Blessings

So, I am the world's worst blogger this year.  I have thought about "shutting this blog down" but I love seeing what other people have going on and, if we ever get a camera or a phone from this century, I will post pictures.  :)

I have just felt extra blessed this week with something that happened and wanted to share our blessings with others.  (If anyone even looks at this page anymore...ha!)

On Monday night around 6:00, Olivia was laying on her belly in the living room doing her math homework.  She called me in for help.  When I leaned down to show her something on her paper, she put her head down and eye straight into the pencil sticking straight up from her hand.  The pencil got stuck in her eyeball!  She screamed and jerked her head back so quickly while still holding the pencil, that the pencil came out.  I hadn't know it before, but, yes, eyeballs can bleed.  I called our eye doctor and he and I decided she could wait til morning to come in.  Where are the blessings, you may wonder?  BLESSING #1, the pencil poked the white part of her eye.  One centimeter closer and there would have been permanent vision loss.  BLESSING #2, the eye doctor gave us his cell phone and told us to call at anytime if we needed to that night.

Olivia calmed down and slept well.  We got up Tuesday morning to a very bloody (in the eye) spot.  The eye doctor dilated her eye, took pictures of the retina and said that besides a scratch and some graphite dust, things looked okay.  BLESSING #3, no permanent damage!  BLESSING #4, the eye doctor has a third grade son and related so well with Olivia.  He gave her drops, cleaned up the eye a bit and sent us on our way.  Liv returned to school with 2 different sized pupils due to the dilation but feeling fine.

All was well until Wednesday night.  We were in the van on the way to church and Liv said, "Mom, I can't see well.  Things are blurry.  My eye feels big again.  Can I have the mirror?"  Sure enough, her pupil was huge again!  We got into church and started to set up for the night but it just didn't change.  I tried with a flashlight to see if her pupil would respond to light - nope.  BLESSING #5, the kids' pediatrician goes to our church.  Dr. Hayes tried again with the light in Liv's eye and called the ER to let them know we would be coming.  BLESSING #6, Dr. Hayes called 3 ERs to find out which one had an opthamologist available and told them to expect us.  They did!  When we arrive at Children's Medical ER (the biggest children's hospital in Dallas) they knew just who we were.  BLESSING #7, we waited for less than 30 minutes before we were in our own ER room watching a movie.  BLESSING #8, every single person that dealt with Liv was so dear to her.  The nurse was even a Steeler's fan!  BLESSING #9, since we had been at church, we were with friends.  Boston was able to stay with a friend at church and then go home with him to sleep.  He felt happy to be with a friend and went easily to sleep there.  BLESSING #10, two sweet girls from our small group showed up (after they took over my church responsibilities that night) to hang out with Liv and I for the last hour and make sure we got to our car safely.  They came just as my phone died.  Donny was out of town during all this so their being there allowed me to use their phone so I could keep Donny updated.  BLESSING 11, I had the cell phone number of our eye dr so the ER docs just called him and they worked together to help Liv.  After about 4 hours, Liv's eye began to react to light and her pupil shrunk a bit.  It was decided that the hole in her eye, caused by the pencil, had acted like a well and collected some of the dilation medicine from the day before.  Something made it come out of the "well" and therefore her eye dilated.  BLESSING #12, nothing was seriously wrong with her eye.

I could go on and on counting all the ways that God worked things out that night in His perfect timing and ways.  In the scheme of life, the past 3 days will just be a little smudge on our family's life canvas, but they seemed big while going through them.  I wanted to glorify God by sharing all the ways He chose to care for us.  It was with great thanksgiving that the 4 of us prayed before we left the ER knowing that things could've turned out so differently.

Olivia will be fine and within a month her eye will be all healed up.  Praise the Lord!