Cake Boss

My sister's birthday was Wednesday so my 5-year-old niece and I made cupcakes. These are the ones she decorated.  We affectionately labeled them "poocakes" and Mom couldn't bring herself to eat one.  :)

Grace to Heal

Yesterday was the 3 week anniversary of my surgery, and I'm still healing.  This is hard for me.  A voice in my head tells me I should be healed already, that surgery was all I needed to be okay, that wincing when pain hits makes me a big baby.

Lies.  Damn lies. (Is that a quote, btw?  In my head it is.)

A friend of mine who has had 14 surgeries (poor girl) reminded me today that my body is healing.  I need to be kind to myself.  I had major abdominal surgery!  Of course my colon is still healing from where all the scar tissue used to be!  Of course I still have pain where my appendix used to be!  Her words were 'a cup of cold water in the night' to my brain and I feel permission to continue my convalescence, rather than pushing myself to start work again or pick my social life back up.  I do not need to go to church on Sunday, I'm still healing.  I do not need to go visit my ailing friend, I'm still healing.  I do not need to go meet my other friend's new baby, I'm still healing.

It is totally normal to be 3 weeks in and still recovering.

Firsts

Today I wore jeans (real pants!) and drove. =)

I think

I'm getting swept into something magnificent.

All I want for Christmas:

George MacDonald

"Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead."

"To wait is harder than to run, and its meed is fuller. "

"Self-loathing is not sorrow. Yet it is good, for it marks a step in the way home, and in the father's arms the prodigal forgets the self he abominates.  Once with his father, he is to himself of no more account."

"God created me -- not out of Nothing, as say the unwise, but out of His own endless glory."

As silly as it sounds,

my surgical pain astounds me.
Ridiculous, considering my pain levels are miraculously so low that
when sitting still, I feel nothing.
Even walking, sometimes fine.
But if I move wrong and am reminded that my body is still in pain
I think,
"What??"
Like,
somehow,
magically,
only a week after major abdominal surgery,
I should be healed.