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Tyler is making his First Holy Communion in May and on Sunday it was “Jesus Day” from 9:30 to 2:00 where the kids attend a mass and then do an activity. Parents, relatives and Godparents are supposed to share by letters their First Communion memories, but all of my relatives are back east and Tyler doesn’t even remember them or his Godparents. Jacques is Catholic but he doesn’t remember his first communion, and the only thing I remember about it was loving my pretty white dress and excited to finally taste the communion wafers!

I had a hard time getting Tyler to go to Jesus Day. There are many things about the church that scare him including the big Jesus on the cross over the altar and the pictures in the stained glass windows. I tried to tell him that Jesus loves him and would never hurt him. I’m kind of out of ideas to relieve his anxiousness about the church and am open to suggestions!

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One day a month Jacques and I eat a meal at our local Presbyterian church. We also eat a meal every Wednesday at the Methodist church to save us a little bit of money. I am always worried that we will never have enough. My SSDI/disability gets us by but we have little in the way of savings. At the Presbyterian church as I parked my car I saw a mother and her two children parking their bicycles. What did they do during the winter? Did they need to skip meals? I was struck by how grateful to God I was and how I take what I DO have for granted. I own my car and home and we never go hungry. I need to trust that when I need money I will have it.

Hope you all are as well as can be!

Emily

The post Getting a Break and Other Stuff first appeared on Mama Sick.

After feeling guilty for many years, I had made my peace with it.  It wasn’t like I was spending Saturday nights out on the town or heading to the beach on Sunday mornings.  I was just…resting.

And then came Tyler.

I knew I wanted to raise him in the church and I figured I was somehow going to HAVE to find the will to get him there.

He is now six.  And really needs to start CCD next year.

I think I am feeling well enough to try to take him to church, only now, no real surprise here, he doesn’t want to go.

Lately he has been expressing interest in religions.  How does Orthodox Judaism differ from other Judaic religions?  What is the difference between being a Christian and being a Catholic?  (Yep, I’ve got a budding genius on my hands.)

It seems like the perfect time to start going to Mass on a regular basis but when I talk about trying out a service after our Saturday activities or attending a Sunday school class to learn more about God and Jesus, Tyler says, “Maybe next week, Mommy.”

It would have been so much easier to have just taken him to Mass from when he was a baby, when he had no choice in the matter, but I just wasn’t feeling well enough at the time.

Lots of Chronically Ill and Catholic Mom guilt here.

As a child I remember being at Mass with a bunch of little children’s religious books which I would read to pass away the hour that I did not understand.  Music was always the best part of the Mass for me and I started singing in the Children’s Choir when I was ten.  I did Folk Group in junior high and also sung in the Adult Choir.

At some point I guess I am just going to have to drag Tyler to church, and soon.

I just hope I have the energy.

Photo Courtesy of Living-The-Mission (Wiki)

The post Tuesdays With Tyler: Losing My Religion first appeared on Mama Sick.

Prompt 3.  The first day of December is upon us!  Describe an Advent calendar or a special way you count down days until Christmas (past or present).  Inspired by (Classy Chaos)

For years, long before Tyler was born, I had a cute wooden fireplace with numbers that as each day you pulled one out, Santa would move closer to the chimney until on that last day before Christmas little Santa was in your fireplace.  But that’s 24 numbers to take care of and it was a Christmas miracle in itself that we held onto all those numbers as long we did, especially with both cats and a child to occasionally knock the fireplace over and to play around with those numbers.

This year I was determined to buy an Advent calendar a little closer to the true meaning of the season and then I saw this:

The Fisher-Price Imaginext Advent Calendar in which, according to Fisher-Price:  “Combines the excitement of Imaginext and the holidays with a fully assembled Advent calendar!”

I knew that Tyler would love it but I hesitated.  It was about as far away from the true meaning of the season as you could get.  I waited on it.

Already a typical man at five, Tyler likes to look at a magazine or catalog when he “does his business” in the bathroom.  One day he asked for a magazine and I handed him the Fisher-Price Holiday Catalog.  After spending a fair amount of time in the bathroom, Tyler came out and said, “Mommy, I want this for Christmas”, pointing to the Imaginext Advent Calendar.

My mind was made up.  I can’t wait until he comes home from school tonight and we show it to him.

Yes, I will have made my little boy very happy.  But I probably haven’t exactly scored many points with God and Jesus.

The post The Advent Calendar That Will Probably Doom Me to Hell first appeared on Mama Sick.

You have trouble getting to sleep because something I have read to you has scared you.  It amazes me what actually scares you and what I think should scare you.

You want to sleep with the lights on but I offer to hold your hand instead.  As we lay there in the dark holding hands I know our times like this are numbered, even though you are only five.

“Do you feel the circle of love that goes around between us when we hold hands?” I ask you.

“No, I don’t feel it.”

“It goes around and around like a mother’s love for her son, around and around like a circle and endless.  You won’t always want to hold my hand so every time you do like this, I treasure it.”

“No that’s not true, I always will want to hold your hand!”

“Okay, honey, you can always hold my hand.  You can stay with us as long as you like.  You can always be with us.”

“I won’t ever want to leave you, I want to live in this house forever.”

“Of course, you never have to leave us, you can live with us as long as you like.”

I say these words to you, knowing that some day it will not be true, so I treasure this time in your life when you think it will be.

I thank God and Jesus once again for giving me you, the most beautiful and best boy in the world and while I am thinking about it, whispering my prayer of thanks in the dark, you have fallen asleep peacefully besides me, still holding my hand.

Source: Metanorn.net

The post Holding My Son’s Hand first appeared on Mama Sick.

(You may want to stop reading here if you do not want to be shaken to your core and be made very upset.  Okay, you have been warned.) 

People always say that I have got to be more positive, more optimistic.  Well friends, I tell them that I am not pessimistic, I am REALISTIC.  These past few weeks I have come the closest I have ever felt to dying.  Two weeks ago I was having a fever every day, freezing, sweating, nauseous.  I had wounds that were not healing, that would bleed profusely by me absent-mindedly scratching a mosquito bite.  The pain was off the charts, the medicine for it, a joke.  Two weeks ago, when my fever was running and I could not get out of bed or barely speak, I swear I felt God next to me.  “Do you really want to die?  Well here is what it feels like.  Be careful what you wish for.  Death is not the peaceful, calm you think, at least getting there sure isn’t”.

I was crying.  I thought of Grant and Tyler and my cat.  I thought about the things I enjoy, just for ME, writing this blog, my voiceover work, my book club, Twitter, Google+, and then I realized…life is fun.  Not just with Tyler.  There are fun things in MY life.  There are still books to read and places to go and candles to be lit and beautiful but cheap things to have. Money is coming.  I WILL travel.  I will take Tyler to Disney World one day.  And then I said to God, “Stop!  Stop!  I don’t need to see this any more.  I don’t want to die.  I thought I did but I DON’T.  I want to live, not just for Tyler but for ME, God please let me live, I still have living to do!”

And then, it was either God the steroids or both, I got better.  Not better like I am trying out for the Olympic team but…my fever went away.  My mouth sores were gone.  My wounds healed.  I bought that “Imagination” candle I had been thinking about from the Disney Store and the Alice in Wonderland Vinylmation and my surprise “Buy one get one free” Vinylmation “Pete” from the Mickey Mouse Club House show.  And all three things are with me right now, bringing me joy.

Last Tuesday, I went to the hospital again.  I had horrific abdominal pain, with all of the symptoms of an appendicitis.  Unfortunately whenever I go to the hospital I am such a complex patient that they often do not want to treat me.  They gave me an ultrasound on my stomach and then up my…well let’s just say I could have had a career in pornography, I took it like a champ.  There was a lot of waiting, a lot of blood-letting and peeing in cups.

Throughout this my feet were swelling, like they have never swelled before.  They were purple and red, as if I had not been walking on them, as if they were starting to clot.  They looked like….like the way my father’s looked as he lay dying.  Like the feet of death.  The only feet I had seen looked like that were my father’s.  All discolored, painful.  I kept asking if they would examine my feet, if they would treat my pain, but they didn’t want to do much until they figured out what was wrong with me.  Alone, in a private emergency room, I started to pray, I started to beg and cry.  “Dear God, Jesus and Daddy.  I have a little boy that I have to make it for.  You can take me, but please, not now, not until he is a teenager and he no longer needs his Mommy.  That’s all I want!”  People on Face Book were praying for me, people on Twitter and Google+ were praying and I thank them very much.

And suddenly, I was getting better.  My feet cleared up.  My diagnosis was spastic colon or a possible flare-up of my Ulcerative Colitis.  That was a lot better than, “You need surgery on your BLANK or your BLANK.”  They had been almost positive I was going to be needing surgery of some kind!

And then I was discharged.  And Grant and Tyler came to the hospital to take me home.

So, where was I going with this, what the Hell does this have to do with BlogHer’12?  Well, the truth is I am being REALISTIC when I say I may not be there…or here.  How lucky can I get?  When God wants me, he wants me, I can only continue to pray that I live to finish out being Tyler’s “Mommy”.

Really, where will ANY of us be in 2012 anyway?  Any one of us could get into a car accident tomorrow.  Our plane might crash, we could get breast cancer.

Yes, any one of us.  But for people like me, with Lupus and other serious, worsening chronic conditions, we REALLY have to ask ourselves, where will I BE?  Will I even be here to make it to an event that for three years now has been so unobtainable?  When I have the money for next year’s BlogHer…will I really…be here?

The post BlogHer Conference 2012: Looking Ahead and Wondering first appeared on Mama Sick.

This Saturday, Tyler and I went to our library’s thrice yearly book sale. The whole book sale really tickes Tyler, going to the library and getting to KEEP a book??  Being a Mommy Blogger, I get plenty of books sent to me so I usually go just to pick out a few for Tyler.  The paperbacks are 50 cents, the hard covers a dollar-fifty, so I make sure I just don’t simply pile a stack into our basket as money remains tight.

Two books stuck out for us on our trip.  We came across Noah’s Arc by Lucy Cousins, who is best knows for her Maisy the Mouse series, but she also writes some downright hilarious versions of fairy tales such as The Three Little Pigs or Little Red Riding Hood, with some incredible illustrations.

We picked up Noah’s Ark right away, me counting my good fortune.

As a young man who worked there was helping us look for things that suited our needs, as every thing was pretty much mixed all around, we both spied upon The Children’s Bible.

“I had the exact same Bible when I a was a child”, I said, tears forming in my eyes. “So did I”, he said.  Tyler was still a little big for the 500 plus pages but I decided this was indeed a keeper.  Noah’s Arc and The Bible, what great finds, among a few others.

On Saturday night, Tyler and I were going through our loot of books.  I love childrens books, love to read to Tyler, and get just as excited as he does, maybe even more to read them! Tyler chose Ms. Cousins’s Noah’s Ark and I dove right in, thinking we would learn the story as well as get a good chuckle. To my surprise it was a straight, serious read, albeit with beautifully illustrated pages.

I had a hard time trying to explain the concept of Noahs Ark, how God told him to pack up his wife and kids, and two animals of every species into a giant boat, and how God was going to flood the rest of the world and kill everyone else and every other animal with it.

This was worse than the movies I have let Tyler watch.

Why Mommy, Tyler asked.  Why would God do that?

I told him that when God first put people on the earth they became bad, but Noah was good, and God was going to destroy every living thing except Noah and his children and two animals of every kind, so that the animals could have babies.  I dont study The Bible that much never but I did remember that God told Noah that he would never ever do that again, so we didn’t have to worry about it.

Tyler still had more questions and so I said, Would you like to read more about Noahs Ark in The Bible?, and he said yes.  My heart skipped a beat as Tyler has taken to religion the way he has taken to water. Talk about scarier than a movie.  I guess we children were tougher back in those days as I had to explain to Tyler that the animals and the people were drowning while the flood was happening.

Mommy, whats a flood?  Whats drowning?

We stopped reading after the rain stopped.

Is this how parents teach their children about religion?  Being a mom with chronic illness, pain and fatigue, I have never taken Tyler to church, although I know I need to and I want to. Its hard because there is no one around me who is a Catholic.  Grant is Agnostic.

I know that next year, in the first grade, Tyler will have to start CCD if he is to make his Holy First Communion on time.

I had made my peace with God and Jesus.  I have a strong belief in Them but I do not believe that They are holding it against me that I am not attending church, as I am usually sleeping, and not the lazy, sleeping-in way, but the way that if I do not sleep I will get very ill type of way.  I think They get that.

But I have a well child.  A well child who I AM trying to do things for, like taking him to the library or to karate class.  And now I will have to find it in me to take my well child to Church for there is no one else to do it for me. Please God and Jesus, let me be well enough to be able to take my little boy to church, even if it isnt every week, please let me be able to do this for him…and for me.

The post Tuesdays With Tyler: Gaining My Religion, at the Book Sale first appeared on Mama Sick.