Life at it's Finest

Nothing like a good ole dose of reality bringing life right back into perspective. Granted, we have plenty of reality going on everyday around here.....just quit writing about it for awhile I guess. Nothing quite like the change of seasons to bring out the romantic sentimental side of one's self. But, as spring arrives in full force so does the need to sell off anything and everything....including the kids, depending on the day. As stated in the previous post, I have successfully drug out pretty much everything to our name. For some insane reason in my psychopathic head I decided to tackle absolutely everything all at one time. Usually quite the organized person, this unintended chaos I poured forth on myself does take its toll. So, I emptied the attic in preparation for the yard sale..into the playroom I might add...which already had an entire wall full of yard sale stuff occupying it. So now we have the entire attic, which Brad unceremoniously dumped into any available space he could pitch stuff into, scattered recklessly all over the playroom floor along with all of the crap that was already occupying what little room was left in there. Like....you can't really even open the door and poor Athena has to complete an obstacle course before ever reaching her bed for the night. So, with that waiting...or rather lurking scarily on my to do list in my overloaded head.....I began to live in denial that it was really out there and proceeded to drag out every article of clothing we own....all 10 of us. Since clothing is my most major downfall and continues to be it is continually overwhelming and so it builds and builds until it runs me out of house and home. Laundry is not an issue. Laundry gets done on a daily basis, folded by the older 3 and put away by a group effort of the older 6. Yes, laundry is no longer the monster lurking behind the utility room door and after 10 years I can safely say that is one area of my life that needs no more help or adjusting. Clothes.....well, clothes on the other hand I am continually juggling and rearranging and trying to find a good way to make it all work. I am still in great need of finding a tried and true method of storing them until the next season or next baby....whichever the need is. So, in my attempts to once again regain control over this area of my life I emptied every closet and drawer in the house. Umm.....so no. That wasn't such a grand idea in the long run. I"m still paying for that one, as we are sitting on the floor at this point. And I actually have the audacity to get mad if anyone dares sit on the piles heaped on the couch that fall off if you look at them wrong. It is indeed getting somewhere though, as I now have 3 massive boxes filled with donation and sell items.




Then next came the toys. Since having children we have gone though cycles. I think toy ownership was at its peak when we had a mere 2 children. By 3 I cut back on small amounts of unused items and by 5 I saw the need for a complete overhaul and re evaluation of what is really necessary in a kids life. We eventually narrowed it down to large outside toys, mostly riding, large vehicle toys such as the ever popular fire trucks around here that make for easy pick up and a tote size container of small toys. I am now of the mindset that the tote's just gotta go. I'm thinking the only thrill they get out of it at this point is dumping it out and walking off. Gavin may pick out a choice truck that he hangs onto for 2 entire days and then soon that is found lying somewhere in a hallway. Instead of being the meanest parent in the world and selling off every toy we own I am of the mindset to box all but a shoebox size box of them up and stick them in the attic to see how they fair....kids not toys, that is. We did this as Brad commuted and I was required to show the house at a moment's notice with a houseful of 6 children 7 and under. They never seemed any worse for the wear and they surely aren't mentally handicapped due to lack of toy stimulation. So, anyway, amid attic dumping and closet emptying I moved on to trashing and boxing toys. This was definitely not the wisest tactic.






Brad has had no overtime shifts in months and it is once again a true walk of faith to make ends meet. But, as always the Lord is faithful to provide. Maybe not exactly in the timing we would have preferred but we have food and every need is met. But, as overtime picked up we went from none in months to almost every off shift within the last 2 weeks he has worked.....translated into never being home. He has had 2 96 hr shifts. We are both exceedingly grateful for this but, I think God may have failed to take note that I was in the midst of turning the house upside down when he opened the overtime gates. As it turned out I have had the 24/7 care of all 8 of them on my own for days and days on end along with the house having just vomited up everything that ever lurked in it's shadows. This would not usually be an issue except that one has to stop and break every half hour to feed a kid...which then promptly turns into 7 kids...and then of course, something about a new baby that smells food and wants to nurse. How that correlation works I'll never know but somehow a newborn is born with a nose that knows food and therefore wants to nurse whether they actually have the ability to eat what they smell or not. I finally established hours that the kitchen is open. Of course, they loved this and played restaurant, liking it for all it was worth until they figured out I was serious. Suddenly, certain little 4 year olds and 2 year olds didn't like the restaurant so much anymore.






I must add that while all of this takes place that they find it so entirely fun to wreak havoc due to the fact that my attention is definitely elsewhere. And 4 little boys all born within 3 years can do some damage. They can dump entire bags of cereal out onto the kitchen floor and then think it's hysterically funny to stomp on it. They can "clean" the mirrors with lotion. They can all 4 climb into the waterless bathtub and empty entire contents of shampoo and baby wash and then play "slide". They can pull shower racks completely down and break off the little decorative curtain holders. They can place a cup on the floor and open up the spout on the water jug to see if the waterfall will hit the cup.....in which case, of course it failed to. The 3 bigger boys discovered it is fun to feed cat food to the baby boy. Oh yes....lest I forget.....they discovered the novelty of sticking their bare butts in the toilet while yet another stands by and flushes so that the seated one can feel the water swirling on his butt and be privy to a grandiose butt washing. They learn to scale closet shelves in order to reach their, supposedly, out of reach clothes. They have discovered it is hysterically funny to blindfold their "baby I-thee" with her headband and watch her look through the lace "like the Lone Ranger, Mama!". They've found that they much prefer to nap in the nude....all 4 of them.





That scenario only originated by the many spankings they seemed to have earned themselves in this whole "spring cleaning - daddy absent for long periods of time" period in our lives. Recently when I have spanked Grant he has been so outraged over the injustice done to him that he has taken to stripping down to absolutely nothing after the fact. With his butt screaming in protest to what came upon it and his effort to rid himself of the sting he proceeds to holler and discard every piece of clothing on him. And, yes...it has succeeded in getting some good laughs out of everybody. Usually I don't force his clothes back upon him but tell him that whenever he regains his composure and is ready to come out of his room that he needs to come out fully clothed once more...which works. I didn't really ever take into account exactly the fun that would emerge from having tons of brothers in there with you as you proceed to run around naked. It took them all of 5 minutes, if that, to figure out that Grant indeed has the right idea going and soon there were not 1 but 3 little naked people having the time of their lives....and soon all 3 were fast asleep.....naked. Fun.






As for our chicken endeavors, apparently chickens have not quite discovered the miracle of life quite like I did. I have found that if you look at a chick wrong it is apt to die. If they don't die in the eggs, they die while hatching or shortly after hatch time....or a few days later. The one in the pic that was hatching actually had something mentally wrong with it and couldn't even hatch out of the egg correctly. We were told to never help a chick hatch or else it was imminent death. But, after 72 hrs of hatching we figured it was going to die anyway so we'd at least give it a shot at life. This would be after 3 other chicks hatched successfully while this very first one was still trying to peck out...and it was dying. He actually lived the longest of them all. But when his 3 friends died I guess he just figured it was the in thing to do. It was a little too stressful for me to find any kind of enjoyment out of the experience. So, by the end of it I told the children in no uncertain terms that I was quite done with the egg hatching for awhile.






So, as I'm cleaning out I instruct Grayson to put preacher neighbor's styrofoam incubator in the shop until we are ready to use it again. That would be the shop with the big brooder and the 36 bigger chicks...that are now near chicken size. Never once did I ever contemplate a chicken being so entirely stupid as to eat styrofoam. But they do....and they did. By the time we discovered it they had obviously been working on it for a couple of days. To make matters worse there was not one trace of styrofoam crumb on the shop floor...just about 100 pds of bird poop to eliminate all doubt as to who the culprits were. Of course, my 1st thought is the expense of a new incubator then it turns to the lives of the crapped out chickens that ate it. Mental images of chickens blown up like little round party balloons float through the head. But I guess they're a little tougher than what I gave them credit for....at least at this stage of their life. After the complete irritation of it I did not fail to see the irony of the fact that chickens ate the egg incubator. Sounds like they may be in need of a little chicken therapy, if you ask me.




In the midst of it all I have grown extremely weary of feeling like an overweight tub of lard. So it is that I have once again hit the road and am running my 2 miles again. I have a morning workout routine and then go run at night. Hopefully that will be enough to burn my fat butt off and kick my milk supply back into high gear....seeing as how it kind of forgot what to do. Due to my over zealousness in conquering the world all at one time it has left me kind of exhausted and playing the catch up game. Maybe one day when I organize my time a little better I'll be back on here regularly. Dont' ever expect me to preach a sermon on time management though.


So goes life around here.

A little company for school work

One of Daddy's boys

Sweet contented girl

Finding the toes

Yep.....there's a story behind this one too.

It'll have to wait for the next post though.

New Content

Alright....due to my dear husband's loving prompting, "You need to put some new crap on here" I thought I would just update and say new stuff is coming. Spring cleaning in is full swing. We had plans to do a garage sale in Fort Worth this weekend but got rained and cold fronted out of it. Typical Texas for you. But, in dragging every last thing we own out of closets, attics, playroom and drawers it looks quite like the house threw up all over our property. I'm quite assured that someone could have set an atomic bomb off here and it would look no different. But, I am feeling good and only slightly overwhelmed at this point. We have mounds and mounds of donation piles, a 600 sq ft playroom of stuff to be yard saled and then yet another pile or two or three of just sheer trash. I have decluttered every year since before me moved here so I am certain that given 2 more years or so we will have nothing but a few clothes and a few beds left to our name. It feels good. I am of the strong opinion that once you become burdened by your own possessions you become a slave to them. When there is freedom from earthly things there is freedom to move in the Spirit and "where the Spirit of the wind shall blow" we have the ability to move freely. Yes indeed!

So, we downsize yet again. Even beloved Pepperoni and Oregano found a new home at Mother's. Fish, as low maintenance as they are, still take up space and still have water to be changed and food to be fed. And since we no longer have a dining room table at the moment then they sat on the bookshelf and became"out of sight and out of mind"....which easily translates into starvation mode around here. So, they went to Mother's where the children can visit them often yet still be cared for and tended to much better. The dining room table even went in this decluttering event. We no longer fit at it anyway so it really served little purpose than to seat the children for lunch. Grayson and I disassembled it and readied it for the Uhaul load up to Mother's for the yard sale. They are now picnic-ing at the coffee table with foldable camping chairs gathered around it. The goal is to eventually purchase 2 long utility fold up tables at Sam's and put folding chairs around them. That should seat all of us and a few more when we have company. It'll be easy clean up too. As of now, there's a vinyl fish shower curtain taped to the coffee table and we are all more than impressed at the simple and easy clean up it creates. I'm thinking vinyl table cloth when we make the move up to the dressy and formal folding tables. Simple is good.

So.....for now our days are packed full of spring cleaning and once again making life simple and enjoyable. Unburdened by worldly possessions. I wake early and fall asleep exhausted once children are bedded down for the night. More to come...along with pictures....of our spring cleaning event. And, more pictures of sweet Ivye since I realized she is now almost 5 months old and I have little to no pictures of her on here. She continues to be the sweetest, happiest, cutest thing ever.

Ninxy-bating the Eggs

The incubator

So it is that I have been avoiding this life changing project for some number of months now. Our preacher neighbor has offered his incubator numerous times and up until this last time we have all but turned it down saying we much prefer to just let nature takes its course. Of all of the times that we have tried to force nature's hand at doing this whole animal thing 9 out of 10 times it just hasn't worked. So, Brad and I both figured we'd just let hens do the hatching and mothering and take the fake brooder out of the picture. Somewhere in there things began to change. Feeling quite confident now, still not quite sure why, and it being a great school project I finally gave in and said we'd take him up on his offer. Now that we have hens laying fertile eggs it proved to be easy enough to gather a week's worth and place them in a straw filled bucket awaiting the great incubation....or as Garrison, Grant and Garrett have deemed it....the great ninxy-bating day. A week's worth of eggs made a grand total of 20 that went into incubation since we only have 4 hens laying at the current moment. Since this was a school project and an effort to make up for the 6 chicks we lost the responsibility was completely up to the children to care for these eggs. Grayson was faithful to turn them twice a day...which quickly fell into a routine of 8am and 8pm, keeping water trays filled to keep humidity at a constant level and adjusting temps as the outside temps affected indoor temps, thus affecting incubator temps. In all honesty, I had very little hope of any of these things hatching. For a first time event I felt we had royally screwed some of the care of them up. One morning we came in to find some little somebody had turned the dial and the temp was a mere 83 degrees when it is supposed to be kept at a consistent 99.5. To make matter's worse, it had stayed that temp all night long since the discovery wasn't made until early the next morning. Another morning we came in to find the water trays were empty and humidity was at a 46% when optimal is 55%. And yep....it had dehumidified sometime in the wee hours of the morning and been low for more than a few hours. Then one night we looked up at midnight and realized the eggs hadn't been turned at all. Now for all of those who have no incubating experience whatsoever....if you fail to turn then the chicks actually stick to the sides of the egg and develop deformed since they are now conveniently glued to one side of the egg. Another day we realized that night that one had been missed in the turning process that morning. Admittedly, I grew a little tired of ninxybating the eggs. And, though I dare not tell the children, my hopes of any of them actually making a grand appearance was pretty slim. Finally as the infamous day 21 drew near I broke it to them that reality was....some of them....or well...probably ALL of them were not going to hatch. I mean....how can an egg that you just stuck in a warm moist place just grow a real live little something with only minimal care...or well, ok....alot of care. And how on earth could these things that have been so still, so very lifeless for days on end, go from nothingness that you eat to something with a heartbeat? I just couldn't see it happening.

Unburying the eggs

Last night I heard that ever still quiet little voice give instructions to go check the incubator. Usually not one to tune into it too terribly much, since I had grown tired of seeing the same thing for days on end, I followed the still small voice and peeked in. Peering through the foggy, water droplet filled window I saw that one of the eggs had a small hole punched out of it. I thought it strange and called Grayson in asking, "Has that crack always been there?" He came to life and excitedly said, "No ma'am!!! They're starting to hatch!!!!!" A bit doubtful I peered back in to get a better look. Suddenly my own excitement took over and it was like Christmas morning. The small egg indeed had a living thing pushing through the shell. The egg wiggled and came to life as the outer shell was pushed upward and outward. I ran to Brad, as excited as all of the children now were, and said, "They're hatching!!!!". He too came in and in our tiny 10 sq ft utility room all 10 of us gathered around and took turns looking into the foggy window of the incubator. For the remainder of the night it was like a theatre had been erected in our laundry room. It suddenly became the most popular place to be in the entire house. Little ones clambered up and over laundry baskets and were told over and again not to lift the lid. Older kids stood there transfixed, chins cupped in hands as they conversed about the most recent happenings taking place within. As the hours wore on our little chick made progress. Finally his beak became visible and everyone applauded. A little while longer little tufts of black wet feathers pushed through the growing hole, tiny egg tooth now shining brightly from within the shell. We finally forced everyone to bed....hearing the wails up until sleep overtook our tired brood. I am convinced they would've slept in there with this nearly hatched chick if permitted. Tired little boys would've fallen asleep right on top of the incubator if allowed. Aubrey was, by far, the most broken hearted of them all. Her intense love of animals, not surprisingly, carried over into the hatching chicks. We awoke to little progress on the chick's behalf and surmised he had slept through the night. Readied for church we left our little brood still incubating, as the 3 Sundays before. But, unlike the 3 Sundays before, we arrived home to see great progress and Mr. Chicky's head now completely visible through the large opening that he is still pecking away at. Much to our delight 4 more have begun their pecking vigil as they take on the task of fighting their way into the world.

Marking for turning

How utterly amazing this is to me. Though I have now gone through the entire journey of pregnancy 7 times and given birth 8 times I don't think it has ever been so real to me as when it came alive in this incubator right before my eyes. Despite the fact that my midwifery practice allowed me to actually participate in almost 100 births it just never really seemed to be as alive as when watching this chick come to life. Maybe because I was so caught up in the moment of helping and being of service to those giving birth I failed to recognize the absolute miracle of life itself. I'm not quite sure. I do know that this is absolutely one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I love that the children all get to see this at their ages...something they will take with them later into life. I love that it is not something they see pictures of on a page in a book but something that they are actually taking part of. They feel the humidity, they smell the process, the can touch it all. It's as hands on as it gets and it's a life changing project to watch something that goes from seeming nothingness to a living thing. It seems to put into perspective the miracle of life itself....and really just creates a desire to own a sonogram machine for our own personal use when baby #9 pops up.

"Can you see it????"

Life itself is amazing. How can anyone doubt there is a God when watching the miracle of life? To think that an egg smaller than a grain of sand is held within my own body and has the ability to divide into millions of cells that become this beautiful baby girl that I cradle in my arms is incomprehensible to my mortal mind. Wrapped snugly and securely in her sleepywrap while we worship at church she is lulled to sleep by the rocking motion of my own body and the sound of my heartbeat against her ear. Sounds and movements so familiar to her. A mere four months before this was her world, where she grew from nothingness to a complete and perfect human being. I glance down at my sleeping angel, short brown hairs barley cover a pale white head, blue veins visibly pumping blood through her entire being. A tiny fist curled up against my chest and the gentle movements of her tiny chest as she breathes in and breathes out in her deep slumber. Life. How could something so beautiful and so perfect be so nonexistent and by the hand of God, in His perfect timing, be brought forth to life?

Jeremiah 1:5 (New International Version)

5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

I look over at bigger baby who turns circles as beautiful older girls dance around him, praising without inhibition. Little boys play instruments keeping near perfect time with a drum, shaking shakers and beating the triangle. I take it all in as I marvel over the miracle of their lives. It is no less amazing to me....even more so.....that these bigger little people came from my body....each one birthed at a specific time God ordained before the beginning of time itself. I smile at them and 7 happy faces smile broadly back. I am captivated by this moment in time. The gift of life surrounds me and it is an amazing thing.

Psalm 139:13 (New International Version)
13 For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother's womb.

Ecclesiastes 11:5 (New International Version)
5 As you do not know the path of the wind,

or how the body is formed in a mother's womb,

so you cannot understand the work of God,

the Maker of all things.

Another version of Ecc 11:5 reads interestingly and so very true:

"As you do not know the path of the wind,
or know how life and the spirit enter the body being

formed in a mother's womb,
so you cannot understand the work of God,
the Maker of all things."

The discovery of the 1st chick's hatching

Watching him work away at the shell

Progress viewed from the moisture covered window

The suspense grows

The captivated audience



His egg tooth and black head now visible...behind the one in front you can see the 2nd egg starting to hatch, the chick within beginning it's pecking journey to freedom

Losing Buddy

More sad life lessons. I cannot help but hope, and even know, that these are the times when true character building is taking place. Like blocks being stacked or steel beams welded together, each new event occurs to eventually create God's finest works of art in the lives of our children. Through these events they must learn to accept and adapt as change takes place.....and things in life come and go...even the most beloved of things and what you hold so dear to your heart.

We discovered Buddy to be one of the best gifts ever to our family. He was an absolute dream of a dog. After the trauma of Tigger's death and a year's worth of looking and being picky about the right dog for our family due to the criteria we have Buddy fit the bill in every way...a rarity in the canine world. And a "buddy" he quickly became.

But after only 2 short weeks here, exactly to the day, we noticed him not feeling good. With Athena due to get her stitches out we just took Buddy in with her to get checked and make sure it was nothing serious that needed medical attention. It was said it could be as minor as a bronchial type of infection that just needed some antibiotics or as major as distemper. I've only ever heard of distemper and knew it was a part of many of the shots a dog receive but that's about how far my knowledge of the subject went. As my research loving mind always does I set to work researching canine illnesses. The more I searched the more horrified I was as my distemper knowledge expanded. I was hopeful it was merely a little dog cold since he was showing only a few of the symptoms. But by mid week if was very apparent something was really wrong and that he was indeed very sick.

The following Saturday came and as he laid pathetically by my feet and feebly followed me around the house he began to have muscle spasms over his whole body as different parts began to seize. His back legs had been seizing for about 48 hours but by Saturday morning it overtook his whole body. With Brad on shift the children and I stood by helplessly watching our new puppy die. Children's tears flowed freely and the why's began. After all of the prayers, all of the speaking life, health and vitality to him through the power we have as children of the living God, quoting Scripture over this dog and claiming healing through the power we have in the blood of Jesus, knowing that the Lord cares even for the smallest of animals and He cares for us we continued watching him grow worse.











Fearing a complete seizure and the nightmare it would be for the children to watch their puppy go through that I made the call. They know how Brad's brother, Uncle Ben, died and I had no desire for them to put the mental picture of a seizure to the knowledge they have of Ben's death.....despite the fact this was merely a dog. A seizure is traumatic no matter the sufferer....especially when it is something you hold so dear to your heart.

I had spent the week troubleshooting with our dear rescue friend and she had given me signs to watch for and, if it was truly the dreaded distemper, when to make the call to put him down. I recognized it immediately from the details she had given me. It didn't seem fair at all to have only had this dog 2 weeks, have fallen so in love with him and then have to go through this....especially with the children. I called Brad and let him know what all was taking place on the home front. I woke children from naps, shoes were fetched, older belted in younger and we carried Buddy to the van. We drove the 32 miles into town and were greeted at the ER vet clinic's doors by the vet's assistant who was now expecting for us. After taking one look and confirming it was indeed distemper and that he was in the last stages of it the prognosis was bleak. Only a 30 % chance of survival to the end of the weekend...only 30 hours away....and almost a 0% chance of surviving the most acute part of the disease.....the remaining 35 days we still had left to go. If by some miracle he did survive he would be left "mentally handicapped". I thought that was a strange term for a dog. Possible incessant running of circles, almost total paralysis and no quality of life were some of the predictions thrown our way. Due to the spasms and almost constant seizing permanent damage had already occurred in his back legs and was now taking place in his front legs. His brain had already started to seize...the last stages. It was heart wrenching to see such a sad slow death. It is always hard to look death in the face.

With this thought my mind seemed to float a thousand miles away. The local homeschooling community suffered several huge blows this week as the enemy launched an all consuming attack against all. More than a few families suffered devastating losses that seem absolutely incomprehensible to me. I cannot imagine the sorrow they bear right now. As I stood staring at death in the face of this puppy of our's my thoughts reeled at what they had been through this week. I stood mourning the loss of a puppy when they sat grieving the loss of a child....one family, even more than one child. The hot tears I felt streaming down my cheeks for this puppy seemed so trivial....so prudish and arrogant....as I pondered the face of death they had seen. Tears for the sick and dying dog before me turned to tears of grief for these families and the aching hearts left in the wake of death.

More thoughts as my tumultuous emotions spun endlessly in circles. Brad does not speak often of his job. More often than not I hear the funnier side of life at the station or the absolutely outrageous calls that make for good storytelling. From time to time I hear his impatience and griping over the torrent of needless but inevitable BS calls that fill his shift nights and allow no one to sleep. 2:30 am 911 calls for splinters in fingers or ingrown toenails or of a person that needed GasX and not a 4:00am ambulance ride to the ER. I know he does the hard stuff too but it is something never talked about. Somewhere in our marriage a deep unspoken understanding took place of allowing him to keep to himself that which he never wanted to remember again and trusting that I will know whatever he feels he needs to tell me. He rarely vents or feels the need to air out any of the atrocities I am sure he sees, so very rarely do I ever get a glimpse into the true life of a paramedic. I have learned in our 10 years of marriage though that about 98% of a firefighter/paramedic's career is spent paramedic-ing and the other 2%, if that, is spent actually fighting any kind of blaze. The majority of the inferno he wages war against is spent trying not to mentally revisit certain calls that somehow managed to seep through the seeming calloused, emotionless exterior that paramedics learn to cloak themselves with. In all of the years of our marriage I have only ever heard one of these stories. I have learned to respect his space and know that to even bring these things up in conversation is only reopening something that has been shut away somewhere deep within him and not to be pulled out again.

But as I stood crying over our dying puppy, grieving for these families that have lost so much in just one week, the respect for my own husband began to grow. We know each other in every way....every intricate detail of each other's lives.....except for certain areas of his work. At times I have even fought the green giant...not quite so jolly as what the commercials make him out to be......over this area of his life of which, at times, I feel completely shut out. Jealousy knocks at the back door and satan whispers lies at how I have been shut out of areas of his life. So my mind wanders.....what exactly do I want....gory details???? No............no. Not really that. Just the peace of knowing he is free to come to me with everything.

At this point I have been totally engrossed in my own thoughts now for quite some time. And so I stare at the face of death as I continue to ponder these strange things. As I stare into huge trusting brown puppy eyes I see the trust and hope of something so dependant on you to help it....to literally save it from death's grip. Pleading eyes asking for help. Suddenly I realize what my own husband must face on somewhat of a daily basis. I merely look into a dog's eyes but what must he see? The sights, the sounds that go along with innocent and premature death. He is the one that has to look a parent in the eye and know there is no hope of bringing their baby back, he is the one staring into the eyes of a child pleading for help when there is nothing he can do. He is the one that hears the wailing and begging of him to do something...just anything to save the life of their baby. Suddenly this forbidden part of him does not seem so bad. In fact, it is so far beyond my grasp to even comprehend and it brings forth a deeper respect than I have ever had for him. The death he has stared in the face I never want to see. In our 2 1/2 years of living here, and the sheer number of animals that have died in our care, it has not really gotten any easier to deal with death. There is a part of me that can process it better but the actual dying.....watching something die......never gets any easier. It is never easy to watch the suffering of another. We are human and this is the way God has designed our very beings. If I find it hard to watch an animal die what must it be to do my own husband's work? The respect I have for him continues to grow and God continues to reveal to me how to better love him and understand him even after almost 11 years of marriage. It takes an absolutely incredible person to do what he does on a daily basis. Someone tough enough on the inside to see what he sees yet kind and loving enough to continue going back and loving on those that the Lord puts in front of him each and every day....loving the unlovable and caring for the grieving, mourning their loss with them, yet coming home to his own house full of bounding, joy filled, energetic kids....being who they need after a shift filled with loss.

Buddy did die. We made the decision to put him to sleep as he struggled to breathe and the seizing of his muscles grew worse. His whole body was twitching and enduring spasm after spasm as he lay there growing weaker and weaker.

It did make for some life lessons. As the children grew angry and wanted to know the why's after so much prayer had gone into it, and the unfairness of it all surfaced, it opened the door to minister to their hurting hearts. As homeschooling families all over the region suffered from this huge unforeseen spiritual attack I told them that we were only wounded in a minor way. The family that lost their 2 1/2 year old would do anything to have their boy back. I told the story of spiritual warfare and said, "They lost their youngest child....Garrett's age....yet they still have their dog. Now you tell me what they would give to have their baby boy back and their dog gone. They would give their very lives to have their son back with them. They would willingly kill their dog if it meant having their baby back. Never get focused on your own problems because in a life very near you there are battles being waged and hurt so deep that it makes our's dull in comparison. The moment you become self focused is the moment you render yourself incapable of helping others. Use your hurt to understand their's and tell of God's goodness. You do indeed hurt and are sad but we are sitting here with every one of our children....and every one of your brothers and sisters.....and our world remains relatively the same. Every person in this house is still here. So, instead of grieving our loss, we need to focus on what we have been given and what we still have that we take so easily for granted. Sing in the midst of your hurt and praise Him even when you do not understand and you think life is unfair. There will be so very much you do not understand in life but it is imperative that you keep singing and that you still look to Him for your peace and comfort and guidance. Do not ever stray from Him even in your anger. Always look for the blessings around you. Praise Him for what you do have. There is plenty." And so I asked them of a fitting praise song and one by one that each requested one of their favorites. Our drive home was spent singing praises and offering up thanks to a loving and merciful heavenly Father that we sometimes do not understand but continue to praise in the midst of it. What better life lessons than those.