Healing and Love

If you've noticed the lack of blog posts this summer, thank you for noticing and stopping by here again. This summer has been kind of tough.  I had all sorts of fun ideas of activities to do with the kids and camping trips with the family but instead…. I had spinal surgery. I’m glad to be on the "other side" of it.  Recovery has been more difficult than I expected but I’m definitely making progress, just very slowly.  And I admit I'm not a very patient person!

For someone who is pretty antsy, it has been frustrating not being able to do what I want to do. Also being a mom, I usually take care of others so it’s been humbling to need so much help with even the most basic tasks.  Through this healing process I have learned a lot though and I’ve become more than aware of the many blessings in my life.  Beyond having health insurance and living in a country with excellent health care, I’ve been touched by these ten blessings (not in order of importance as these were all much appreciated and important):
 

1. Delicious meals - brought by family and friends to keep our family well-fed and nourished.  Just seeing so many names on the meal calendar made me feel so supported and loved.
2. Compassion - shown by the kids and my husband throughout my recovery as well as in the many months leading up to my surgery while I have been dealing with chronic pain.
3. Child care - from people who love our kids and didn’t just watch them but gave them a fun outing to look forward to
4. Lessons in patience - will I ever learn?  
5. Doctors and nurses - so thankful for their skill  and taking such great care of me. Extra big thanks to Patty at Providence for making me laugh while waiting for my surgery.
6. Encouragement - from neighbors in response to my physical therapy, limping to the corner of the street and back.
7. More snuggle time - apparently when you park a bed in the middle of the living room and don’t move around all day, you invite lots of snuggles from the kids!
8. Time to heal - while healing has taken more time than I would have liked it to, I have been so thankful for the time to heal.
9. Time for reflection - what can I do differently in my life? what do I look forward to doing after I recover? 
10. Skype - with my family being so far away, it was wonderful to give them regular updates via webcam on how I was doing without astronomical phone expenses.  

This probably doesn’t even cover it all but I wanted to write this post as a thank you to all of you who have helped me. Whether you brought a meal, took care of our kids, cheered me up, took time to chat with me or listened to my stories about my health which must have been boring after a while…. thank you very much!  

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