Thanksgiving week turned out to be a great one! The holiday messed with our therapy schedules a bit but we were able to cram lots of activity into one week off with daddy.

Mom took some of the youth group on a hike this week. We climbed straight up a mountain…one of Jake and I’s favorite hikes when we were in college. The view is breathtaking, especially in the fall so I snapped a few pictures to share with you. This is about ten minutes from our house. We love this place!

Malachi had his best session of horse therapy yet! He was shouting “walk” to the horse right on cue and even said the instructors name with perfect clarity (“Tara”). These Monday afternoon sessions are hands down his favorite. I am so proud of how far he has come. Tomorrow we are planning to have him ride solo again with the pillow attachment to make him work a little harder. These last few sessions he has been riding tandem with the instructor.

I think Malachi may be going through a growth spurt! He is all legs these days and so incredibly long. I snapped a picture of him today at lunch to give you some perspective. He was sitting with his buddy Sam!

Malachi’s seizures seem to have changed a tiny bit lately, so we are watching them closely. His seizures used to end with slight laughter and now are ending with an angry yell and sometimes tearful cry. They are definitely starting to scare him, which is difficult to watch. He has also started zoning out a bit before the onset which is also a new thing. We are scheduled for an overnight EEG December 5th but I am waiting to hear back from the neurologist to make sure this test is absolutely necessary. It will confine us to a small area of a hospital room for 24 hours and they will glue electrodes to his scalp. Getting them off can be a painful process, so I want to be absolutely certain that the test is necessary before putting him through that again. The Vanderbilt overnight EEG wasn’t too long ago, so I am hoping we can use that data instead.

With the chaos of our upcoming house closing/move we have not been as ambitious about feeding Malachi from a spoon. He has been getting small tastes of things here and there but nothing substantial. Having Jake off work this week was definitely a blessing, but our time quickly vanished with chores and other various things. Jake was able to spend two of the days at a local children’s home doing repairs with a crew from our church. The rest of the time we have been boxing up our things and making plans!

Here are some silly videos from the week:

Our original plans have changed ever so slightly requiring us to find a place to rent during the construction process. Even though I try my best to give anxiety to God, it definitely got the best of me this week and I found myself tossing at night trying to mentally sort out the next several months. Jake and I were driving down the road talking about possible solutions and I realized how ridiculous it was for me to waste time and precious sleep stressing over something that God already had figured out.

Within 24 hours we had worked out a plan with a local family who is also building a home for their special needs daughter. They are planning to move into the new house by New Years, which will be just a few weeks away from when we will be closing. They are going to let us store our things in their basement and rent their old house after they move out of it. It is about 2 miles from the church and Jake’s school and will allow us to remain in our community. God is a provider, that is for certain! Here is a picture of the house we will be renting.

My to-do list is growing more and more each day as we try to process the dramatic change our lives are about to take. Even the idea of changing the address on our medical paperwork for all of his specialists has me stressed out. I have to keep reminding myself that the end goal of a Malachi friendly home will make it worthwhile.

We took a day trip to Georgia this Thanksgiving to visit with my brother and his family. It was refreshing to spend time with them! Jake and I got to have some great, focused conversations on the ride there and back- those don’t get to happen too often in our crazy world. It was a fun day.

Funny story of the day: Malachi has been a terrible sleeper this week and I have been running on fumes. This morning was no exception and as I scrambled to get myself ready for church, Jake offered to get Malachi ready. He forgot just one thing…let’s see if you can figure it out haha…

In my Bible study tonight we talked about the character of Ruth in the Bible. We discussed how broken she must have felt losing a husband, abandoning her culture and upbringing, and living as a poverty stricken girl in a strange land. The thing that strikes me most about her character was her humility.

1 Peter 3:4 says “Rather, it (your beauty) should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”

As I read this verse I evaluated my own spirit to see how “gentle and quiet” it truly was. And to be honest, sometimes my spirit is more like a freight train in a tunnel! But the end of the verse reminded me that humility is of great worth in God’s sight.

Time and time again we have watched God close doors in our lives, only to see Him later open an even better one with a greater blessing. You think that witnesses that time and time again would have developed a gentle and quiet spirit within me that trusts God without hesitation! But the human-ness of me always tends to trump that quiet nature and I create turmoil stressing about the doors that have been closed, forgetting about the ones we have yet to encounter.

One of the neat things about being a child of God is that it is not something to be “mastered”. We all make mistakes and we all have moments of weaknesses. But we carry a hope that can’t be replaced with worldly things. So this week I will be asking God to help develop in me that gentle and quiet spirit that is so valuable in God’s sight.

May your week be full of blessings!

Jake, Leah, and Malachi