family – Page 5 – Casting A Stone

Saying Goodbye

Posted on April 16, 2016April 17, 2016 by Tammy

There was a well worn path in the dirt road from our house to my grandmother’s two bedroom home. I could make it there on my purple bike with the plastic streamers coming out of the handle bars in five minutes flat if the red-winged black birds in the oak tree at the corner didn’t take me out. Grandma knew I was scared of those birds. I told her everything.

On one of my visits, she proudly pulled out a large pinwheel. I was confused when I first saw it. Then she told me I should hold it over my head as I rode to her house. The pinwheel whistled as I rode my bike and scared those stupid birds. Nothing would keep us from our afternoon visits.

I’m not really sure how we filled all of the hours we spent together.

She helped me with my homework. I always was up for a ride to “the city” to help her buy groceries. We ate red licorice together and painted our nails….always with clear polish. I watched hours of Gospel Sing TV with her, and she attended every band concert, play, and art show. She taught me to drive and took me on my first airplane ride to visit the cousins in Florida. When I was all grown up and traveling on my own, she wrote to me weekly on her old typewriter and mailed me phone cards.

When I was a self-conscious middle schooler, she taught me to sew. She had this way of making me feel like the most talented kid while at the same time telling me truth without sugar coating. Her words still ring in my ears: “You don’t have to be perfect. It will all iron out.” What seemed like a lesson in stitching a seam on my latest 4-H project, really was so much more. She knew me and my struggles.

This week, I lost part of my heart. Alzheimers (what I now call the cruelest of all diseases) has slowly been stealing her from me. Robbing us of any new memories. But, I guess I am still the little girl on that purple bike….hoping to race faster than the black birds. Every time I was able to sit next to her on the couch in her nursing home, I was hoping for one more moment. We had always been good at sitting together and not doing to much. I could take in her smell, feel her presence, and pretend we were just watching the Gaithers together.

Even that is now gone.

I have gone back and forth about writing this blog post. I usually save this space for stories about living and teaching cross-culturally and how that affects raising my family. I wasn’t sure if writing about the death of my grandmother fit that.

This week, as I have cried over her death, the miles between my childhood home and Asia have felt even longer. I wanted to stand at her graveside. I wanted to cry with my family, who would understand why I am 40 but a weeping mess over losing my grandmother friend.

But, it is even more than that.

Some of my tears this week are over my mother and my own children. I am crying because my kids can’t ride their bikes down the road and eat licorice with a grandparent who loves them with extravagance. In my grief, I question the stolen moments that might shape my own children.

Living cross-culturally, it is what we are called to, but man, sometimes the cost is high. I want to write and say it is all worth it. But, honestly, I am not sure if I will ever know if it is or not.

What is worth something…following Jesus and trusting him with my heart. I guess that means I should trust him with the heart of my kiddos and be thankful for video chats. So much easier to write that then to truly live it out.

Years ago, Dr. Kinlaw gave a sermon at a summer camp that included a story of a young single woman who was living cross-culturally. She was asked if she was scared of living so far from home in a strange land by herself. Her response. “I am more scared of NOT living where God wants me to be.” I can’t remember the rest of that sermon. Actually, I am pretty proud of myself for remembering anything from 20 years ago! Funny, the things that come to mind as you are grieving. The simple answer that young woman gave….I want it to be my answer as well. With all my heart, I want to be where God calls us.

Lord, help me in my weakness. Help me when the days are hard and my tears fall in abundance.

Often, when I sat next to Grandma at church, tears would gently slip from one eye. She joked with me that she had a leaky eye and not to worry. The one time I really remember seeing Grandma cry was when she said good-bye to me as I was leaving for college. She sobbed – deep heart wrenching cries as we hugged in the driveway.

Now, I am the one sobbing as I have to say good-bye to her. There are no promises about Christmas and spring breaks….but I am thankful to know there is the promise of eternity.

What happens when you pray…

Posted on April 10, 2016April 10, 2016 by Tammy

I often ask you to pray for the kids who are heavy on my heart – the kids without families. My students. The ones I love and hope to see in forever families. Ever wonder what results from those prayers? You are in for a treat today. Here is a guest post from a friend of ours who can tell you from first hand experience what happens when you, my amazing blog readers, pray.

Dear followers of this special blog who pray:

I’d like to say that these days I don’t have the life I was going to. For one thing I’m homeschooling, a thing I don’t particularly love. I’m also juggling eye-opening tantrums, both public and private. And, as I guy who’d rather change activities every five hours, I’m sometimes changing them every five minutes and finding it a challenge.

My soul is worn.

And my plans were better.

Maybe they weren’t super-clear plans, but, as this past fall we joyously marked the conclusion of 15 years of babies and pre-schoolers in the house—boy, did our ears ring that day—I had all sorts of plans that could have made use of that quiet. Any number of dusty pursuits that could have been brought off the back burner.

But. My plans aren’t what happened.

What did happen was the impossible. Or, at least, something that, just one year ago, I would have called inconceivable in the extreme. And our house is quiet no longer.

The paperwork says he’s fourteen. Though he looks certainly younger, and his emotional, psychological, or social age—whichever you please, I’m not being technical, here—seems usually closer to two. Our ears are ringing plenty, now, too, though not from quiet. For this guy—perhaps not unlike a kid you’ve known?—didn’t come with a volume control (or many other kinds of control, for that matter). So it’s not just our ears, but our heads, even our whole selves, ringing some days.

And it’s largely your doing.

Adoption is hard, isn’t it? At least the worst of the feral screaming and self-injurious flailing seems to be over (or so we hope). But it’s still difficult, for he’s a kid from a hard place, and the transitional throes of switching to beloved son from institutional inhabitant can be extreme. And even when he is fine, we at times still aren’t. An energetic, self-absorbed, as-easily-wounding-as-getting-wounded entity of tireless underfoot-ness—no matter how happy—truly can make your day drag by.

But saving one kid is good, right? It is. It truly is. And, way back when, that’s what we signed up for: one. One adoption.*

How did this guy ever become number three?

That wasn’t my plan. In fact, you could have pretty much said about me last year that I was anti-adoption. Not again. No way. Not us. But. You were praying.

And, more unexpectedly than snow in summer, God spoke. To—of all people—our oldest teenager (the one who’d said he’d run away if we ever considered adopting again, and to whom I always replied with laughing assurance about that being the last thing he needed to worry about):

“Mom, I think we’re supposed to adopt this one.”

What?

He was putting together videos—to help update their files—of six older kids from the local orphanage. The boy that our teenager was talking about said in his video that he wanted an American family, a big family, and a family with younger siblings. Our family was check, check, and check, and my wife’s heart began to melt.

But not me. Not in the least. Sure, I’ll pray this kid gets a family, but that family as sure-as-shootin’ ain’t going to be ours. No way were we going to think about adopting another kid. And a teenager to boot? Be serious. Even my wife concurred as readily as I did that our family was stretching its limits beyond what we could handle already.

But you were praying. And her burden grew.

She resisted it. Asked repeatedly for the burden to be taken away, and I was all encouragement: “It will go away, dear. It will. The burden will fade. There will be another family for him.” I knew: All I had to do was outlast her. Outlast that completely irrational burden brought on by übercompassion and her over-sensitive heart. “Honey,” she pleaded with me one day as her burden only got stronger, “would you consider at least just praying about it?”

“Uh…no?” Why would I pray for something I didn’t have the least intention of considering?

But you were praying.

And the rest of that long, long story (that I now call “God’s 2×4”)—of how a boy called Manning come to be in our family, and how I was the only one who needed to be outlasted—has been told in other places already.**

Sometimes it isn’t our compassion that saves. Some of us don’t even have a whole lot of what might be called compassion. God can save just the same.

You prayed for Manning, and, because of it, things and powers and hearts that were not otherwise going to be moved were moved. A boy on the verge of a life sentence to institutional existence was spared. Though he might possibly have known abuse and neglect and hopelessness as companions forever, now this same boy notices and repeats (well, shouts, rather) the word “Jesus” every time he hears it in speech or song. Though not long ago he may have been doomed to never mature beyond hurt and anger and revenge and manipulation, now we’re building up trust. Just tonight he put his headphones on my ears so I could know which was his favorite Chinese worship song: “Isn’t it moving, Dad?”

It’s largely your doing, you know.

You prayed. And he’s home.

*The story of the Johnsons’ first adoption (and how that unexpectedly became two) can be found in Lily Was the Valley: Undone by Adoption, available on Amazon in both Kindle and softcover formats.
**Those who would enjoy reading the full story of the genesis of this most unlikely of third adoptions can do so at dannrobertjohnson.com, the earliest ten entries.

Your next project? Pray for “Hemingway” my youngest, happiest and sweetest student. He is four years old, a Down Syndrome super star who loves painting with the color yellow. He is waiting for his family to take a step of faith and come get him. Pray that he isn’t destined to life in an institution. Instead, may a family see his sweet face and recognize the value of his life and embrace him into their family.

You can contact Amanda (amanda.h@chiadopt.org) a social worker with Children’s House International to get more information on how to adopt him.

Just a side note: if our family can get approved to adopt and overcome the hurdles…ANYONE can. Seriously. I am sure the Johnsons would say the same!

Twists and turns along the road

Posted on April 2, 2016April 2, 2016 by Tammy

Pizza and catching up with an old friend – two rare treats that came my way last week. This friend, although absent from my daily life for years, has made significant impact on my life. Just been pondering where I would have been. Just been walking down memory lane.

7 years ago (Could it have really been that long?) we were in the throws of adoption paperwork for our little Monkey. The process was taking so very long. We watched other families get approval and travel to their sweet babies while we waited…and waited…and waited. At the same time, a natural disaster had struck in the part of China where little Monkey was living. It was heart breaking, excruciating, mind numbing…and then some.

I remember venting all my woes to my dear friend over dinner in our home. She was the special education director at the orphanage in our city. She challenged me. “Do something while you wait. It will make it easier.” That is where it started.

As I waited for little Monkey, I taught one art class once a week. One class of 8 students. I thought it would keep me busy and give me something to do rather than check my email like a crazy woman, hoping for news about our adoption. Instead, the children in my class helped heal my broken heart; they taught me to serve and to love in a way I didn’t know was possible. It amazes me.

Our journey to adopt had begun as a seed in my heart as a college student. Hubby and I knew it would be a part of our family story from the beginning. What we didn’t know – that adoption would take us on a heart journey that didn’t end with our youngest two children. Our hearts and eyes were open to the world of orphans, children with special needs and we would be forever changed.

I shake my head and laugh as I look back on those times, 7 long short years ago. I thought it was about waiting for our daughter, Little Monkey, to join our family. It wasn’t about the wait at all. I was learning about the Father’s heart.

This was a pretty big twist in my life story. I had no idea the joy my heart would glean from painting with a child suffering with Cerebral Palsy. The surprise was mine when I learned to communicate with a non-verbal pre-schooler with Downs Syndrome. I didn’t know the peace that would wash over me while holding the hand of a child with Autism. I have learned that every life has value and my life is deeper when I see God’s image in each one of His children. Pretty big stuff. It has shaped me.

The twists and turns that my journey with Jesus has taken – they take my breath away. It is easy to see how He was leading my heart as I look back. It gives me courage for the future. I am so sure that there are more bends in the road. He is leading us down a path and we can’t see the end. I want to trust Him. The lessons He has for me to learn…they are good. The road He is taking me down…will make me better. Even when I don’t understand the bends in the path, He is good. He is leading.

Recently, I was asked to share at a conference about how and why I work and live where I do. I laughed at the request. Seriously, I am the last person that should be inspiring others on knowing where God is calling them. As I prepped that talk with honest words of ending up in a place that I didn’t expect, I was reminded again that my story with its bends twists and turns probably isn’t that unique. When we make our own plan…it is just that…ours. He has so much more for us than we ever could hope or dream for. I am living His dream.

I was so desperate 7 years ago. I wanted my waiting to be over, to hold my precious daughter in my arms. What joy to look back and see how God used that time of waiting for so much more. In this season, I wonder again. What will I see with such clarity 7 years from now.

Trusting Him in the journey. Taking one bend in the road at a time.

And then he did a face plant…

Posted on March 19, 2016March 19, 2016 by Tammy

My first mistake was telling Little Man he could ride his tricycle to the market. An unseasonably warm day made me unusually optimistic on how much I could carry with a kindergartener and a tricycle in tow. Lesson learned.

A box in one arm, several days’ veggies and fruit in a bag on the other with the tricycle slung over my shoulder, Little Man and I started crossing the road to start the trek home. He was holding the hem of my jacket as we stepped off the curb. I am not really sure what happened next. It all went so fast and slow at the same time. We had plenty of time to cross the road in front of the white car that suddenly seemed to be barreling down on us when Little Man’s leg came off. Velocity taking over, his body kept going and he landed hard on the pavement near the other side of the road.

You know those moments? The moments when you are standing in the road deciding if you should let the car run over your son’s leg or scoop him up and comfort him — all the while trying to untangle yourself from a bag of broccoli, apples and tomatoes. AND while doing all this, you are thinking in the back of your mind….”Wow, I guess his leg really isn’t fitting that great these days!” See what I mean? Never in my life did I think there would be such a moment. I chose wiping tears and checking for broken bones and blood. Little Man was not happy with that choice, and he began screaming even louder that his leg was about to be road kill.

In enters a stranger.

Just a little cultural context. It is not common to help strangers. Friends and family, absolutely. Strangers, no. It is culturally common to stop and watch, but not to help. Let’s just say, in all of my years living in Asia I have been stared at A LOT more than I have been helped.

Wednesday was different.

A man stepped out into the road, rescued Little Man’s leg, retrieved the roll away tricycle and was at my side helping me steady a weeping boy. He held a little hand while I checked for wounds (there were none) and slid an intact prosthetic leg back in place. When I finally had enough wits to look up at the man, I said. “You are a very nice man.” His reply was with typical Asian modesty, “No, not at all.”

And he walked away.

We made it back home with a story to tell over dinner. All of the kids marveled at the nice man who stopped to help. “I want to be a nice Chinese man like that.” Little Man exclaimed. It truly is amazing how a few moments of help can make a deep impression on those around us. It reminds me of a statement our pastor in Michigan used to say often, “Small things done with great love make a big difference.” Okay, rescuing a prosthetic leg from being run over by a car actually was kinda a big thing. But, the few minutes he took to help us…well that was a small moment from his life and I am very thankful. It made a big difference to us.

I want to be that type of person…willing to stop for a moment and help. We can make grand plans on how to live out our faith and how to love those around us, but if we aren’t able to slow down and embrace the unexpected moments – well, it is worthless. I am striving to live a life of service that will encourage those around me and I am so thankful when the blessing is turned my way.

The best birthday gift would be….

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Tammy

I turn 40 this week. (My phone calendar even sent me a reminder just in case I forgot about it! HA!)

I have given it a lot of thought and have decided exactly how I would like to celebrate getting old. Because, my head is not buried in the sand…I have a teenage son, a daughter who knows what is cool (and I do not) and I am pretty sure my body creaks when I get out of bed in the morning. I am not even going to tell you the story of when one of my dears during homeschooling asked if I knew any of the Pilgrims. How old do they think I am? All that to say, I admit I am getting old.

I am embracing this birthday and I want to celebrate big.

How?

So glad you asked.

I would like my birthday gift to be a forever family for one of my favorite students. His birthday is this month too. He turns 4 years old. This month also happens to be Down Syndrome awareness month and his super power is Down Syndrome. Finding out that he has a family and will be adopted….that would be the most amazing gift! Would you pray that happens? Would you pass the word that he needs a family?

So let me tell you more about him….

He is beyond precious and may have one of the sweetest personalities ever known to man. He lives in a group foster home and attends kindergarten for special needs children. He knows his numbers, enjoys finger painting especially with the color yellow and always helps his teachers clean up after class. Although he is non-verbal, he expresses how much he loves his teachers by blowing kisses and often claps for his classmates to cheer them on during a project. He dances to music, is learning sign language and has a very large sweet tooth. Not surprisingly, this little guy is an orphanage favorite and the staff hopes he finds his forever family soon.

I wish you could meet him in person. The way he sticks his tongue out as he paints….well, it has captured this art teacher’s heart!

I would consider it a birthday gift if you would say a prayer for my 4 year old friend. Pray this is the last year he celebrates his birthday without a mom and dad of his own. Kids need families.

If you’d like to learn more about how you could adopt my 4 year old friend or other children like him who wait, please contact me. I’ll be glad to put you in touch with the folks at CHI who can tell you how to get started.

Back at it

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Tammy

If you don’t hear from me for the next 12 years it is because I am now homeschooling 4 children and it is kicking my tail! I have now done Kindergarten several times and really thought it would be no big deal to add it to our daily school business. Well reality has hit but we haven’t hit our stride.

All joking aside, we are working hard to get into a rhythm for the semester. Hubby has two weeks of classes under his belt (they are mostly literature classes again with a fun grad class to boot) and I have enjoyed two art projects with my special students at the orphanage. Play-dough and dot markers are a great way to start the fall.

On the home front we are tackling Kindergarten along with 3rd, 6th and 8th grades. Little Man was thrilled at first to have his own shelf of books and to be a “real” student. Three days in he was asking how many days we needed to do this school thing! Reality hits. The girls and I are digging in a bit deeper this year and exploring some creative elements in art and writing that have been over looked in the past. Hoping we can keep up the fun. Soccer Dude is testing the waters with online schooling and enjoying it even though there is a learning curve. Never a dull moment when a notice is posted on the apartment complex door that we will have no electricity when we were scheduled for a Skype meeting with his teacher and he was to do an online math test. In the end, we packed all the kids up and took the excuse to explore a newly opened Starbucks in our city. The kids joked that they felt like they were going to school in the States! I guess we don’t live in the backwoods any more if we are able to order a frappuccino!

All in all – we might not have hit a stride for the fall, but we are slipping back into routine and slowly recovering from our crazy summer. Soccer Dude even let me take his picture at Starbucks. He is looking good (thank you to the plastic surgeon in Detroit!) and all of his stitches have fallen out making eating so much easier. Now, if only we could find an allergy medication to help him with the hives he’s had since the dog bite.

Many have also asked how Little Man is doing. I sometimes forget he had such a major surgery at the beginning of the summer. He is back to his old self running around so much that there already is a crack forming at the toes of his prosthetic. I wonder if there has ever been a package shipped internationally with “foot” marked as it contents. We might ask our team of doctors in Florida to give it a try before we have toes fall off again!

Thanks again for all of your support and prayers as we have transitioned into the fall. His grace has been so real to us over the last few months and we know it will continue to carry us.

Home Sweet Home

Posted on September 12, 2015 by Tammy

Last night at dinner Soccer Dude casually mentioned, ” Hard to believe the last time I ate noodles at this table I didn’t have scars on my face from a dog bite.” It struck me again.

I have joked in the past that travel week for us is kinda like living out one of those sci-fi movies. You know, where you enter a time machine and arrive on a different planet and in a different dimension. We leave a world of grandparents, bagged salad, dryers, large yards with trees (and speaking English!) — to enter a world of friends, noodles, apartment buildings, and a college campus where we teach English and art. They are two totally different worlds and it can be unnerving to hop from one to the other. We really fit in neither, but love both…I struggle to wrap my brain around that, not to mention help my children navigate our two realities.

This summer has been extreme. HA, understatement! We went from our busy world in Asia to a world of hospitals, dentists, immunizations, doctor appointments — and did I mention doctor appointments?

In a way, it has helped us to be more thankful than ever to be back “home.” Surgeries are behind us. Little Man has a new prosthesis that fits and he is running again. (See photo of him during a walk through the woods!) Soccer Dude continues to heal and the stitches are dissolving. Life is moving on. We are beyond thankful for Father’s healing and our ability to come back to our Asian home.

It never felt better to walk in our apartment door. Starting the routine of homeschooling in our own space has been a comfort and facing a new fall has been a joy. There is no way we would be back here without the pr.yer and support of so many of you. It carried us.

A mentor always willing to take a phone call when we needed a sounding board, an ophthalmologist who fit Soccer Dude for contacts the last week we were in the States because his glasses were bothering the wounds in his nose, a pediatrician’s office willing to work us in to talk about hives and swelling, friends who drove an hour to play with us at a park and express their love and concern, friends in Asia calling and sending us gifts, a simple text message saying “we are pr.ying for you”….all these things (plus many more I could add to this list) carried us and reminded us of the love of a Father who provides.

So when we are weary from jet-lag, facing another busy semester after a crazy summer, when Soccer Dude breaks out in hives again…we have no doubt Father will provide.

Wow! This post has been full of lists! I am sure you could make your own list. How is Father providing for you this season?

Thanksgiving in August

Posted on August 30, 2015 by Tammy

We ate turkey dinner with all of the trimmings. Yup. It was August 19th and we pretended it was Thanksgiving and it was so very yummy (mostly because it was lovingly made by my mom!)

Even though it was a fake Thanksgiving, I still paused over the gravy bowl and took a second to realize how many things I have to be thankful for. Even just a week earlier I would have been hard pressed to visualize my whole family healthy and sitting around the dinner table. I am one thankful mom.

Two and a half weeks ago Soccer Dude was bit in the face by a large dog – a large well trained dog. It was a freak accident. Really. But as freak of an accident as it was, it landed our boy in the hospital for 5 days. He needed two surgeries to repair the damage and in the process we discovered he is allergic to several antibiotics. As you can imagine, none of us were happy about this turn in events. We were supposed to be having fun at my parents home in Michigan – not sitting around a hospital in Detroit. Every time Soccer Dude would introduce himself to the nurse coming on duty he would mumble between the hundreds of stitches in his mouth, “this is the worst summer vacation ever.”

At about the same time, Little Man was struggling with muscle weakness and the process of making a new prosthetic leg was not going well. The physical therapist who was helping us shook her head and told us he would need months of physical therapy.

So things haven’t gone as we planned this summer. It has been a ride. But, we are amazed at how two weeks and a lot of prayer can change things.

Soccer Dude’s face is healing and he has had no infection in his wounds. He is still struggling with crazy allergic reactions that are causing full body hives, and he has some swelling in his face. We are starting a new journey with him to figure out what all he might be allergic to…related to antibiotics, the accident and maybe even more. Let the fun begin! We would appreciate you keeping him in your thoughts.

Little Man – He has worked hard over the past two weeks and his strength is coming back. His story also is nothing short of miraculous. When the docs saw him Monday they were amazed and instead of recommending three months of physical therapy as they expected, they declared there no longer is the need. We were able to move forward in the fitting process of the prosthetic and he gets his new leg tomorrow.

There have been times this summer that I wondered if we would be able to return to Asia this fall as we had planned. We still have some loose ends hanging out there, but we are taking strides to be off this coming week. We are taking it one step at a time and are thankful for each small victory that takes a step closer.

Resting Comfortably

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Tammy

The first several days after surgery were rough, but we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday, Little Man was acting more like himself. His fever has broke, last night he slept through the night without pain medication, and this morning he is asking to go for a spin in his wheelchair. This mom is breathing easier!

He loves the wheelchair. Even when he was experiencing a lot of pain he was willing to push himself around. After a month of not being able to wear his prosthesis, mobility seems like pure heaven. He has mastered doing donuts and his favorite new game is pretending to be Pac Man. He chases everyone (ghosts) to eat them. Love hearing him laugh as he chases us – Don’t love those huge wheelchair wheels running over my toes! He has also figured out how to crawl without touching his leg on the ground. It is like some crazy knee lift push up while crawling. He is amazing.

This week we are focusing on his continued healing and exercising his leg to keep his mobility. It is more natural for him to keep his knee bent so they have given him a brace so that his knee doesn’t lock. Next week, we go back to the hospital for them to check his leg and fit him for a compression sleeve to continue the healing and prepare him for a new prosthetic.

We can’t thank you all enough for keeping him in your prayers. Our family feels very blessed by your love and support!

Surgery Day

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Tammy

We literally rolled in on our last wheel, but we are now in Florida getting Little Man all fixed up. We can’t sing the praises of Shriners Hospital in Tampa loud or long enough. They really are bending over backwards to help us care for our guy.

On pre-op day they discovered that even more was going on than we had anticipated. Rather than one bone spur needing to be removed he would need further amputation and reconstruction of his limb to remove old scar tissue. This is much more invasive than we had planned for, but since we were in good hands we felt confident with the direction things were going. Unfortunately, this means a longer recovery time, but we will take that one day at a time.

Yesterday was surgery. He wasn’t feeling very brave, but when they rolled a wii into his room as they prepped him for surgery everything else seemed less important. Mario Kart saves the day. Unbelievable that he could be woozy from pain meds and able to win a race.

Surgery went as planned with no surprises.

We spent the night in the hospital (and may be here another one) due to his history of infection. They are giving him iv antibiotics and pain medication. He is having a very hard time with pain because some of the meds that usually work just aren’t working in his body. Truly, this is one of the hardest things I have done as a mom. Hate seeing my baby in this much pain. He wanted to know if my leg was hurting because I was crying along with him. Sweet boy. No mom’s leg isn’t hurting…just my heart.

Would appreciate you praying for him that the pain would ease, that he would stay infection free, and that he heals beautifully. I am ready to be eating this boy’s dust again!