Update on Joshua 2

I thought I’d include one more update on Joshua, and hopefully this will be the last one!  I am praying that the next few months will be completely unremarkable 😊.  In good news, Joshua turned 2 last weekend.  He shares his birthday with his Grandmom Vaughn who celebrated her 60^th birthday BIG in Charlotte.  We enjoyed surprising her with a weekend packed with family, a beautiful hotel, shopping, a fancy adult dinner, and a casual brunch with the grandbabies.  This weekend marked the first time we have allowed Joshua to play with children who were not his siblings since he got sick, and he was in heaven!  He had a blast playing with his cousins, and our babysitters were total saints to keep that crazy crew so we could enjoy a dinner out.

His birthday was on Sunday, and on Wednesday we went back to the doctor for his 2 year old check up.  The poor kid has seen so many doctors that as soon as we walked in, he immediately started saying, “I want to go home.”  He got a lot of sympathy from the nurses for that sweet voice crying to go home.  They made it as quick and painless as they possibly could, and the next day our doctor texted us with the results of his blood work.

Unfortunately, he still has what they call mild neutropenia This basically means that his body’s ability to fight infections is still compromised.  He is improving, so they aren’t concerned, but it also means that we still need to guard his health carefully because he may not have the resources he needs to fight another big virus.  The infectious disease doctor described the immune system like a team of soldiers.  He said that after fighting a battle like the pneumonia Joshua dealt with, that team is seriously exhausted and needs time to rest and regain their strength before they are prepared to fight again.  It’s hard to know with certainty when the immune system is ready to fight again but there are some signs that show they are definitely not prepared, and Joshua’s bloodwork is currently showing the signs that his immune system is not ready to fight again.

The pediatrician recommended that we continue to keep him out of childcare settings and other “germy” places through March.  I had planned to do that, but I thought keeping him home would be extra conservative, not a necessity recommended by our doctor, so I am overall a little discouraged.  It makes me fearful to know exactly when it would be safe to put him in childcare, and it makes it extra hard to be dealing with this while we are new to town.  I know that the new people we meet have a hard time understanding what is going on with Joshua and why I’m hesitant to go to a play date to an open gym place, for example, or why I ask if their kids have been healthy before agreeing to be together.  It makes me wonder what kind of first impression I’m making on potential friends.  On top of all of that, we can’t go to church together as a family, so Andy and I are taking turns going to church with the big kids. Sitting in church without my husband is hard – especially when I don’t know anyone.  I have so much more compassion for single mothers or mothers who have husbands who aren’t interested in church. 

I wrote a blog about identity a little while ago, and I think God is continuing to work on that concept with me. At the end of the day, my identity is in the Lord and what he thinks – not what anyone else thinks. We are making the best decisions we can for our family, and the Lord is guiding those decisions.  We are prayerful about where to take Joshua and what situations we should put him in, and I know that even if it alienates potential friends, God will still be faithful to provide the right community in his time  Furthermore, we are trying hard to show our children that even though we have a tricky situation with Joshua, church is something that is still a top priority for our family.  It would be easy to sit out on church through March or even April, but instead, weekly we load the big kids in the car and try a church – continuing to be prayerful about where to go. That also means that many weeks, Andy or I are navigating new childcare situations in a new church alone.  And then Andy and I come home, and report to the parent who stayed home everything about the service and our thoughts on it.  Our children have been privy to many more conversations about church and where to plug in and what is most important than they might have been were Joshua not sick. 

We are expecting Joshua to continue to improve, and our doctor has said that as long as he continues to stay healthy, we don’t need to repeat bloodwork. The big thing for us will be to give Joshua more time to recover and for flu activity to die down.  I’d think by May we will return to life as normal provided that he has been healthy.  We so appreciate all the prayers that have been prayed on his behalf and we are looking forward to his 3^rd year of life being a lot better than his 2^nd – for our family and for him personally!

Good Things

Before we even moved to Clemmons, I remember God promising me community there.   I vividly remember being 8 months pregnant and walking into Target.  Andy had not even been offered the job in Winston-Salem yet, and in that parking lot, I almost audibly heard God say, “You are moving to Winston, but I’ll go and prepare a place for you, and I will provide community there.”  I had a friend ask me this year exactly how I heard God speak (whether it was in prayer time or in church) and another friend in the room started giggling and said, “I think it’s in places like the Target parking lot!” because she knew this story so well. 

It is not unusual for me to hear God speak in unusual places, but I can barely think of my community in Clemmons without thinking of that Target parking lot experience.  It took a year before God made good on that promise, but then he MAJORLY showed up.  To describe the level of community we had in Clemmons in this blog post is way too hard for me right now.  Just suffice it to say that this was not just a place I had close girlfriends.  It was a place where Andy had dear guy friends, where we had couples that knew our children well and poured into them – whether or not they had kids the same ages.  It was a place where we had older mentor figures and younger friends we were enjoying getting to know.  We had groups of friends we saw on regular basis, and there was so much overlap in these groups that in building one friendship, you felt like you were building others at the same time.  We had a neighborhood where we knew by name almost every person – where trips to the bus stop often led to long conversations and encouragement. 

I still feel baffled when I think about why God moved us from this community.  It seems insane that he specifically promised these people, and yet, I was only given four good years with them. But I have spent some time this week reconnecting with an old friend and talking to her about our move to Charlotte.  It has made me start to reflect on some of the lessons we’ve learned and some of the good things that have come from this move.  It also seems hard to believe that we have been in Charlotte for almost 4 months.  We’ve spent one third of the year here and now, one third of the year away from “home” which I still call Clemmons.  With the exception of one friend, it has been almost 4 months since I’ve seen so many of the people I dearly, dearly love.  However, in that time, God has started to rework in me the idea of community, and there have been some special things come out of these past four months.

1.       I have not lost my community from Clemmons.  When we moved, I mentally tagged a few people I did not want to lose as we moved.  I love friendships with other women.  But real friendships take time and effort.  I believe that you only get out of a friendship what you put into it, and I don’t want a lot of surface level friendships.  I’d rather have a few friendships that I truly invest in and have deep, meaningful relationships.  One beautiful thing about this move is that, so far, I have not drifted in these relationships.  My friend, Meredith, and I actually joked that we have talked more since I’ve moved than we did when I lived right down the road from her.  I’ve learned to love the Marco Polo app, I’ve done a lot of texting, my sweet friend Taryn has learned to tolerate random FaceTime calls from my kids to hers, I’ve scheduled times to chat on the phone with my friends who are extra busy or have schedules vastly different than mine, and this weekend, I got to put our first kid-free couples beach trip on the books.  When Joshua is fully recovered, we look forward making a day trip to visit friends and our church, but being “stuck” here while he recovers has shown me that I don’t have to actually see our friends regularly to keep them close.  God did give us the community he promised in Clemmons, and he didn’t take it away because we moved.

2.       I have had the time to refocus on Andy and the kids and their place as part of my community.  When we left Clemmons, several people there who had moved often reminded me that I was taking my favorite people with me to Charlotte.  Although I knew it to be true, I had a hard time latching on to that encouragement.  But being here has helped redefine these relationships and solidify these people as my tightest community.  Andy is the only adult I talk to face to face most weeks, which has allowed for meaningful conversations – especially as we begin to identify what is most important to us regarding church and school choices.  The time spent in the hospital was so hard and exhausting, but it was also special to get so much one on one time with my youngest child who has never had that kind of attention before.  Relationships with the kids have deepened as we have brought them into exploring our new town with us.  Daniel was up early this morning and was even present for a conversation Andy and I were having about a church we have been visiting.  We weighed many pros and cons, and I hope that hearing those conversations at a young age will begin to shape how he sees the church and how he develops his own wisdom.

3.       The school situation has been good for both my big kids.  Daniel would probably thrive in almost any school setting.  He is a “learner” and a rule follower.  I had no concerns about him making the transition, but he has done it so well, and we like his teacher.  Abigail is a little more on the unfocused side when it comes to school.  She enjoys being social and doing art and creative play, but she has no interest in learning her letters or writing her name at this point, and our new preschool has been the PERFECT fit for her personality.  We adored her preschool teachers in Clemmons, and I cried when I said goodbye to them.  When I walk Abigail into school, I still ache for the community I had with the other parents and the teachers at her previous school.  But objectively, I know that her new school is exactly what she needs.  I had a conference with her teacher this week, and their teaching philosophy is so perfect for my middle child.  It possibly would have been frustrating for Daniel, but it is 1000% on target for Abigail.  In addition to that, her teacher knows her so well.  As she described Abigail’s strengths and areas of weakness, it warmed my heart to know that she was so seen and loved in such a short period of time.

4.     

 We have found a super sweet AWANA program for our kids.  AWANA is a kid’s church program where children are able to play and make friends and learn Bible stories, but where a huge emphasis is also put on scripture memorization.  I attended AWANA growing up, and I can say that it was the single most valuable experience I had toward building the relationship I now have with the Lord.  I love seeing what our kids are learning in this program and the relationships they are developing through it.

When we called our former pastor for advice on finding a church – telling him the pros and cons of our front runner – he advised us to find a Bible believing church where our kids could thrive.  He said that almost everything else could come secondary to those two things.  We have not found a church, but I do think that in many ways, we have found an overall place where our kids are thriving, and for now, that gives me enough encouragement to keep putting one foot in front of the other as we make Charlotte home again.