Deep Thoughts on the Last Two Months.

I had planned to dedicate the next few posts to Thanksgiving, Christmas and my pretty girls all dressed up and a FANTASTIC picture of what the Aftermath of A 21st Century American Christmas Looks Like (I bought and wrapped each gift and even I was shocked), but it has been weighing on my heart to write about what I feel I have learned as I and my family have journeyed through the last few months.

I can only take that to mean that someone, somewhere needs to hear what I have to say and God wants to use me to make that happen.

And I say that because clearly that is exactly what happened to me.

I was praying and praying and praying that my dad's cancer would be fixed, that I could fix it (Oh, you didn't know that I can cure cancer? Sure I can, if I just pray hard enough and will it to happen.  Yeah. Right.), that I could battle it out for him and I, that somehow my first-born sense of responsibility and love combined with truly incredible human hubris could somehow impact this terrible arc we were on. And I was struggling, struggling and struggling some more with God, seeking Him, looking for guidance, for peace, for a sense of purpose in this journey.

I got to a point where I didn't even know what to pray for anymore.  Do I ask for God's will to be done? What if God's will is that he dies on the operating table? Am I complicit in his leaving us if I have prayed that prayer? But what if I am more pointed in what I ask for? What if I say, God, I want you to heal him and make him all better, and that's not what God has in store?  Am I am "bad" Christian?  Could I deal with the disappointment of God not giving me what I asked for?  I know what I am SUPPOSED to pray- Thy will be done- but I wasn't sure that God's will was what I wanted, and I was so balled up and trying to be in control of a completely out of control situation that was so clearly above my head, I was just like a fish out of water, flopping around and gasping for air. 

Help me.

So I went to church, I went to Bible Study on Sunday mornings, I went to my regular Bible Study on Wednesdays and looked for relief.  The other women in my Bible Study are wonderful, kind, compassionate and empathetic women who have walked this entire journey with me.  After class in the week before my parents left for MA, the leader (who is a towering Christian woman in every sense) took me aside, looked directly at me, and said these profound words to me: "Cheryl, you cannot fix this. You have to just throw it all at Jesus' feet and tell Him you are FURIOUS at Him for letting this happen. Because He already knows." And she gave me a huge hug.

That was the shift for me.  That was the moment when I was able to stop asking for God to help me to fix it and I really put it all on Him.  I prayed to Him and told Him, Well, God, I am furious at you.  I want you to make this better for my dad.  And you are the only one who can do it. I tried and I couldn't, so I am throwing it all on you.  Fix him, Lord, and help him get better.  And I prayed it with such a horrible smart-alecky attitude that I'm pretty sure I heard God roll His eyes at me and smile at my barely-veiled anger.

I kept praying that prayer, each time with less anger and more softness and supplication, and do you know what happened? The anger ebbed.  The peace began to fill my heart.  The pressure I had placed on myself to fix an unfixable situation subsided.  I felt God around me.  And around my family.

Even when my girls cried to me, usually at bedtime, and told me how worried they were about this monster of a surgery we were facing, I was equipped to tell them the exact same thing.  I told them to pray to God that He be with us and PopPop.  I told them to throw it at Jesus's feet and let Him take care of it.  I told them to ask for peace and to soothe their hearts.

Help me.

That was all God wanted to hear from me.  Those two simple words that I was too stubborn, too proud, too angry, too scared and too hurt to say.  And once I said them, all that fell away and I was back in God's arms, being comforted and held.

Seeing this situation now with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I am amazed at how God has carved a path for my father to get well.  He sent us to this amazing doctor, He blessed her hands during the surgery, He has kept him free of complications so common to others who have gone on this journey before him. 

And after living through this crisis, this other-worldly experience of being plucked out of my comfortable, safe and stable everyday life and plunged into another, I can tell you, my parents, my family, my children, my friends, my Pastor, my church, and anyone who will listen to me that I am beyond certain of these two things:

God is with us. Immanuel.

And all He really wants, more than anything else, is for us to seek Him out and talk to Him and lean on Him. And ask for His help.

All the other stuff is just additional layers.  All the study, the praise, the worship, the liturgy, the Church, the history, the piousness, the conflict, and the structure- all of that can be stripped away and this truth remains: God is with us and He wants to be in a relationship with us. 

He wants to comfort us and love us.

I had an amazing dream about a week after I got home and started processing all that had happened.  In my dream, I was staring at a beautiful castle, and every so often, in a shimmering radiance, more layers of the castle would appear and then disappear.  I had the sense in the dream that this castle was something someone had told me about, but I had resisted, but here it was and I was seeing it with my own eyes.  It was the most beautiful castle I have ever seen.  Along came an older man, who looked like a kindly old professor, and he smiled at me and took my hand.  I had an overwhelming sense of warmth, love and safety with him that I can still feel.  He had been trying to convince me of something, and seeing the shimmering castle was the proof I needed to go with him. So I did and it felt wonderful. And then I woke up.

You can choose to think that having that dream was just my brain firing electrical currents while I slept.  You can choose to say it was random and our dreams don't mean anything anyway.  And that's fine. 

But I know what that dream was about and I know what God was telling me.

Immanuel.

Happy New Year!

(A few days late.)

I am not much of a resolution girl, but I do love me some goals, so I always like to set a few targets to reach for the New Year.  But first, I like to look back and see what was accomplished in the year previous.  This was made into a game we played at the dinner table on New Year's Eve where we made up the 2012 Libutti Family Year in Review Trivia Challenge and asked the kids to recall some big and some small things that happened over the year (Name the address of our vacation house on Cape Cod.  What National Park did we go to and see a reenactment of the Revolutionary War?).

So here are my biggest accomplishments of 2012:
1.  I was part of a miracle and saw God working through me as clearly as if He had been standing right next to me. 
2.  I worked really hard with Alec and his therapists to help him get better.  And he did.
3.  I lost about 20 pounds.
4.  I rode my bike again for the first time in three years.
5.  I went kayaking for the first time.
6.  Our family enjoyed a week long vacation to Cape Cod.
7.  We did a few really satisfying home improvement projects.
8.  I helped Michaela successfully transition to Middle School.
9.  I helped Alec successfully transition to preschool.
10.  I dedicated another year of my life to raising my children to be loving, kind, and well-adjusted human beings.

And here are some goals for 2013:
1. Lose another 20 pounds.
2. Finish at least THREE of the DOZENS of projects I have bought supplies for and have great desire to do but have not followed through on.
3.  Clean out our basement.
4.  Enjoy another Cape Cod vacation.
5.  Be the best mom I can be to my three greatest blessings: Michaela, Jenna and Alec.
6.  Pay more attention to my blog.
7.  Take more yoga classes.
8.  Reduce the amount of sugar coming into our house, being baked with in our house, and being consumed by every member of our household.
9.  Reorganize and redecorate our home office.
10. Hike at least one of the Adirondack High Peaks, and start our family on the road to hiking all 46.

Happy New Year, and here's to fresh starts!!

Coming Up for Air.

I apologize, dear blog and dear readers, for my utter lack of attention to you... December was a bit of a blur and things are finally, one by one, settling down into their correct places and now I can actually think and process. And breathe.  When I'm not coughing.

So here's the short version: we get the name of a surgeon for my dad, an appointment is scheduled, a surgery date is set, Christmas preparations go into overdrive, we celebrate Christmas in early December with my parents, they leave for MA, my brother flew in from Chicago, we drove out to MA, my dad had his surgery, Brian leaves, I leave, I come home to a husband who has just contracted the flu, Christmas baking ensues, wrapping is done at a breakneck pace, last minute gifts are bought, I develop a horrific chest cold and cough, Christmas Eve arrives, hair and makeup and clothes are styled, pictures are taken, hubby is still down for the count, Christmas Morning!!  SANTA comes! My cough gets worse, trips to see my parents are delayed, my dad is discharged from the hospital but can't leave MA yet, Dan and I lie on the couch and try not to breathe on each other, New Year's Eve finds us home asleep in our jammies, I sound like I am coughing up at least a few lungs, maybe more, Dan and I take naps to try to recoup, the kids go back to school, my dad has an awesome followup appointment with the surgeon and gets the green light to come home, I start to feel a smidgen better, and today my mom and dad returned home.

Phew.

Intermingled with all of that is lots of pretty pictures of my dolled up babies and lots of insights I gained about myself, prayer, community of believers, what God wants from us, and miracles.

Lots of posts to follow. 
Stay tuned.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Dear Michaela, Jenna, and Alec,

This is a special Christmas Eve edition written by Dad. 

Christmas Eve is a special day that we look forward to all year.  We enjoy spending time as a family, finishing last minute wrapping and baking, going to church, enjoying a family Christmas Eve party, and anticipating Santa's arrival.  One of my favorite times of Christmas Eve is right before you go to bed when I read The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore.  The book itself is very special to me as Mom gave it to me as a Christmas gift in 1995.   (This was the year before we were married.)  She wrote on the first page, "I give this gift to you in hopes that you will give it to our children.  We'll read it every year, it will become old and worn with us.  It is a classic: it is the magic of Christmas."  

Each year as I read it to you I think of how grateful I am to have three beautiful, healthy children who make us so proud and a wonderful wife.   I couldn't have imagined how wonderful my life could be and you are all a major part of that.  "Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!"  I love you!

Love,

Dad

Nostalgic Break in the Action.

Just for a moment, as I was driving with our three kids in the car to go to the mall and pick up the last of the Christmas Gifts To Be Bought and get some dress up shoes for the girls to wear on Christmas Eve, just for a moment I profoundly missed being a kid at Christmas.

I missed the feeling of excitement about the holiday. I missed the anticipation, the sense of time standing still when we were celebrating, and the feeling of fullness afterwards.

I miss my grandma.

I miss her rum balls and Russian tea cakes that she she made every year (but I never ate), the Swiss Colony petite fours that she bought every year and I also never ate- scorned them, actually, until the day I tried one and realized how good they were.  I miss the refrigerator cake she made every year. I miss all the traditions she and my mom kept alive year after year after year.  I miss her keeping us in line when Brian and I were totally sugared out and bouncing off the walls.

I miss the party we had every Christmas Eve at our house, the Christmas tree up on a card table to keep it out of my brother's curious reach, the glass cart we pushed around the living room with appetizers on it, the bookcase in the living room that held our stockings.  I miss opening our gifts on Christmas Eve because that's how they did it in Germany.  I miss seeing the pile of presents on the piano in the living room.

I miss getting a new dress for Christmas and feeling all dolled up.

I miss my parents.

They are two and a half hours away in a hospital in another state.  I miss having them 90 seconds away.

I miss the Christmas of my youth, when no one was sick, when everyone was alive, when I didn't have to plan the holiday, bake all the goodies myself, buy and wrap all the gifts and in general fret about making a wonderful holiday for my family.  Though I usually enjoy being Master of My Domain and Making all the Decisions, a little part of me misses the lack of responsibility.  I feel like I can close my eyes and be back in our old, old house and I am nine years old again, opening up a Laurie Walker doll who seemed larger than life with her navy and white pinafore dress and reddish hair.

I feel just like Clark Griswald does when he watches the old home movies in Christmas Vacation. 

I feel happy and sad and wistful and blessed, blessed, incredibly blessed that I have these memories I can pull up at a moment's notice.

Nostalgic.