PCH pics (no specific order)

Persistence

My two oldest, Isaac and Emma, had track and field days in the last week of school that underscored something I already knew -  Everyone wants to be a talented sprinter.  It is quite an honor, at the primary and intermediate schools, to be among the top three in your class that gets to race that day.  You must place high enough in you preliminary class heats for boys and girls in order to do so, and when you go out to race, the hopes of your whole class rest upon you.  Bragging rights are at stake individually and as a class.  The 400 meter run on the other hand is open to all takers.  This is the longest event they run that day and anyone can enter. So Isaac did.
When the timer said "go" they all took off.  The boys in first and second place jetted out in front of everyone else.  Their lead grew steadily until about the 200 meter mark, and by then it looked like they may not even be catch-able anymore. Isaac hustled along a ways back in third.
Thanks to genetics, Isaac is not big, there were kids in his race that were easily a whole head taller than him.  He planned his race well though, he kept a consistent pace and by the end he was in place to challenge for the win while many others had long since faded.
For the last two weeks now Christi has been in the Phoenix Children's Hospital in a medically induced coma. She was put under to stop a massive seizure that she was having.  In order to get it stopped they had to put her under deep and keep her under a long time.  I remember watching her brain waves on the EEG monitor go from violent spikes to screens and screens of completely flat.  For the last couple days she has begun to wake up.  Her progress has been very slow, and even now she does not move her limbs or extremities on command or even very much at all.  The story and perhaps even our trajectory changed a little this morning when the doctor's did their rounds.  They reported that the levels of sedation medication in her blood were low enough now that they no longer were effecting her behavior. That means there is some other cause.  There are two possibilities that they asked us to consider - first, that what we are witnessing is the extent of her brain damage, or second, that this is still post seizure recovery.  Either one could be long term of even permanent.
While we had know these possibilities from the beginning, we had hoped I suppose for 2 maybe 3 intense weeks and then a gradual slide back into normal noisy, energetic Christi life.  2 to 3 weeks of buoying each other up, 2-3 weeks of tears mixed with seasons of rejoicing, 2-3 weeks of life at this level of intensity would be a good sprint for our faith.  Faith, for me at least, has always been easier in the short term though.  It takes more planning and consistency, more persistence to stay the course for the long haul.
The journey must still be taken a step at a time - manageable short term goals make a big difference - but this type of race isn't run with grit teeth.
Paul said, "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight,...and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." Any distance runner will tell you that running with patience does not mean running slow.  What it means is pacing yourself - planning for the long haul.  In that way, distance running is more cerebral than sprinting I guess.  In elite races there is an ebb and flow of things.  They always give their all, but in very few cases does someone lead the race from wire to wire.  Every endurance runner must pick their spot and each one can expect to battle at some point with "the beast." This inner battle, and how it is fought, separates champions from the rest of the field.  Paul continues, "let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith."
Not knowing how long this race is would be unbearable under any different author.  He is the finisher though too.  Isaiah wrote, "Has thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?...He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up on wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint"   -Isaiah 40:28-31
Christi faces the possibility of a tracheotomy if she does not develop a sufficient cough/gag reflex by the end of the week.  The thought of it is hard to bear. She continues to progress though, and today's cough was better and more frequent than yesterday.  Still weak, inconsistent, and not yet half what it should be, but getting better. There is no way that she or we could run this alone.

Time to Wake Up!

"And now, knowing the time, that it is now high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than we believed." (Romans 13:11)

When I was young, my dad used to wake me up in the morning by coming downstairs to my room, wiggling my big toe, and telling me kindly that it was time to get up.  This was much better than a blaring alarm clock or anything else for me.  He probably doesn't know it, but many of those mornings I woke up as he came down the noisy staircase or even a few minutes earlier, but waited in bed with my eyes closed for him to come wiggle my toe.  I was quick to obey, and was usually one of the first ones upstairs at the table for breakfast.  I've been a morning person ever since.

Christi also rises quite early we have found :) Most of the time, when she wakes up (between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning) she cries or yells out a little as she awakes.  Just a little usually, but enough to alert her parents and sometimes her siblings.  That's my cue. I'm the keeper of the morning routine around our house, and have found that the way Christi is first greeted makes a big difference for her.  If she is shushed or controlled she gets angry.  So for the last while the greeting of choice has been, "Hi Princess!! How did you sleep?" - spoken with as much enthusiasm as I can muster.  She always responds, "Good."

In the scriptures, awakening has to do with coming to see things as they really are.  President Packer taught, "True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior...That is why we stress so forcefully the study of the doctrines of the gospel."  In that sense, we all should have patterns of awakenings, big and small, as God teaches us true doctrine through scriptures, prophets, promptings, and life experiences.  The whole experience of this last week has been an awakening to me I guess also.  There are a number of sacred and personal things that I have learned.  As I have come to understand each of them more clearly and fully, I have felt each time a great desire and motivation to act on them.  The Lord is such a great teacher and motivator!  The way He awakens me to what I should know and do to become more like Him is sometimes a sharp change (like waking up can be), but His call is always filled with love and kindness.  Do I always "awake and arise" as I should when he 'wiggles my toe'?  Do I make the changes I need to make when I am shown them?  He promises us, "If men come unto me, I will show unto them their weakness." (Ether 12:27)  That may sound harsh if I forget his kindness and love for me. He loves me enough to teach me.  That is one of the reasons he asks us to study His gospel.  He continues, "...I give unto men weakness that they may be humble, and my grace is sufficient for all those that humble themselves before me, for if they humble themselves before me and have faith then will I make weak things become strong unto them."  That is the hopeful promise that those who "awake and arise."
          
A little over 2 hours ago a doctor, then a team of doctors, entered my Christi's room here at Phoenix Children's hospital.  They announced a dramatic change in plans for Christi's path toward waking from her coma.  Instead of taking from five days to a week, they are going to wean her off the drugs that are keeping her in a coma today! This means she could wake up as soon as tonight! I can hardly wait to hear her cry out and greet my princess again!  Mustering enthusiasm will not be a problem, containing it might be :)

There are a number of possibilities that we are preparing for as she awakes.  She may linger under the effects of her medication or her long sleep for a while; she may come back as lively as she has ever been; or she may exhibit a new baseline from any damage that has been sustained to her brain.  Whatever the case, we are excited for whatever this new morning brings.

I'll try to do my best now that the stairs have symbolically creaked, to close my eyes and hold still waiting with great anticipation for our toes to be wiggled.  With any possible changes or teachings that the future holds - it's going to be a great morning for us both!   Its almost time to wake up!!

The trial of my faith

I have always felt that what Moroni was referring to in Ether 12:6 about the trial of a person's faith was referring to difficult times.  He certainly was going through them!  He had seen his entire people destroyed and even his father killed by the enemies that now sought him.  He was in hiding, and yet the things that he records in hiding and on the run include a discourse of his father on faith, hope, and charity. While he certainly had hope for the future of the record he bore, what hope did he hold onto for himself in his own personal situation?
He testifies that if one holds on faithful through those difficult times, through the trial of ones faith - times when doubt may threaten, or when despair or fear seem to pursue - that they will be blessed with the "witness."  He wrote, "I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith."  Specifically, this was his own editorial comment on the Jaredites that would not believe the prophecies of Ether because they could not see them. He continues, with the example of the Nephites faith that brought them a visit from their Savior. He writes, "Wherefore, ye may also have hope, and be partakers of the gift, if ye will but have faith...for if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them."  What is the witness?  And how then do we exercise faith?
The last one first. Joseph Smith taught that "faith is the principle of action in all intelligent beings." (Lectures on Faith:1)  Faith is a cause of action then. James taught, "Faith without works is dead being alone."  Elder Richard G. Scott taught, "Every time you act in faith, that is, act in worthiness on an impression, you will receive the confirming evidence of the Spirit." (GC Apr. 2003)
Moroni had difficulties, but he also had a responsibility - a direction that he had been given by God - to finish the record and hide it up unto the Lord.  He performed his responsibility marvelously and among the last words he wrote included the witness he has received that "I soon go to rest in the paradise of my God."
Perhaps exercising faith has more to do with how well we serve the Lord in the midst of our difficulties then how well we can grit our teeth and be stoic.  Certainly there are times when we must be still and know that He is God. There are also times (maybe more than not) that require us to believe and go forward doing the will of God with the attitude of Daniel's friends who after testifying of the power of God to deliver them from death, reply to the angry king, "But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up."  Their unrelenting firmness to act in in faith and worthiness on direction given from God eventually leads the king to exclaim (after the furnace) "there is no other God that can deliver after this sort." (Daniel 3:29).
A little over seven years ago I found a little piece of a wall in Phoenix Children's Hospital where people could attach messages of hope and inspiration on little slips of paper.  Feeling immense gratitude for the miracle that was the birth of my Christi I wrote those simple words from Daniel 3:29, "there is no other God that can deliver after this sort."  We had been delivered too.  Delivered from fear and doubt as often as they had come, and delivered from the expectations of the medical experts who had delivered woeful prognoses.
Time and time again over the last seven years we were delivered again and again, and to me it became maybe a little bit too common.  That is until this Tuesday.
So tonight, after so much good and positive news about Christi's improving situation, she had a setback. The sedative they were about to wean her off of, instead of cutting the dose, the doctors 5x'd it.  The seizures had returned.  So to suppress the electrical storm within the brain they were going to take her back down to the depths of her medically induced coma. No she hadn't awakened, but moving that direction had brought the seizures back.  The news was almost paralyzing.
But if to exercise faith is to act, then it can't be. There is STILL no other God that can deliver after this sort.  His plan is STILL perfect, and doing His will and accepting His plan is STILL the choice that will bring the most peace and happiness to anyone and everyone.  Maybe there is a double message in the phrase "Be 'still' and know that I am God."  I will be still, by seeking still, by serving still, still standing for truth, and still seeking to act on what He directs me to do.
The witness will come.