Think on Such Things

Oh my sweet girls. As I sit here in downtown Gilbert, taking in the sounds around me, enjoying the sweetness of time to just think, I can’t help but think of you right now. For so long I have wanted to write you a letter to tell you more about our life. To explain to you more about why mommy cries so much. Maybe someday, you will read this and understand better what I am not sure you may not understand right now, at age 8, 4 and 14 months. You girls, are my heroes! Our life as a family, it has not been easy and you are the first ones to see and experience that. However, because this is all you have known, I wonder how much you see the struggle. I wonder if your free spirits and flexibility are a result of not having to   mourn some of the luxuries that you have not been able to experience. Some of the things and experiences that I wish I could give you but can’t at this time because of how difficult Moses' health makes our day to day. Experiences like going to a restaurant ...

Here we are again. Writing an update of the medical happenings in the Stone home. You know, someday we hope that we won’t have to write these updates. Someday maybe this blog will be filled with posts of redone furniture or fun new recipes, maybe lessons we are teaching the kids. Not today my friends. Not today. Today we invite you into our new journey with Moses. For the past month, we have been in survival mode, just trying to make it to bedtime. Why? You ask. What is going on? A month ago, something very strange started happening with Moses and it lasted for eight days! Moses stopped eating and stopped using the bathroom. At first, we didn’t really know what to think of this. My first reaction as an ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) momma was, this might be a sensory issue or a behavior. But, I quickly dismissed that thought and chose to believe my sane momma instinct. Something was wrong, very wrong. We would try to give him anything to eat, all his favorites and he woul...

The month of January, 2016…aka the month of challenge, or maybe we should call it the month of change. So much has happened to our family this month that we are living in survival mode. You know, I really wish that I was more consistent at blogging. I wish that every time I updated this wasn’t because we were in some sort of crisis. But, I’m not going to cry too much over that failure. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Back to the reason for this post. On December 31 st at 10:40pm, we had the privilege of having Ivory Rose Stone join our family. What a joy it has been to have a little teenie, tiny baby around again. It is so much fun seeing new sides come out of each of us. Hannah is even more of a mom than I could have imagined. I am so proud of her instinct and compassion. She is going to be a fantastic mom one day! I was a little nervous about Izzie. She is my little snuggle bug, so the whole jealous factor was a big concern. She has definitel...

With great struggle comes great victory. If you sow sparingly you will also reap sparingly.   For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.”  I hate the struggle of autism. Now don’t get me wrong and let me be VERY clear. I do not hate my son! I would die for him. Moses is not autism. He is a happy, empathetic, loving, passionate kid. He is not autism. That is not his identity. He has autism. There is a big difference in the way that we say it. I never say that my son is autistic because that is not who he is....

  --> So, this is my fourth go around at trying to write down what has happened to me today. No matter how I write, I can’t seem to find the words to describe my awe and wonder. I can’t seem to adequately explain how I feel about what God did for me today. I’ll try though, because I want to praise Him with my lips, or my fingers.  Today, I went to the doctor to have a follow-up on the nodules that have developed on my thyroid over the past several months. About six weeks ago, I went through a pretty scary time of thinking my heart was literally going to fail because my thyroid was so out of wack. Doctors were confounded. Tests were coming back strange and what I was left with was, “Let’s just wait and see how this goes for the next several weeks.” That’s always what you want to hear when you think that you may be dying right? WRONG! I walked away from all those appointments six weeks ago with a diagnosis of Hashimotos Thyroditis and possibly cancer. The...

I’m laying here right now, totally and completely depleted, wasted, exhausted. "What from?" you ask. My family has been put through the gauntlet with a stomach bug that has earned us one urgent care visit, two emergency rooms, and one hospital stay, all in the span of a week. And now, I lay here out of necessity because it is my turn to do battle with the norovirus. Being sick, stinks. Especially being stomach sick because it is so contagious and leaves you feeling so dirty. So, naturally I take a shower to wash off all the virus junk, try to keep this monster at bay. While I’m no longer the child who enjoys being sick because that means she gets to stay home and just watch tv all day, being sick does have one advantage. It forces me to slow down. Everything around begins to slow down and it’s no longer my fulltime job to take care of the family, I have to take care of myself too. Laying in bed has afforded some good time to just read. Not endless amounts of facebook po...

Sleep. I love, love sleep! Anyone who has known me for an extended amount of time will tell you that I sleep a lot. I pulled one all-nighter in college. Not because I was so ahead of the game but because I was willing to take a lower grade to get more hours of sleep. Sleep for me pushes the restart button. It makes my day new, even if it means taking a nap in the middle of the day. That's how I felt today, in need of a restart button. I took a nap this afternoon and I woke up feeling like this morning was a distant memory. It made it feel like God was pushing the restart button on my life. The results today were better than what I could have hoped for and God used taking a nap to wipe away all the anxiety from the days before. This morning we went to the hospital to get the results. We were pretty sure that it wasn't going to be good since the scan the day before didn't go well at all! What we were told to hope for is functioning thyroid nodules, or "hot" n...