Happy Easter (and an update)

Happy Easter, dear friends!  I hope you had a blessed day with your family celebrating Jesus' great triumph over sin, evil, and death.  LIFE EVERLASTING!  It's hard sometimes to really grasp what it all means.

When we were making our way home from Italy, with each and every moment that we were closer to home, the anticipation was building.  It was six long weeks since I had last seen my dear friends, my mom, and of course, my beloved Amelia and Lucy.  I thought I would burst with the eagerness of the impending moment when I would finally cross through the revolving door and see their faces. 

And then it dawned on me.  If this is how I feel when I have only been absent six weeks, and only absent from my regular, daily life, can you even begin to fathom what our hearts should and will feel in those final moments before we meet Jesus, our redeemer and Savior and most treasured friend?  The moment when we finally SEE Him with our eyes? When our Heavenly home, that we have been absent from for so long, is just beyond the precipice?   How can we even bear it?  It is too much to even try to imagine.  All I know is that when it is my turn to go Home forever, I want to look forward to it with the same excitement and hope and joy that I looked forward to seeing my children after a six-week absence.

We did Easter as Easter should be done -- a wonderful worship celebration with our family and church family, a scrumptious lunch prepared by Grandmama, and an egg hunt in the backyard.  Our Easter weather was absolutely perfect.  It was the most gorgeous day I have seen in a very long time.
The girls had a grand time hunting eggs, and since we can't do candy at our house because of Anna's teeth, the girls were all little Miss Moneybags at the end of the day.  The good news is that, at least to the little ones, finding two pennies in an egg is even better than one quarter (the "two is better than one" principle at work!).  The grown-ups even managed to work in a Scrabble game.  I know -- we're pathetically boring people, but we enjoyed a low-key day together while the little girls played.  The only difficulty encountered was that Anna kept signing my letters to the other adults, so they knew that I had the z.  (Winner:  Grandmama in a last-moment victory.)

As for Anna's progress, today, we celebrated that, too.  It is one week since Anna's device was activated.  She turns her head at certain sounds (drum, bell).  As much as I love banging the drum behind her head just to see her turn (yes, she turns!!!), her therapist reminded us that it is not our job to "test" her hearing - after all, you would no go up and bang a drum behind a newborn baby's head.  Instead, it is our job to reinforce hearing:  "Oh, I hear the doorbell!  "Oh, I hear a dog barking!"
We are supposed to talk, talk, talk to Anna - just like you would talk to a baby.  Anna is one week old in her "hearing age".  Over time, Anna will go through the same stages as a baby when he or she learns about sounds.  We know that, typically, progress with ABI is slower than with a cochlear implant, but we also know that you can't put labels and boundaries on people.  Anna will do what Anna will do when her brain has developed and the time is right - and not one moment sooner.  Our job is simply to pray, trust, and do our part at home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are blessed!

Amy