undeserved

It's easy to write about how wonderful life is and how I am "crazy in love" with my family. I don't often write about tough times for two reasons.


1. People don't want to hear it. Maybe in "people" I mean myself and I'm making an assumption about all people. For me I tend to "skip" over the gripping and complaining of others. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't care or want to hear about the hard times. I want to be a listening ear, I want to be a support to others. But I have also read those blogs where it's just post after post of gripping and grumbling. Granted they are justified in their gripping because life is handing them a raw deal, but I don't like the constant negativity.

2. When I am upset I need to vent. It's a weakness. Hello, my name is April and I am a ventor. Typically the venting is contained to Jeff and a few close friends, but for you lucky few that read this sometimes you are in the sting of my venting. The post "my struggle" was just venting. Boy howdy did I get alot of response in the form of e-mails, comments, and calls. I felt guilty for writing it. I displayed myself wrong and I feel guilty of the support I am getting. I felt guilty because I don't want people wasting their time in thought and prayer on me. Sounds twisted and immature, ehe? The guilt comes in the fact that only 5% of the time do I really struggle with Ty having diabetes. The other 95% of the time I'm just dealing with it and making it another "to-do" on my list...it's annoying like doing laundry, dishes, going to the grocery store with 3 kids. Wouldn't it be silly to ask people to pray for me to have the energy and discipline to do the dishes every night. Ok. The analogy might not make sense to you but to me it does..it's just another "to-do."
If you want to take it a step deeper another issue is that I have a hard time accepting help, it portrays that I'm weak. I've always considered myself a strong person so weak is not exactly a compliment.
I know we are to be broken before God, I know I can not handle life on my own. I have confidence that I was served an extra heaping of courage and strengthen when he formed me. I know that the worst situation that could happen in my life is death. As a Christian death is only a door to eternal life. I know it all sounds a little grim, but when I keep the grand scheme of things in perspective "these light and momentary troubles" don't seem like such a big deal. However, to me the 2nd worst thing to death is my children being endangered. The moments that get me down is when I think of the possible endangerment that having diabetes will do to his future body. I've had to stop reading research and statistics, it was a downer.

So it's hard to live down those posts where I basically word vomit all of my frustrations. Usually by the time I've written them out, I want to erase them because I've over it. I've said my peace and there's no sense dwelling in the negative. But I don't erase them and I post them because while they are fleeting thoughts and feelings, they are mine. My blog serves as my scrapbook to my mothering moments, good and bad.
In all of this I feel loved. I am amazed how many people have taken the time to care. Especially my family, friends, and my church family. In our one income household, I'm the budget and bill payer of the house. I'm the one who stresses about money. During this whole event I never once thought about the money aspect of Ty having diabetes. We have good insurance coverage through Jeff's job, but the month to month cost (especially the 1st trip to the pharmacy) was quite a chunk of change. While Ty was in the hospital, so many people wanted to help us but didn't know how...and so she started a money tree. I cried when she gave the money to me. I felt so undeserved, I felt so loved. The stress of the financial burden was totally absent. Before I even had a chance to stress over the money God provided.

Last Thursday I went back down to Children's hospital for another day of "diabetes education." I learned the new way to factor Ty's insulin and so we aren't bound to the 60 carbs. It's all a mathematical formula that's based on the number of carbs he's going to eat plus a correction factor based on his blood sugar. It was very enlighten and refreshing. It looks like he's going to get to eat a normal birthday cake loaded with icing on his birthday in a few weeks. My most enlightening part of the whole trip was being there with other families whose children were newly diagnosed like Ty. They spoke of struggles and constant battles they are having with their children (they were all 5-7 years old) over eating their food and taking their injections. I just sat back and felt so proud of Ty. He is so mature about all of this and is doing everything we ask him with out a fight. He really is amazing. He's not perfect especially if you were in our area at Costco on Saturday night, the kid threw a major melt down fit that I would score at  10 out of 10. I was seriously embarrassed and had to have Jeff deal with him for the sake of me overreacting. Ty told Jeff he was really tired and was having a hard day with diabetes. In the grand scheme of things, he is doing terrific.