Reshaping Our Vessel of Clay

How do eight weeks pass, summertime be well into July heat, and we can hardly remember our way home? Sometime today, God willing, we will leave the hospital and not have to be readmitted for a long time! Clay's gastrostomy mickey is now replaced with a Gastrostomy/Jejeunostomy tube.....a lot more obvious and larger than the simple mickey, but if jejeunostomy feeds keep us home, by golly we will happily accommodate larger tubing and learning a new method of feeding him after 24 years!!! His stomach no longer empties as it should because of bands of tissue and anatomy constricting the area that opens into the intestine and also keeps food from back flowing to the stomach......(it's all complicated and at 50, my brain is much foggier than when I was 26, so I'll just say complicated; it all makes sense, just no need to go into grand detail for now).....so the J tube will allow feeds to be absorbed by avoiding the stomach. We will use the G tube port for medication dispersal and water flushes, but for the enteral Nutren 2.0, we now will use a feeding pump and slow feed the majority of the day through the J tube. Overwhelming? YES! Adjusting ~ adapting? YES! Clay has had a gastrostomy since he was a year old....bolus feeds; now to convert back to a jejeunostomy and a feeding pump is a work in progress, but feasible. If this measure keeps him healthy and at home, we definitely will learn and adjust accordingly. It has been a very long eight weeks with only 14 nights cumulative with him at home between readmits. Prayerfully the docs from Internal Medicine have finally pinpointed why we kept needing to return with feeding issues. Thank God, they feel this has been the reason.....all he has been through has been difficult and exhausting. But Clay is still with us and we hope this new feeding regimen will be finishing glaze on his now reformed vessel. There is much more I can explain and possibly post, but for now a smaller post to update our status. Please keep Clay in your prayers. We appreciate all of them as we anticipate going home at some point today and very prayerfully, our lives will begin to get back to normal with some modifications and rest. We are blessed to still have Clay here with us......so many amazing miracles and extreme blessings during this eight week ordeal. I cannot fathom how Mary endured Jesus suffering; I experienced much conflict with emotions in my prayers and groans that words could not express as we watched Clay suffering horribly and painfully as he has. His journey here is not finished yet; he says his angels have been with him and he is to stay here with us. I don't know for how long, but I will treasure my jar of Clay for as long as God ordains our purposes here on Earth. He is sovereign and He deserves much praise for all He has provided. Love remains never ending. To all those reading this post I wish you much love, many hugs, and abundant blessings, Annette

please pray for Clay

Health crisis with Clay since the 17 of May........unresolved as yet and hospitalized. Also my Daddy has been just placed on Hospice Care...........Please keep us all in prayer requests. Thank you all. Love & hugs.........

Finding Strength in Weakness

How is it that other people around us see us at our strongest when we feel most vulnerable and weak? Quite suddenly I feel weak in my knees. The last two plus weeks have been so filled with fatigue. So filled with emotions…. controlled, some not so controlled. I’ve done well until a call from my mother has made me feel extremely vulnerable to her circumstance, Daddy’s circumstance, our own circumstance, other’s circumstance. Life can be harsh so suddenly. Sometimes it hangs by a thread. Sometimes the thread can thicken into a stronger more viable life line. Sometimes the thread completely severs. It is totally unpredictable. It is filled with bittersweet timing. It often is filled with unexpected joys and blessings. Just like the saying when a door closes God opens a window. I suppose I’m learning these last couple of weeks more than ever before that when a sorrow occurs, an unexpected act of kindness, compassion, love and joy comes along to sit with us. I will understand these things as God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s unconditional love. Clay gave Patricia and I some hints today of his experiences of late. He wanted us to acknowledge Michelle’s photo over his bed…….his way of expressing angels with him. We asked him did he remember angels around him and he reassuringly said yes. We asked him if he was scared and he said no……well a little, but the angels kept him safe. He says they told him to stay with his family. Patricia welled up with tears several times today. She lost her favorite sister in law, Vern’s favorite sister to a heart attack a week ago. Clay was her comfort today. She gently and lovingly gave him a thorough bath, slowly cleansing the tape residue from all over his bruised, thinning frame. She coated him with warm, tender hands with body lotion. Brushed his teeth. Combed his long, wavy hair. Dressed him in a new birthday shirt she had brought for his birthday gift…….”I knew this shirt would look great on you Clay! When I saw it, I thought of you.” I’m not sure who poured more love today, Clay or Patricia. Both were the exact ministry the other one so needed. So much love. So much compassion. So much total dedication. There will be more things to put words to with upcoming weeks. I’m not sure what will evolve in the meanwhile. How sweet the confidence so many friends and family members hold in me to be the strong one, the comforter, the nurturer. How overwhelming the sensation of realizing such. I do not know the plans in these things. I can only and have only been following the voice of spirit that lives deep in the chambers of my heart. I love. Two simple words. I love. I need to add a third………deeply. I love deeply. I realize more and more that in return, I am loved deeply. It sweeps over me the grace of it all. It sweeps over me that God has entrusted me with much. It sweeps over me that He also now requires of me much. Not sure what it all involves, but I’ll certainly hope that I can continue to find strength and peace of spirit and heart to follow the whispers. I’ll pray that He fill me with a gentle, kind, compassionate sense of purpose and direction. I’ll ask for His sufficiency to get me from point A to point B. I’ll ask for courage. I’ll ask for strength in weakness. I will sometimes fall, sometimes fail. But I will also stand tall and strong and succeed along the way. For that I am grateful and I deeply realize the love I feel and give away to those who share the path with me. I am grateful. I am blessed. I am deeply loved.