Wild Things

We had a long day yesterday. I came off of a rather personal high on Sunday -- a beautiful worship service, with Don singing a fantastic version of "Precious Lord, Take my Hand" in his deep, classical-yet-soulful bass voice that I haven't heard in a long, long time. The sermon was part of a series about Joseph -- very fitting. In the afternoon we attended a party hosted by our intern and his wife, and we had a really great time hanging out with some church folks. As each week goes by, we are really starting to feel like we are truly home. It feels good -- and is tremendously healing -- to feel like we fit in.

Then comes Monday, and we certainly did not start off on the right foot. The kids woke up at the horrible hour of 6:00 a.m. (I believe they're waking up earlier and earlier) and I was far from pleased. I'm frustrated beyond belief that my mom has to wait for her treatments. Everything takes time -- scheduling appointments with doctors, getting her port put in, waiting to see someone else for a second opinion (the reason being the fact that her oncologist, who sees all kinds of strange tumors and cancers daily, has never seen this one before. Figures.) -- but with this new kind of cancer being so terribly aggressive, isn't waiting the last thing we should be doing? Isn't time something we cannot afford to waste? It's extremely frustrating to feel like your hands are tied, having to wait on others to fit your very life into their schedule. My mom found out yesterday that her chemo will start on August 13 -- a full month after her mastectomy. A month!

While my mind was churning with these thoughts, I hear Aidan in the living room, telling me that he's freezing and needed a blanket. As I put the blanket on his little body, I felt the heat of his skin before I even touched him -- he was burning up. Now where did that come from? Couple that with my daughter's current condition of diarrhea and nasty diaper rash -- our two-story house is turning into some kind of infirmary. Instantly all my plans for the day went out the window; we were going to be stuck indoors with a sick little boy. [Update: he woke up fine this morning, cranky but no fever. Strange. Wake up time was 6:30 a.m., though. Not fun.]

I needed a grace-snack yesterday, big time. It actually came in a very unexpected form: a cute little visitor in our yard -- a baby rabbit. All summer long we have seen an adult rabbit hopping about the yard, thankfully doing no damage other than leaving behind piles of droppings and driving our Beagle nuts, and now the offspring have made their appearance. It's quite a surprise -- my dad has lived in this house for almost 60 years and this is the first year he has seen a rabbit in the yard. Our neighborhood is a very old, crowded "suburb" so any kind of wildlife always looks a bit out of place. My dad had fertilized the grass and was out there watering it with the hose, accidentally spraying them out of their hiding place. I think I was just as excited as our kids to see these little creatures. We had lived in a rather rural area at our second church -- where Aidan was born and spent most of his little life -- so we saw wildlife on a daily basis. There are days when I miss that, so yesterday's visitors were a nice little treat. I then saw some movement in the sweet alyssum behind this little guy, and sure enough, there was a fuzzy sibling hunkered down between the plants and the wall. Later on my dad said he saw a third close by. The biggest treat of all came later on -- I was in the kids' room talking on the phone, casually looking out their window, when I saw movement in the peonies on the other side of our fence. Out hopped one of the babies, followed by Mama Rabbit, and they snuggled together for a few minutes by the garden. It's too bad I wasn't quick enough to grab my camera; talk about a precious moment.