Thank You!

I want to say Thank You to all of you that have helped us in some way or another.  I have had people offer to watch the girls so Mike and I can get out of the house for a while, I have had people want to help and send us a little something in the mail, I have someone making us dinner and bringing it to us tonight.  The response from everyone has been overwhelming and truly amazing.  The purpose of the blog was not to have people send us money or have you do things for us.  It was originally meant for me to have a healthy outlet and to make others aware of Craniosynostosis and to help other families facing the same difficulties.  It has turned into something that has had a huge impact on my life. 

Through all of this I started questioning my faith and decided I may not even know the definition of faith.  How could I have faith in something if I didn't know what faith was?  Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, concept or thing, according to Wikipedia.  I am supposed to have faith in God so I am supposed to have trust in him.  This all makes sense and I can handle that.  However, all this stems from the bible.  How do we know that the bible is 100% correct and true?  It was written by his followers and people that experienced him.  But this is all just hear say continually being passed down.  I don't know, maybe I am reading to much into it and making this harder than it needs to be.  Or is this where my faith comes into play and I need to trust in it that it is true. 

I was on my way home from work the other day and my mind wonders frequently, I began thinking about all the things that were happening in my life.  It was so weird but at that very moment and I can even remember where I was when this happened I knew what I was supposed to do.  People say that God has spoken to them and I always thought that those people are crazy but, I think he spoke to me too!  I didn't hear a loud voice from up above I just started putting everything together.  I was supposed to talk about our situation with other people.  I am supposed to educate other people on Craniosynostosis because too many times it gets confused and diagnosed as Positional Plagiocephaly, flattened head.  By the time the correct diagnosis is made it can have caused damaged or require more than one surgery.  I am supposed to talk to people and let them know that it is OK to ask for help and receive help from others.  Once our situation is resolved then I am to take what I have learned through all of this and pay it forward.  I am to help others by setting up benefits or fundraisers, donating my time or anything else I can do to help along the way. 

I have found myself during our journey.  I know that I am a strong woman that will fight to the end.  I have learned to let others help me when I need it most.  I have also realized that I didn't lose faith or not know what faith was or what it meant, I just forgot where I put it.  Now that I have found it again I know that I have been truly blessed by God.  He has chosen my family to go through this so we can do the things listed above.  Mike has told me that your parents don't take you to church to learn the bible, they take you there to plant the seed so you know where to turn when the time arises.  I have faith in God and I know he will see us through this.

Now that we have Livie's surgery scheduled for 03.16.11, I can relax a little bit between now and then.  That was my plan anyway.  I looked at the calendar today and cannot believe that it is already 01.21.11.  Where has this month gone?  I can't help but worry now.  In two months Livie will have had her surgery and we will probably be on our way home.  Since this is a major surgery her recovery period will be 4-6 weeks.  I plan on being off with her for the first 3 weeks and then after that my sister, Brooke will come up and stay with her for the next week maybe 2 if needed.  The time I take off will be unpaid.  I am a little nervous about not having an income during those weeks but believe we can survive anything at this point!

Mike recently accepted a position with Applebee's.  We are so thankful that he has found a job in this economy.  Thank you for all the prayers and support!  Keep them coming, God is listening!  It is not the pay that we were hoping for but, it is something.  I am so happy that he has found this job, I do believe that being a stay at home dad was starting to wear on his nerves a little.  He was nervous about starting back to work, I am sure that he will miss the girls and starting a new job is always a little nerve wracking.

Before you start reading the next paragraph I want to again say how thankful I am that my husband has a job and how thankful I am that it is with a company that cares about their employees.  There just continues to be this list of concerns that I have even after he has gotten this job.  I am sure that a lot of people would be in the same situation that we are in currently if the bread winner of the family was no longer employed.  We had our budget set according to what we were making at the time.  We didn't think about or I didn't think about, what would happen if Mike lost his job.  That just wouldn't happen to us.  Now our budget and bills are set for the other income that we lost, not for the income that we will have.  How do we fix this?  How do we fix our budget when we are still in the red?  Do you still continue to pick and chose what bills to pay?  When do you get ahead or is it just a continuous cycle and you don't? 

We are doing what we can to save on things that we can control.  We are able to manipulate our schedules so that the girls will only go to daycare for 2 days a week which is, $210/week.  That saves us a considerable amount of money because if they had to go the full week it would cost us $430/week. We try not to spend additional money on groceries other than what we receive with WIC and Food stamps.  It is just really hard to grasp everything that is going on and put all these things into perspective.