Crazy Life

I apologize in advance for all the spelling errors. To do spell check, I have to be on the 'big' computer...so it will get edited later. I wasn't going to publish it until I did that but I hit the wrong button accidentally and published it already. To quote X, "Oh Phooey!".



Jut and I look at each other sometimes and say, "Someday we are going to look back on this time and laugh and wonder how on earth we did it." It has been a crazy six months. It all began with Jut starting graduate school back at the end of August...now it isn't as intense as my sister's nurse anesthetist program that stole a couple years of her life...but it does give him many more hours of 'work' to do each week.

Just when he was getting into the routine of school, C was born. Newborns are wonderful but the outside world ceases to exist when one enters your home. It took until Christmas to come out of what I refer to as "newborn psychosis"...Jut managed to finish up his first semester of grad school and somehow most of our Christmas stuff got finished. Although...I will admit that with the exception of the Christmas tree, there weren't too many decorations around the house.

Then, the last week of December came and I feel like Jut's been running even faster ever since. The church is usually pretty slow the week between Christmas and New Years. But, a family in crisis, a family that lost its patriarch, and the death of one of our former youth sponsors...made it anything but a slow week.

Come January 1, Jut started as the official "lead minister" of the church. I don't remember exactly what happened that week, other than Sue's funeral, but I know it was a busy week. We visited Jut's folks for our Christmas that weekend. We learned that Jut's dad's cancer was progressing. We had a wonderful time with his family but things were looking bleak for Mike. He was significantly weaker and had lost substantial weight since we had last saw him in November.

The second week of January Mike had an appointment with his oncologist. The dr did not recommend continuing chemo. The cancer was growing and there weren't any other treatment options available. However Mike and Joye decided to continue with the first chemo that he tried that had worked very well...with the exception of the nerve damage to his extremities.

The rest of the month is kind of a blur...Jut's classes started back up again. He went down to his folks' two more times. He tried to help out with what he could. He tried to stay on top of his school work and his new position and responsibilities at church. What a busy, busy month.

This month, he had a week of class on campus at Rochester Hills. And then he's been home for two full weeks. It has been so nice. C has been difficult this month. He's not sleeping well at night and therefore neither are we, but it has been nice having Jut home every night.

On Saturday, Jut received a phone call explaining that our custodian from the church, Larry, had passed away unexpectedly in the night. His daughter in law, Sue, passed away less than two months ago. Our hearts ached for the family. We said our earthly goodbyes to Larry today. He loved our kids. His only daughter was named Elizabeth...and he loved to tell me how proud he was of his E and he only hoped that we could be as proud of our E someday. He'd watch X tool around and he'd say, "I never see that boy but that he's running somewhere!" and then he'd laugh. We will miss Larry very much. He was an ever present in our lives that we didn't think about too much because he was just always there. Now there is a hole where he should be.

Yesterday, Jut received another phone call. His dad was calling to tell him that he was being admitted to the hospital. He's gotten so weak that Joye can't get him out of bed anymore. We knew it was a matter of time before this happened. He's been losing strength weekly and Joye's had to call for help weekly for the past several weeks to get him in the house, car, etc. But, we are still disheartened for the actual news.

We've attended two funerals in the last two months for people that seemed to leave this world before it should have been their time. Both people were Christians and there was hope because it was just an earthly goodbye...but it still stinks to bid them farewell on this side of the veil. The looming reality is that soon it will be our turn to be the grieving family to bid Mike an earthly farewell. This stinks. Sudden deaths are hard and deaths that you know are coming are hard. It just stinks no matter how it happens.

Anyway, Jut's gone again. I'm home with the kids again. The nice thing is that we have a routine down. Really the kids do great when its time for single parenthood. If C would just sleep, life would be pretty easy. But there is a cloud looming and an ever present question of God's plan in all of this craziness.

I'm so glad that sometimes we don't know the future and can just enjoy the wonderful little things that happen in midst of the craziness...like C's adorable smiles and infectious belly laughs, X's fascination with all things trains and exploding vocabulary and sentence structure, and E's eagerness to learn and play.

Life is a bit crazy but its manageable. We just take it one day at a time and keep a stash of chocolate stocked above the fridge when things seem a bit out of control.