better late than never...

4 October 2009

I have found it hard to write these last couple of days even though I have wonderful news! Wednesday when I went to Dr. Chang’s office after xrays and measurements he came to talk to us (Mom and I as always,thanks Mom!!) of the next step. I had been hoping and praying that he would set the date to get the spatial frame off and was going even so far as to hope he would do it sooner than planned. He came in all smiles and wanted to know what we thought. We had of course already sneaked a peak at the xrays and seen that the gap in my femur had definitely stretched some more…so much more in fact that I AM DONE!!!!! Just hearing that as a definite made my day=) So Dr. Chang sat on a stool in front of, stretching my legs to see if they matched and said “so what’s the next step?” Jarod, the guy in charge of providing the hardware for the brace and making sure it was put on and is taken off correctly was there also there and they started discussing the steps. They started saying how the plan was to keep it on for 2-4 weeks after the gap was big enough but since I had had it on for so long, and seeing that the bone was “somehow already filling in” ;)…I interrupted and asked if he could take it off next week half expecting some rolling of the eyes. He looked at me for a sec then shrugged his shoulders and said “ok”. OK!!! Mom thankfully shares in my every emotion through this time and so was just as ecstatic as I was…so….I GET IT OFF!!!!!! the date is set for Thursday, the 8th.

I don’t really know how to convey my utter happiness and my blatant frustration that there is still 4 days between me and freedom!! Thanks to each of you who have come along beside me and cheered me on...listened to my complaints, offered a hug for my tears, held my hand when I was scared…these last few months have been filled with a myriad of emotions and when I let myself think about the immensity of everything I get overwhelmed. Thank you Dani for my doughnuts after every operation…, thank you for laying down your life these months...thanks Mom for being my every-day strength and my constant Pusher…gracias Marcos para tus visitas y por siempre ayudarme salir adelante...and oh BEAUTIFUL family of mine!! There is not enough I can say about your stamina and grace and encouragement and patience, your love…I just simply would not be here at all, especially not doing this well and being this happy without you all. There are too many people, so many wonderful friends who have been kind and funny and long-suffering and attentive.

I know this sounds sappy like a book dedication or something but to me this marks the beginning of the Tomorrow I have so long waited for. I finally get to walk to the next page. Dance to it actually. =)

Today everything hit me at once. I’m still in a lot of pain and being THIS CLOSE makes it a bit harder to take. Tonight friends went salsa dancing and I was so having a pity party and sad that I couldn’t be there with them and that is the kind of moment where I have to step back. Behold all that is. I keep reminding myself that I still have months of intense therapy ahead of me to be able to walk normal and be able to have an “average” day. Be able to do everything that I want to do. My goal once again is to dance by December when I get to go home and see my sisters=) On one hand I see all that is before me and am so HOPEFUL, then my mind sees the cost of it all...sweat and emotions, perseverance and pain...sleepless nights ... I'm held in check. I don’t want to let my dreams run away with me and me expect too much too soon. I can almost TASTE the sweetness. I feel a little silly because of my emotion. I want to embrace life so much more than I already have! I will have so much less pain in my body and will get to be active in life again, more fully than I have been, you know? . I know so, so many of you understand what that means. I pray for the same kind of relief for you (especially you Sarah, I love you!!). I pray with my whole heart that this really is a new beginning and that even though I will still have remnants of the accident to deal with, perhaps it will no longer take center stage. There is so much more waiting, I can feel it!

God is just SO good!!! There are too many blessings to be counted…so many hopes…my heart is FULL!!

I am reading a book by John Eldredge so I wanted to leave you a quote from him. It says better than I can what I am feeling right now:

“Something in us longs, hopes, maybe even at times believes that this is not the way things were supposed to be. Our desire fights the assault of death upon life...At some deep level, we refuse to accept the fact that this is the way things are, or must be, or always will be…Even though we sleep, our desire does not…His [a person’s] miseries are his ally, they urge him on...We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. [What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? Matt. 16:26] To desire something and not to have it - is this not the source of nearly all our pain and sorrow?...Desire is the source of our most noble aspirations and our deepest sorrows. The pleasure and the pain go together; indeed, they emanate from the same region in our hearts. We cannot live without the yearning, and yet the yearning sets us up for disappointment-sometimes deep and devastating disappointment...Do we reach for nothing in life because our reaching opens us up to tragedy? Because of its vulnerable nature, desire begins to feel like our worst enemy…We all know the dilemma of desire, how awful it feels to open our hearts to joy, only to have grief come in. They go together. We know that. What we don’t know is what to do with it, how to live in this world with desire so deep in us and disappointment lurking behind every corner. Still, something in me knows that to kill desire is to kill my heart altogether. Do we form no friendships because our friends might be taken from us? Do we refuse to love because we may be hurt? Do we forsake our dreams because hope has been deferred? To desire is to open our hearts to the possibility of pain, to shut down our hearts is to die altogether.”