We all have them…those things on our to-do list that we really truly don’t want to get to. Week after week they get pushed further down on the list as you try to wish them away. I accumulate several of those “things” on my list and this week I decided to try to tackle a few of them.

I spent hours this week on the phone with medical supply companies, insurance, doctors, and pharmacies trying to shorten that list. It truly is a mind game trying to deal with many of these companies and the psychological effects of hours of hold music is pretty intense. But each time you get to put that sharpie maker line through the list it brings such a rewarding adrenaline rush.

Yep, I am officially a weirdo medical mama haha!

The boys have had a great week. We tackled a myriad of appointments as well as some added on social activities. My mother had a birthday this week so we celebrated with my brother (who lives locally) on Friday night. He has several dogs and Malachi’s face lighting up with those pups made me realize how much he misses his dogs.

For new readers to the blog, Jake and I had two lovable dogs when Malachi was born. Right before we moved out of our cabin in 2016 we lost one of the dogs to a heart attack. Our other dog went to Ohio to stay with my in-laws while we were living in the Ronald McDonald House in Cincinnati. Sadly, we never go to see him again as he too passed away a few months ago. We really wanted to bring him back to Tennessee but couldn’t justify it at the time with Levi being hooked to so many wires that were susceptible to being pulled out/off of him.

Malachi loves animals but he really loved his dogs. This weekend planted the seed in my head of getting him another dog in the near future, and possibly even looking into a service dog that could help is detect his seizures particularly at night. I don’t think we are ready for that quite yet but maybe in the future.

Malachi’s quality of life is priority number one for our family and by golly if that means we get that boy a dog then I want to be able to do that for him.

I had the opportunity to speak to a speech/pathology class at a local college on Tuesday afternoon and share the boys testimonies and medical histories. I love opportunities like these as I hope I can share a parental side of the world they are about to enter that textbooks may not provide. They asked a lot of great questions about the boys.

Levi got some new shoes this week. Can you spot the irony…

Malachi has a big exciting event coming up! Our small town has decided to set up a giant Christmas tree by the courthouse and they have asked Malachi to be their “grand marshal” and be the one who lights the Christmas tree. I told Malachi about it and he went wild with excitement that they were going to clap and cheer for him. He loves attention and I can’t wait to let him spend a minute in the spotlight. Levi takes so much of our focus and I often feel like Malachi gets overlooked. It is special that this gets to be just for him to do.

Levi has been a complete train wreck in my office during the week. If he isn’t climbing on the walls he is finding things to dump out all over the floor. It is a mix of exasperating and exciting that we have such typical behaviors in our son. When you have a child that can’t get his body to cooperate with his brain it really changes your perspective when another child does those things.

Here is a video of the mess he made when I stepped out to the bathroom for a minute:

The boys got some early Christmas presents from their grandparents, Malachi getting some new Disney movies to watch and Levi getting some really neat g-tube friendly clothes from a new adaptive line at Target. I took a photo to show you how the clothes work. So cool!

Levi is still very eager to include Malachi in his games and imagination, this week making sure they both could sing karaoke together.

If their sweet relationship doesn’t bring a smile to your face then you are a robot haha.

Jake and I are still having the youth group come over to the house on Sunday evenings, hence the later than normal blogs! The group is continuing to grow and we are up to between 35-40 teens at the house each week. We feed them all dinner so I usually start cooking around 2:00 for their 6:30 arrival and the last one leaves between 10:30-11:00. Our Sunday evenings have become a marathon but both Jake and I feel so strongly that this is what God wants us to be doing right now.

Logistically getting all those teens in our modest house has been a challenge. We successfully tracked down enough seating and space for 30 but as the group grows we have to be more creative so I started looking for a better kitchen table.

Back when we sold our cabin and started the building process we shopped for a new dining room table. Everything we choose to get for the house has to fit our situation perfectly. We took Malachi in his wheelchair and tried him at many different tables, trying to find the best fit for his chair. We found the perfect table that has cafeteria style benches that swing out leaving room for his chair to slide in, but it was $800. I couldn’t justify spending that much on a piece of furniture that would likely take a wheelchair beating and have the scars to prove it.

Fast forward to this week. As I started my search for a table to help increase seating for our youth nights I found the exact table we fell in love with years before. The man selling it had purchased it six months ago and was selling it for nearly a third of the purchase price and was willing to deliver.

I know it sounds like a stretch but it is in moments like these where I am reminded that my God is a God of details. We tried out the table this week with the group and it made such a difference! And Malachi loves it too so it is a win-win.

On Sunday nights I have been studying the book of James with the girls. Tonight we went through James 4 which has a very familiar verse inside of it:

¹³ Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

I explained to them that at some point in their lives this verse is going to come to life for them. It will grow legs and take on a brand new meaning. There will be a day that they wake up with their plans made but something will go terribly wrong and all of those plans will be meaningless as you struggle to grasp what just happened.

Some of you are probably nodding right now as you reflect on a day your world got turned upside-down.

Obviously for me there are several of these gut wrenching moments…truthfully too many to count. But the biggest ones being the nights that each of my boys were born. Each day started out with a plan in place that had nothing to do with birthing a child. And each day ended with a fresh c-section scar and a baby in a NICU.

There are so many variables in this world that we can’t control. But we like to ignore that fact and assume that we can dictate our path and steer the will of God in the direction that we want.

We spend too much time making plans and trying to make them happen; in reality, we need to be spending more time finding contentment in the will that God has for our lives.

When we read those verses we automatically assume that the command to stop worrying is for our own mental health. But this request from God for our unconditional blind faith is meant to concrete our relationship with Him. He is asking us to let go of our plans and hold His hand while we allow Him to lead us.

There is so much freedom to not worrying about tomorrow.

I say all that, and I bet you $100 I will worry about tomorrow in the next hour as I lay my head on the pillow. It’s an addicting habit that is hard to shake. But God doesn’t expect perfection, He simply wants our heartfelt and persistent effort.

Please be in prayer for Jake and I this week as we combat worry. We have been having a lot of conversations about upcoming tests and procedures for the boys in December and those conversations breed worry. Pray with us that we find contentment in the will of God.

Much love,

Leah