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‘faith’ Category

  1. the diabeetus and how it’s going

    March 26, 2013 by Megan

    InstaxThe Cadet celebrating his first 100 blood glucose reading with a couple of Polaroids!

    It’s been 2.5 months since The Cadet was hospitalized and diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.
    Two months in and it seems old hat.
    Something about being asked to keep your child alive forces you get a good grasp on the care plan REAL quick.
    All of the ill effects of of his Diabetic Ketoacidosis have resolved themselves.
    He’s gained back the weight and energy and is back to being a rambunctious little guy.
    He’s not the biggest fan of diabetes but he’s so laid back and go with the flow that he has adjusted better than My Soldier and me.

    About a month ago I had TOTAL diabetic parent burnout.
    {not sure that’s a real thing but let’s go with it}
    It’s a lot of work to keep up with involving a lot of math (so not my strong point}, endlessly checking blood sugar, giving shots, and worrying about what his blood sugar levels are doing.
    It’s no less work, but I’ve adjusted to it at this point and we just keep trucking on.

    I’ve never worried much as a parent.
    I am actually probably laid back to a fault as evidenced by The Cadet being in full on Diabetic Ketoacidosis before we took him to the ER.
    We just kept dismissing the symptoms.
    We were at an Army function the other night and sat across from a lady who has Type 2 Diabetes.
    She was asking about his diagnosis and she offers up,
    “Wow! You’re lucky he didn’t die!!”
    Thanks total stranger!
    Why yes, we are lucky he didn’t die.
    But don’t think I haven’t thought about it!

    The other day at breakfast The Cadet said something profound.
    {the kid has some mighty profound thoughts at breakfast}
    He said,
    “Mama, I will ask God to take away my diabetes.
    But if God says, ‘No, I want you to have diabetes’ then that will be ok too.”
    And then I cried.
    {    Out of the mouth of babes…sheesh}
    He’s the one whose pancreas up and quit.
    He’s the one getting stuck with lancets and needles all day and night.
    And here I am with my panties in a wad over a bit of math {ok a lot of math} and administering injections that KEEP HIM ALIVE?!?

    I’ve had the first part of this written for a while.
    Weeks even.
    I guess I don’t know quite how to wrap up a post on our friend Diabeetus.
    There is no “wrapping up” something that is as essential to his life as breathing.
    My feelings are far from wrapped-up either.
    I also don’t know what to share in this space because it’s not just my story, it’s not just my battle, and it’s not just my victories.
    On the other side, not sharing about The Cadet’s diabetes is preventing me from sharing anything else in this space.
    So I guess that leaves me at a bit of an impasse?
    I’m going to hit Publish before I leave it undecided for 2 more weeks.

    Category diabetes, faith | Tags: | 1 Comment

  2. the day the cadet’s pancreas broke

    January 27, 2013 by Megan

    2 weeks ago The Cadet {my darling superhero of 4} was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.
    {ugh}
    After a couple of weeks of showing some bizarre symptoms (like constant thirst, frequent urination, and rapid weight loss) he ended up in the ICU.

    ICU

    I hope and pray that no one reading this ever has to see their child in the ICU.
    For those who don’t know, {or those too ignorant to care} Type 1 Diabetes occurs when the body’s immune system attacks the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin.
    My son’s pancreas broke.
    Without the ability to make insulin his body can’t use the sugar in his bloodstream for energy.
    Without insulin you die.
    So now my super-tough 4-year old receives shots of insulin all day, everyday, and he’ll continue to do so for the rest of his life.

    So how are we doing?
    We are fine.
    Honestly.
    {that’s not some estrogen-loaded definition of fine but a webster’s dictionary definition of fine}
    That’s not to say that it didn’t affect me.
    I did most of my concerned-parental-panicking the day before he landed in the hospital.
    My heart just hurt, and continues to hurt, for such a big burden on such a little guy.
    My Soldier had his break down the day he was diagnosed.
    We both spent the whole of the week he was in the hospital learning everything we could on Type 1 Diabetes because it is now our job to keep The Cadet alive…literally.
    In classic Megan-is-addicted-to-books fashion, I began reading everything I could get my hands on.
    We now check his glucose levels 10-12 times a day including a couple of times a night, we count carbs, do lots of diabetes related math, and give shots like it’s nothing.

    And God is good.
    We’re grateful that The Cadet isn’t an overly emotional kid.
    We’re thankful that by nature he’s super tough and totally adaptable.
    We’re thankful that we didn’t have to make any major diet changes.
    We’re thankful for the people who have come alongside us to help us through the crisis part of his diagnosis.
    We’re crazy grateful for the healthcare available to us from The Army.
    And I’m shallow enough to be grateful that There’s An App For That.

    Yes it’s a chronic disease
    but
     we have everything available to us to give him a normal childhood.
    With that in mind we hit the ground running and found our new normal and have been cruising ever since.

    I’ll probably do a series of posts realted to Type 1 Diabetes {which we affectionately refer to as The Diabeetus ala Wilford Brimley in the Liberty Medical commercials} and how we live with it.
    They won’t be frequent, but for anyone out there in the blogoshpere with littles with The Diabeetus I know that any info can be helpful.

    For those of you reading who I actually know and have been praying for The Cadet and the rest of our family,
    Thank you!
    {seriously, we are so grateful}
    Honestly, we have felt so loved and supported through this whole roller coaster and are so grateful for our friends and family scattered across this tiny globe.

    Category army living, diabetes, faith | Tags: ,,, | 1 Comment

  3. quiet spaces

    November 12, 2012 by Megan

    20121113-001558.jpg

    My Soldier has been gone for 3 weeks.
    I talked to him for the 1st time today.
    I got to wish him a ‘Happy Veteran’s Day.’
    It made my heart happy.
    I’ve spent 3 weeks not really talking, doing my best impersonation of a recluse.
    {a recluse with a caffeine addiction and short temper.}
    In all of my time hiding from people I have somehow managed to sew a ton of clothing.
    I can’t bring myself to take self-portraits so you’ll have to wait for me to share.

    The Army Brats and I are en-route to Seattle for 10 days.
    {and don’t get any funny ideas people of the interwebs, i have a trained killer house-sitting}
    The Deep South was smothering me in more ways than one.
    I’ve been lonely, quiet, and a bit sad; but I don’t want this blog to be a Debbie Downer environment.
    I also don’t want it to be dominated by a negative overtone.
    But I don’t want to be fake, so I tend to not blog when I’m in either of those head-spaces.
    I hope Seattle gives me a bit of time to breathe.
    This space will likely be quiet.
    Quiet is often good, especially when Jesus meets you in those quiet spaces.
    And now I must feed The Peanut and head to bed.
    {which happens to be one of my favorite quiet spaces}

    To the men and women who have sacrificially served our country,
    Happy Veteran’s Day!!

    Category army living, extracurricular, faith | Tags: | Comments Off

  4. on mothering my 3rd

    September 4, 2012 by Megan

    the peanut and i in the hospital

    The Peanut will be 2 months old tomorrow.
    I feel like I should get his newborn photos up here on the ol bligity blog before he’s headed to kindergarten.

    hi baby

    Everyone warned me of the chaos and work that is adding a 3rd child.
    They warned of multiple siblings lashing out and struggling to adjust.
    They warned me of how detrimental sleepless nights are when you have 2 other kids still dependent upon you for care.
    Honestly, other than Annie, no one was very positive about it all.
    Thankfully, that hasn’t been our experience.
    And I know I’m just asking for retorts.
    {i’m ridiculously good at refuting retorts though}
    I get the, ‘Just wait…, or  Newborns are easy…, and It’ll will all hit the fan in time…’ comments.
    And I smile and nod and try not to belittle their existence.
    But here’s the thing:
    I don’t think that will ever be our experience.

    There are a number of reasons I think this;
    my kids don’t really stress me out,
    there isn’t a Type A bone in my body,
    we thrive in chaos,
    and we trust in God’s provision.

    Seriously, I brought The Peanut home to a mattress on the floor with zero friends, family, or church body for assistance and it was totally fine.
    Believe me, I’m not saying that out of pride.
    I’m saying that out of confidence in God ordering our steps through this whole PCS and that included the birth of The Peanut.

    Honestly, the timing proved to be a blessing.
    There was no horrible adjustment phase for My Helper and The Cadet, likely because there was no disruption to an established routine.
    By the time The Peanut arrived we had just adjusted to My Soldier returning from Afghanistan and had been nomadic for more than a month.

    So our new normal has been pretty blissfully sweet.
    We’ve been able to adjust to Alabama as a family of 5 right out of the gate.

    The Peanut himself is very alert, slightly demanding, and a little crafty.
    Most of the time he’s totally content but he definitely makes it known when he is hungry, wet, or wants to be held.
    Through powers of newborn coercion he typically gets us to hold him through at least one nap a day, typically in the evening.
    {i told you he was a little crafty}
    My favorite thing? He “communicates” largely through grunts and horse noises.

    My Soldier took the photos above in the hospital.
    Here are some of the shots I took from the newborn session we did when he was a week old.

    he’s still a little jaundiced here

    terribly out of focus but i wanted you to see his dimples

    a baby in a box
    one of the many things that we “unpacked”

    Cheers!

    Category extracurricular, faith | Tags: ,,, | Comments Off

  5. in the not quite christmas spirit

    November 28, 2011 by Megan


    That’s our Jesse Tree sitting sad and empty yesterday before it received it’s first ornament.
    Normally the season of Advent get’s me all excited but this year I’m a wee bit distracted.
    We have 2 HUGE things on the table for the first part of the year and it’s hard not to be completely focused on them.

    One of them is My Soldier’s deployment which you can’t exactly ignore.
    Deployments involve heaps of planning and tasks to accomplish,
    and joy of all joys! all that needs to be completed right around Christmas.
    {please acknowledge the inherent sarcasm in that statement}
    Bonus: I live in Hawaii, which normally is a bonus except it feels like summer vacation year round.
    Not exactly snuggle by a fire and and watch a Christmas movie weather.
    I’m hoping as we get closer to Christmas day that my mood will have shifted;
    but with so many thing affecting our future on the other side of this season I kind of hope it just comes and goes quietly.

    Category army living, faith | Tags: ,, | Comments Off

  6. preparing to prepare

    November 16, 2011 by Megan

    Hello little blog!
    My family left this weekend and we hit the ground running trying to get the house back in order.
    {not to mention the vast effort we’ve put into getting the army brats back in order}

    Yesterday I finally felt like we were back in the swing of things and then I realized that Thanksgiving is next week!
    Whoops.
    So today I hit the commissary and picked up all the items that will be out of stock come Saturday;
    Cranberries, pecans, pumpkin, Karo syrup and a handful of other things this island notoriously runs out of.
    The one thing I ended up frantic about was turkey brining bags.
    {is brining even a word? what would you call a bag that you brine turkey in?}
    Seriously, I fear dry poultry of any form and I will not subject my Thanksgiving dinner guests to dry turkey.
    I ended up frantically searching 3 stores and and ended up with the last package on the shelf at Target.
    :::wipe sweat off brow:::

    On top of the Thanksgiving preparations I also hauled out the Christmas decoration bins.
    {and by i hauled out i mean My Soldier hauled out}
    Advent starts on the 27th this year which is the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
    Yay Advent, the season of preparation for the birth of Jesus!
    I have dug through everything and pulled out our Jesse Tree ornaments,
    essentially I have been preparing to prepare but preparation is SO important.

    In other news, I solved my ongoing issue of pattern storage.
    I’ll post on that tomorrow.
    I also finished the quilt for my BFF who’s about to pop with her 1st baby girl!
    {to clarify, not her 1st baby, she has a studly baby boy but this woman is totally made to mother girls so it’s extra exciting}

    I’m off to attempt an hour of straight cleaning ala my friend Melanie.
    {i give myself 27 minutes before i give up}

    Category cooking, extracurricular, faith, homemaking, housekeeping, sewing | Tags: ,,,,, | 1 Comment

  7. slow-paced life

    September 8, 2011 by Megan

    I lead a really slow-paced life.
    Despite what the world tries to tell me a slower pace is the best thing for me and my family.

    I had no convictions about being a stay-at-home-mom or homemaker until college.
    It wasn’t how I was raised and honestly wasn’t appealing.
    I didn’t want kids until a summer missions trip to Uganda changed my heart completely.
    I spent years in school training for a life I don’t want and was told I am too smart to waste my time in the home.

    I stumbled upon a quote in my favorite magazine, Seeing the Everyday;

    “Educated women in the home? What an odd thing to deplore!
    What better place to have us “end up”…
    What more important job is there than sharing the values we are learning to cherish with the next generation of adults?
    What more strategic place could there be for the educated woman?”
    -Edith F. Hunter

    So now that I am a homemaker I treat my job very seriously.
    I want to provide a place for my family to thrive.
    For my family this means an intentional slow pace and a home-centered existence.
    We live in a super chaotic world that is shouting all sorts of messages at us, my home should be the best refuge against all the noise.
    My kids need peace and calm, likely even more-so than your average kids because they are Army Brats.
    One third of the time My Soldier is gone on deployment for 12 months or more at a time.
    He is the rock and stable influence in our home which is all the more reason for me to provide a slow-paced calm environment for them.
    I want our home to be their haven.
    My home is my favorite place to be and I want it to be my children’s too.

    Slow-paced and peaceful for us looks different than it does for a lot of families.
    {peaceful and quiet are not synonymous in our home}
    I try very hard to be in our home as much as possible.
    Totally counter-cultural but my young kids don’t need the frantic pace of a Wall Street exec.
    So I combine errands, limit activities and often say ‘no’ to exciting opportunities so that we can be home as much as possible.
    We are still out-n-about regularly with church and ministry opportunities and we do spend a great deal of time with friends in their homes.
    I make a point to cook as many meals from scratch as I can and we eat them as a family.
    I love to cook.
    It’s my favorite “chore.”
    Feeding my family (and others) brings immense joy to my little heart.
    We don’t have cable.
    {Crazy right?}
    We’ve been cable free for almost 2 years and I don’t know that we’d ever go back.
    We own 1 TV and it is used as the monitor for my Mac Mini.
    We can stream shows over the internet if we want and enjoy movies from time to time.
    Honestly, that type of entertainment is not a regular part of our lives.
    My kids go days without watching anything and they don’t know the difference.
    {bonus: we save a ton of $$}
    We do a lot of nothing and we do it as a family.
    Doing nothing for this family is just unstructured time.
    This time includes a lot of reading, drawing, coloring, and playing with Legos or dolls or walking to the park right outside our back door.

    That is what “slow-paced” looks like in our family right now.
    There are many areas where I can improve.
    {like cleaning, and watching my temper with my kids, and laundry}
    With God’s help and abundant grace I am making headway in those areas.
    Off to sweep!

    Category army living, faith, homemaking | Tags: ,,,, | 1 Comment

  8. on the not blogging

    August 12, 2011 by Megan

    I haven’t been blogging.

    When life gets chaotic it is the first thing that goes.
    Life has been chaotic.

    My darling boy, The Cadet, has been crazy disobedient and defiant this week.
    All. Week. Long.
    {it’s exhausting}

    I try very hard to be consistent in my parenting.
    God has set me the task to mother these wee babes {who are not so wee anymore},
    and I’m trying {and often failing} to be a faithful parent to them.
    That means that I have spent a HUGE chunk of this week reminding The Cadet about boundaries, respect, and authority.
    Over, and over, and over and over….
    {i’m currently shaking my head as i think back through some of the more outlandish moments this week}

    Thankfully I recently read Loving the Little Years. Twice.
    {it was that good}
    It’s an amazing, gospel-centered, convicting, and encouraging read for those of us who are in the trenches surrounded by small people.

    So now I must throw back another cup of coffee and try not to think too hard about My Soldier’s CRAZY schedule the next 2 weeks.
    12 hour shifts, 14 days straight, starting on a Friday, because the Army thinks they’re clever.

    Category extracurricular, faith | Tags: ,, | 1 Comment

  9. if you can’t stand the heat, spend 8 hours in a sweltering kitchen

    August 3, 2011 by Megan

     I love being cold.
    Probably because I like all the things in the world designed to warm you up.
    Coffee, tea, sweaters, scarves, quilts, fireplaces, you get the idea.

    Here’s how a loverly sequence of events turned into God challenging my love for people.
    Friday I got a call from my BFF Army Style that a wife of one of her Hubby’s squadmates had broken her ankle and was not really functioning enough to take care of herself and her 2 small children.
    {did you track with that crazy loose association?}
    The BFF Army Style asked if I’d be willing to bring her some meals since she is in Texas and can’t help.
    DONE.

    So Saturday morning as I’m planning an epic cooking fest to make 7 meals for Down-Out & Deployed I shoot her an e-mail letting her know my plans and asked for requests.
    I had gone out to buy groceries at the Commissary and when I walked in the house I about died.
    {serious times call for serious drama}
    Our Army-issue home was no longer pumping out Army-issue Air Conditioning.
    In fact it still isn’t.

    I don’t do hot.
    That’s my biggest pet peeve with this here rock that we live on.
    I literally have a hard time functioning if it’s higher than 80º.
    And although this housewife hails from Seattle where it is wet and gray and perfect,
    I have done my fair share of ridiculously hot places,
    like 5 years in North Los Angeles on the border of the dessert,
    and 3 years in Dallas where it is as hot as LA but with he added bonus of humidity.
    I don’t really acclimate, I sit indoors with the A/C blasting and pretend it’s 65º instead of 110º.

    So here I am, super hot {not supermodel hot, sweating profusely hot},
    in a house with an inconsistent breeze and intermittent Hawaiian rains blowing in,
    cooking a marathon of super involved food for someone I don’t know.
    Awesome.
    {the sarcasim implies my attitude towards the whole thing and the fact that the FRG should have been taking care of this whife while her hubby is deployed, but wasn’t}

    So that was my day yesterday.
    From scratch I made a lasagna, chicken enchiladas, chicken parmesan with homemade marinara sauce, and chocolate chip cookies.
    That was all the heat I could stand so I bought a case of orange chicken and a case of pizzas from Costco as well.
    BONUS: I also baked a pecan pie and a blackberry/raspberry pie for a farewell for The Coastie and The Coastie’s Wife last night.
    {dear Coasties and your squishy baby, we love and miss you}
    By the time I was done with it all the thermostat read 89º inside our stinkin house which was 2º warmer than it was outside.
    I was a very unhappy camper as I threw a ton of food and two cranky nap-less children into my Durango.

    About 10 minutes into the drive up to post I calmed down.
    It was probably due to the combination of my car’s A/C, awesome music, driving, and prayer.
    I hopped in the car at the beginning of crazy Hawaiian rush hour willingly because to me traffic is much more preferable to heat.
    I was in a good mood (although running late) when I blew into Down-Out & Deployed’s home bringing lots and lots of food with me.
    The look of relief on her face made my heart break.
    I will likely never see her again but to know I filled a real need, as menial as it is brings such joy.
    Hopefully she didn’t see any of my heat-related grumpiness through the whole situation, Lord willing she saw a bit of Christ instead.

    I drove straight from her house to the farewell for The Coasties with our itty-bitty church plant.
    By then the frustrations of the day were just a memory.
    I was super blessed to come home and find that in the hour My Soldier was home in the afternoon he scrubbed my kitchen clean of all cooking-related residue.
    He even made me coffee this morning.
    {i ♥ him}

    Today the mighty maintenance men will spend hours fixing our A/C unit.
    My chores are largely done so I can spend the day sewing and doing art with the kids.
    I might even get a bit of interweb wandering done although that requires sitting in front of a window with the sun staring down at me so I might pass.

    Category cooking, faith | Tags: ,,,,, | 2 Comments

  10. hello boppy

    June 22, 2011 by Megan

    Miss Melanie had a new baby a couple of weeks back.
    {it might not have been that long but we haven’t seen them but once since. we try and keep our germ infested preschoolers away from wee little babes}
    Here name is Ainsley and she is 100% perfect and 100% opposite of her sweet but bruiser of a brother.
    {seriously, the kiddo is 1 month older than the cadet and he’s got 10lbs and 6″ on our not-so-little guy}

    If you dink around Melanie’s blog you’ll see that she has been living up the opportunity to make super girly items for baby girl.
    But it left me TOTALLY stumped as to what to make for this totally capable seamstress.
    They PCS’d from Alaska a few months back so there is no shortage of blankets for the wee one who is born during spring in Hawaii.
    I ended up just asking her for a request because I was totally stumped.
    Thankfully she had a very specific request so it was easy peasy for this pathetic friend.

    A Boppy cover, quilted with Moda’s Hullabaloo fabric line.

    Done, and Done.



    The front was trixy for a couple of reasons.
    Firstly, I was flying by the seat of my cropped denim shorts {in my typical approach to sewing} so that meant no pattern and no direction. Awesome.
    Secondly, I was working with a charm pack for the top so that I could use most of the fabric line.
    The problem with that is that I couldn’t pre-wash it which is uber-necessary when making stuff for little people.
    So I made a generously large pattern, basically made a Boppy-shaped quilt, washed and dried it and then assembled the cover.
    I made The Soldier give me a pat on the back for that little work of genius.
    {which he often does since he thinks sewing is hard and that I am accomplishing great feats with a needle and thread}
    Yay for washable baby items!!

    And because she is super-mom she has somehow been able to squeeze in some quilting during her massive amount of free time as a new mother of two.
    {pretty sure my sewing machine didn’t see the light of day for many moons after either kid was born}
    Melanie is currently working on a a star quilt with the same fabric line.
    {it’s turning out super cute}

    Don’t forget about the Into the Streets of Ethiopia online auction!!
    Winners announced this coming Sunday!

    Category faith, sewing | Tags: ,,, | Comments Off

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