. He is way more than I deserve.

I hope my little escapades this week have been a little bit of an encouragement to you. I know it isn’t much, but it seems like huge things in my life right now. Sometimes the tiniest things can have the biggest impacts on our lives. Thank you for taking the time to read about our little family and the struggles and parts of life that we go through.

I hope you each have a wonderful weekend!