Pride Comes Before the Fall

 I just love the Bible. It is an amazing story of an amazing God who saved us from eternal separation from Him. That is the greatest, most life changing story in all of history. The Bible is also filled with great wisdom that many people quote without even realizing from where the quote came. For instance, this verse:

 

Pride goes before destruction,
    and haughtiness before a fall. Proverbs 16:18 (NLT)

 

First pride, then the crash—
    the bigger the ego, the harder the fall. (The Message)

 

 That is the TRUTH. I am guilty of living it out far too often. I've recently been reading, studying, and preparing for leading a study based on Lysa TerKeurst's Unglued. Pause for a moment: this book is outstanding for those who struggle with letting their feelings rip through others OR silently swallowing true feelings only to have them lose relationships based on false peace. God showed me this was the study for me in the most unexpected way.

 

 It was the day of the spring program for my older son. He was dressed and prepped and oh so handsome. On special days, I put a paste-like substance in his hair that we call "banana head." He likes to "help." A tiny bit, that is what he is allowed to put on his hair. A tiny bit turned into a glob when I wasn't looking and I let those words fly. The stress of re-washing and drying his hair was just too much for me in that moment. Now most moms probably don't tell their son that his hair is ruined and ugly...but we've all had bad mornings. I admit that shortly before this I rejected the idea of leading the Unglued study because I basically told God, "I got this. On my own, I got it." WRONG.

 

 Through the study I have been slowly making progress. Imperfect progress. I've been learning that I can never change on my own. God has been changing me. In fact, just Wednesday night, I realized that I had so much patience with the boys. I hadn't yelled in a few days, and it was a genuine patience and a heart of grace. "I got this."

 

 Wednesday night, I'm sure you can guess what happened. The fall. Baby was awake the entire night. Screaming. I had no idea what was going on, as he has been sleeping all night for over a year. I tried and tried to put him back in bed, but he was not having it. I prayed and sang and I fully leaned on God. I was still feeling pretty good about myself. Until I finally got in the bed and let my husband have it. He suggested that I do something different during the day. How dare he?! But it was me, I came unglued.

 

 The common thread in these cases is this: I thought I had it on my own. The truth is, no matter what the struggle, we will never "get it" on our own. Daily it is a surrender to the God who holds the world in his hands. I am still learning that I am not adequate to live this life on my own. I am not equipped without my Savior. I'll keep trying to take control, and He will keep showing me that it is not mine to take. But through all of this, I will make progress. Imperfect progress.

Boys Will Be Curious

Boys Will Be Boys Gross Curious

 My sweet son, G, has serious ear issues. The very first time we were aware of his "issues" was when he woke up with brown-tinted ooze coming out of his ear. He was nearly one year old and never had a fever, pulled at his ears, or had any other indicator of an ear infection. Mother's Day 2010, I was paged away from church to take care of my baby, who had a 102 temp. It was his ears. Again. He was on some kind of antibiotic for more than six weeks. I preferred tubes, but the ENT was a little more conservative and he wanted to wait it out. When G's ear drum perforated while on strong antibiotics, we scheduled surgery. All went well and he had no infections for three years...

 Then, this past February, he woke up once again with a soaking wet, nasty pillow case and fluid draining from his ear. I actually first noticed something was not right because he was covered in hives (another post in itself). A ten day course of antibiotics and he was good to go...for about a month. Then it happened again. (This child has an incredible tolerance for pain- they should do some research on him). Back to the ENT we went.
 

 This time around, the ENT doc. suggested his adenoids come out. I was expecting that. The main warning from the doctor was this: "his breath will be really bad." "Okay," I replied. "No, I mean, really bad. It's bad. Horrible." The doctor was serious about this bad breath warning. We scheduled the surgery.
 

 When the day came for my nearly four year old to have surgery, I was nervous. My brain, being saturated with statistics (most of which I make up), knew the chances of something going wrong were tiny. But my doubting, faith-lacking part of the brain wouldn't shut up. So I went to the surgery center armed.   

 We waited and waited and waited. We waited so long that I started to do squats in the pre-op area. We may have even spent some time speaking with accents or sticking surgery bear's head out of the curtain as nurses were walking by. (We now have two surgery bears. G wants more. I do not.)Then they took him back and we waited some more.

 

 

 They brought G out from recovery and I was positive they had switched him with a look-a-like demon child. He was screaming, crying, sometimes flopping around like a fish. When we asked him what was wrong he mostly said "I DON'T KNOW!" And the breath. Oh my, there is a reason the doctor warned us multiple times about that. Burnt flesh. That's all I will say. When we got home, he was peacefully sleeping and loudly snoring. He recovered very quickly and was off to school after a day.

 

 We informed the teachers of his procedure and I wrote a note explaining the death breath. Five days after his surgery, the school called me. I didn't get to the phone in time. Then my husband called: "We need to go get G from school." My mind ran away with itself. Does he have a fever? An infection? Is he bleeding? Will he need an emergency surgery?! No, none of those. It was this:

 

 If you are having trouble seeing that, it says "bead." G stuck a bead up his nose. It turned out that we didn't have to pick him up at school because he was able to huff and puff and blow the bead out. The paramedics then gave him a stuffed bear for being so brave (just what we needed). G proceeded to tell his friends that "if you put a bead in your nose, you will get a bear!" I, personally, think this bear was a punishment for his behavior. We lovingly refer to him as "scary beary."