Ready to multiply your return exponentially?

This upcoming RAGBRAI my Uncle John and his two friends, Eric and Don, will be raising pennies for the Nepal Home for Children, a Christian missionary organization to provides vocational training for boys and girls in Nepal.  My Uncle John writes beautifully about his inspiration for this bike ride here. 

My short summary is: They are asking for individuals to pledge a penny a mile for their 500 mile bike ride, for a total donation of $5/person.  With 2,000 people donating $5 a piece, they can quickly reach their goal of $10,000, all of which goes straight to the Nepal Home for Children.  Every penny will go a long, long way!  Amazing!  Now I know I don't have 50 people reading this little blog, but if you could pass this along to people you know and they pass it along to people they know, we could take a little chunk out of this goal because every penny counts.

Uncle John has a website, Pedal for Nepal, charting their training progress in their home state of Pennsylvania.  Please visit their site, read updates, comment to let them know if you are praying for them and support what they are doing.  Every little note is a great encouragement to their team.  Also, you can meet up with them in person and join them in a leg of the RAGBRAI adventure.  (I know Josh is planning on doing so!)

Thanks so much in advance!

I remember being at a couple's conference when I heard this phrase come from the speaker's mouth.  He was using it in explaining how God knows how to love us best and we can ask God to help us to show love to our spouse in those little ways that speak directly to their souls.  He told how he got this gift for his wife that was truly God inspired and only He could've known how much this gift would mean to her.  Afterwards, when he was thanking God, he prayed, "We loved her good today, didn't we?" 

I feel like that statement is so true for me today and God loved me good through not only my spouse, but though the sweetest girls.  This morning I was kidnapped, blindfolded, carried into a van and driven around for half an hour. 

When the blindfold was removed I saw this...

And I began to cry.

On my birthday, Josh and I had a heart-to-heart about my garden and it came down to I had to be ready to give it up if this whole foot thing went sour.  Since that chat, I got to the garden only twice to weed the cold weather crops (both times having Josh drop the kids and I off to play and work for hours) but I could tell I was going to be hard pressed to get any warm weather crops.  Planting new crops means not only gathering all the seedlings from the store but preparing the beds, weeding the beds, planting the plants and watering them in AND watering them every day for the first 7 days... and for me that also meant doing all with crutches and a foot I can't walk or drive on.  I never expressed my desires to anyone and in my mind I kept trying to figure a way I could rope people into helping, maybe my parents when they come up, maybe Josh on his day off, maybe if we just... my ideas were endless but none were working.

The sweetest girls joined forces (and conspired with Josh) and pulled off the unthinkable. 

They gathered seedlings and soaked seeds, hoes and rakes, bagels and cream cheese, gatorade and water, balloons and banners, sweat and sunburns.  My birthday surprise was they were going to prepare my beds and plant my warm weather crops for me.  No joke.  They gave me a (decaf) latte and a comfy chair and a foot rest and told me to boss them around (though I did convince them to let me plant my beans!).  They had bought all the plants I needed, of all the right kinds and some being beautiful, homegrown, heirloom tomato plants from a friend's mom!  The 7-6 girls worked in the hot sun for over 4 hours and weeded and laughed and planted.

They turned my weed covered beds into a thing of beauty (And to top it off, they are even going to water it every day for the first week).  Wow.

I don't know if they fully understand it or not, but God truly used them to speak to my soul today.  "We loved her good today, didn't we?"  Yes, you did.

First, sorry to say, but you have not heard the last of me talking about my foot.  But I figure, since this blog is more for my journaling than your entertainment, it'll be fine.

Welp, the results from my human experiments are in... 

While out of town over mother's day weekend, my pain increased so much that I couldn't walk without crying and my husband kindly purchased me a cane to get through our vacation.  We went right into the doctor when we returned and I was immediately downgraded to crutches, given meds, a scheduled MRI, physical therapy, and then downgraded to a cast.

Can I just say that I wanted to avoid an MRI at all costs.  Serious.  Do you know how much one of those crazy things cost?  But with it being over 12 weeks since I broke my foot and still intense pain, it was the next best step.  My prayer was very simple about it though, I simply wanted results.  If we were going to fork over that kind of money, I wanted the test to be "worth it."

Was it worth it?  Yes.  The proverbial good news is we found out that I do not need surgery, hooray!  All the cartilage is healing well on the top and bottom of the talus, praise God!  But listen up, I am praising God for the proverbial bad news, because there is bad news and technically, that answers my prayer.

We found out that I do have bruising on my tibia and talar dome.  In addition, it turns out my talus bone is STILL broken (over 12 weeks later), BUT it is a 3rd break that refuses to heal, (different than the original two breaks and different than the lesion on the talar dome) that was not known due to the angle of original x-rays but read loud and clear in the MRI.  Who knew!

It absolutely amazes me when I think about it though... I busted the snot out of this 1 bone and did everything possible to it, crack it, divot it, bruise it, but displace it.  Unbelieveable.  And so thankful. 

I am now back where I was over 3 months ago, back in a cast and crutches, unable to walk or drive.  It was rough the first time, but a second time... wow.  I know I have so much to be thankful for in this whole situation and I know that there are many things I have in life that I can, and do, rejoice in and I know there are crazier things I could be going through personally or with my loved ones but just between you and me, insignificant in the grand scheme of things as it is, it is wearing.

As of Tuesday, it's been 11 weeks since I broke my foot.  3 weeks ago, I noticed my pain level was going back up and found out I had a lesion on the top of my talus.  (When I landed with all my weight on my foot on concrete, the tibia slammed onto the top of the talus causing a divot.  This divot typically shows up between 6-8 weeks after an accident.  It is rare that it heals on its own without surgery and fairly common to cause lifelong chronic pain.  Sweet!) 

Given 3 options by my doctor, we opted for Option 3 which was 4 more weeks of limited activity.  However, for those 4 weeks we decided to perform various in-house, cause and effect experiments on myself.

I am probably the only one, but I find this all incredibly entertaining. 

The one experiment that shocked me the most was if I walk on my foot like a normal person for about 40', with no limping, it is like someone slashing at my ankle with a knife for a good 24 hours afterwards. But if I stay off my foot, walking on crutches, I have only a "normal" constant pain, with occasional spikes of pain that can be calmed with an ice pack.  Sleeping after staying off it for a whole day eased the pain a bit more for a short time in the morning, but once up and going the pain went up.  Thus far, nothing has made the pain actually cease.

I also find it entertaining that for the first time in my life I am taking daily vitamins.  Seriously, I HATE taking vitamins.  When I was a kid, I would hide the Flintstone vitamin in my mouth and then walk out of the kitchen and spit it out into one of my mom's vases with plastic flowers.  It was a long time before I was found out.

Now some doctors say food before supplements, others say supplements before food... ahhhh, love the internet.  But since I started first with vitamins, I am now going to work on foods.  We actually already eat most of the bone building foods recommended, broccoli, salmon, nuts, spinach, etc... but I haven't recently tried yogurt, soy, Chinese cabbage, kale & collards.  Another thing to note are the bone robbers like anti-inflammatory medicines, alcohol, salt, sugar, and caffeine... drat.  I figure my body runs on caffeine and can grow bones with it, but I think I may be proven wrong.

In any event, I have 1 more week before I get checked out again to see if any of this has helped the bone heal.  If you have any thoughts on another test I can do on myself, let me know!

*Josh asked what 10 was.  10 is not childbirth, nothing compares to that.  10 is like that rugby player who broke his foot the other weekend - OUCH!

I am sure no one lost sleep over finding out these answers.  If you really wanted to know, it was easy to Google/Wiki the answers.  But in case you didn't search them out and wondered, even a little, here they are:

"What was the first war radar was used in?"
      World War II

"What 2009 documentary award winner's recipient balanced his award on his nose?"
      Man on Wire

"Name 2 of 3 movies Annette Bening was in where she was a realtor."
      Regarding Henry, American Beauty, What Planet Are You From?

"What other animal can have leprosy besides humans?
      Armadillo

"What did the Japanese Finance Minister do at the recent G7 meeting?"
      He was drunk

"What pro-sport did Wilt Chamberlain play after basketball?"
      Volleyball

"Do you know who retired at Plum Grove?"
      Robert Lucas

"Who was the first woman to drive in NASCAR?"
      Janet Guthrie

"Name the 3 IC public schools named after women."
      Tate, Lemme, Wickham

"Who signed the letter to FDR regarding the atomic bomb?"
      Albert Einstein

"Who wrote Peter Rabbit?"
      Beatrix Potter

If you think that was fun, why not participate in the next one!  Have laughs and support the work at the Community Mental Health Center.  Next Team Trivia date is June 11!

I don't know about you, but I LOVE to mow the lawn.  I love to mow it, weed wack it, rake it, etc.  It is one of those things I look forward to every year... mowing season!  This is great too because Josh is not as excited as I am about lawn mowing so it is, happily, my task (we truly are the perfect match). 

However, as life would have it, due to this bum foot of mine, I cannot mow the lawn this year.  At first, this was no big deal considering we had 2 busted mowers in our possession.  But as the rains have come and gone our lawn was growing at an increasing speed and now in dire need.

Figuring out what lawn mower to buy was as arduous as figuring out what is the best dishwasher.  Both items have bad rap sheets and we wanted to make our investment in them last as long as possible.  Josh's research led us to a great dishwasher where we did pay as little as possible but not buy a piece of crap.  He then proceeded to do the same search for our mower and while we did pay more than we wanted, we are hopeful in the fact that it has the one good rap sheet out there.

But you want to know the best part?

Can you believe my little boy is this big?!  (Dude, am I really getting that old?)

This mower rocks the house in warranty, motor, features and our son can mow!  The design makes it so that there is nothing shooting out anywhere and it has a variable speed that Zeke can literally run behind it and mow like a champ!  True, he needs help on the front hill and getting the lines straight, but what he still has to learn in skill he makes up for in utter enthusiasm!

What a blessing indeed!

I remember being at one parenting conference where they spoke about how it is never too late to change you as a parent and to change what you are doing.  (Specifically, they referring to a better late than never mentality with being a better parent, but allow me to potificate...) I had one of those, slam on the brakes and turn 180 kind of moments today.

While others are the perfect parent with no sloth moments and are super parents, I am human parent.  Thankfully, the Holy Spirit does not allow me to stay in my sloth parent state for too long and second chances abound... especially in my frequent, lesser moments as a sloth.

Enter the day's sloth moment...

A child was d-o-n-e at the the garden and wanted to go home.  We were just finishing planting a few things and they needed to wait.  Their impatience grew, I was distracted and ignored their need for direction, and their nagging me to leave continued.  Without thinking, I quickly wrapped things up, feeling anxious inside, and then left... leaving plants tossled around and watering undone. 

We were driving away when I realized how I had erred in the situation.  Instead of taking a moment to lead my child, I was driven by distraction and the whine in their voice.  Thankfully, it was then that a little voice in my head reminded me, "if I am getting anxious, I am not doing my job."  I saw how I was reponding like a child and let something distract me from my job as a parent. 

It was then I put on the brakes and turned 180, literally.

Explaining the situation to the child, and asking forgiveness for my sloth parenting, I turned the car around and went back to the garden.  Now, with obedient and joyful attitudes (out of all 4 of us, because honestly, I was hot and tired too) we went back to the garden and the kids all watered our garden... and then watered our neighbor's.

One of the verses that goes around and around my head is "He who is faithful with little, is faithful with much" and I keep thinking, "be faithful with the little things."  This verse speaks volumes to me on so many levels, in so many facets of life... and it is ever so true in parenting.