my favorite new christmas pillows

i made the fronts for these christmas pillows in the days before pete had his cardiac arrest. the night of the accident i snuggled up next to him while he was reading. i kept thinking that i needed to get up and sew the backs on these pillows. i finally surrendered to how nice it felt laying with him, so i scratched the pillows and fell asleep next to him there. that was the right thing to have done.

yesterday it hit me that the single word message on these pillows needed to be displayed in our home THIS holiday season; they couldn't wait until next year, so i put the backs on these pillows yesterday. 'peace' and 'joy' are exactly what we have experienced over the last 10 days. when i was making these pillows i kept asking pete what words i should put on them. i was thinking of christmas words like 'merry', but we decided together that 'peace' and 'joy' are the best words for christmas. i'm grateful these are the words we chose. never have i understood so fully what those words really mean, and they are the best christmas words. peace and joy are some of the greatest gifts offered by jesus christ, and since this is a celebration of HIS birth they are even more appropriate. hopefully each one of you will feel peace and joy in your homes at a whole new level this year and always.

hard realization take 2

pete's hard realization was yesterday, and my hard realization was today.

i am so changed by this whole event, like things on the soul level.

i thought i would always feel different.

i thought my perspective would always be so open.

i thought it would always be easy to love everyone.

and always be easy to feel good.

i thought i would always be strong because of this and that the little things that were hard for me before wouldn't be hard for me anymore because after all i felt like this was the hardest thing possible to overcome.

my hard realization is that i am still the same.

still the same me with the same weaknesses.

i don't want to be the same anymore.

i want to be able to always feel as deeply about life as i have,

and i certainly don't want it all slipping away this fast.

today's realizations were hard for me.

a pretty normal day

gosh, there were certainly many times last week that i was certain i would never be able to refer to our life as any type of normal. in fact, i had started referring to it as "the new normal". today, though, had many "normal" moments like tonight when we played operation and memory (pete thinks he needs the practice :) ) just like we would have done any night before putting the kids to bed. i just couldn't believe we were enjoying each other again in such a normal way and especially within such a short amount of time. i guess i can keep referring to this as "the new normal" though because there are many things that are different and new but now it's more of an internal difference.

pete did mention a little about his 1st therapy consultation with the speech therapist. speech therapy may seem a little odd, but it's actually the type of therapy that works on re-training cognitive processes not just on helping people talk better. pete did amazingly well on the testing that was done today. our next appointment will consist of more testing that focuses more on cognitive ability and thought process rather than short-term memory. at that point we will proceed with appropriate therapy and just wait for the update on when he can return to work. in the meantime, we will just focus on lots of relaxing and enjoying every "new normal" moment we can get.

Hard Realization

Today was probably the toughest yet. (mentally) All until now I thought" yea I went through a little scare but I will be back." Today I went to a therapist that ran though a gamut of cognitive test.On the way to the therapist I started thinking, "this little episode is going to leave me permanently damaged." I mean, I have a mechanical device to help me stay alive that is connected to my heart. My brain went without a fresh flow of oxygen for 7 minutes. I can't remember a whole week of my life. Yesterday is a little fuzzy and I am afraid that tomorrow it will be gone and today will be a little fuzzy. "How could this happen to me!" I am the guy that runs ultra marathons. I am the guy the works out everyday. I am the guy that loves my Friday ride because it challenges me to work harder the next week. I am the guy who......

Words of advice:

If you have ever had a doctor tell you watch your diet, had a family member that has had serious heart problems, felt that something is just not quite right inside.....don't be a know it, arrogant idiot, ignorer of reality, because and one time or another it's better to face reality that your body is broken then to end up.......

Pete

PS. Sorry for this rant it's just been an interesting day

nights are hard

i know there's still a long way to go until i can get in bed at night and start to feel peace instead of fear. last night was long and hard. pete was stirring a lot and mumbling all kinds of things, some things funny like about getting the book about the aerospace museum before we went upstairs and other things a lot more disturbing. he wouldn't keep his arm restrained to his side so he wouldn't disrupt the defibrillator implant; he would wake me up all the time pulling the restraint off. if he happened to not wake me up i would wake up to see his arm above his head which is a MAJOR no no for at least 3 more weeks. that worried me. i was mostly scared that he kept almost rolling out of bed so many times; that's what really scares me and makes me re-live it. i held onto him the whole night hoping and praying that i could keep him there. every time i woke up only 30 minutes had passed. it was a long night to say the least.

another bizarre comfort would come almost every time i woke up. sometimes i would wake up panicked of where the doctors and nurses were. i couldn't believe that i had pete and the boys there alone with only me to take care of them. i would get really freaked out and at times get up and look around for a doctor. in those crazy moments i had an overwhelming insight that our room was full of people from the other side who were administering to pete and strengthening me. hopefully when i wake up again looking for the doctors and nurses i will be reassured with that feeling.

keep reading :)

pete and i still have so many emotions and experiences that we want to share. pete has been overwhelmed and shocked by the amount of traffic we have received on our blogs; he has been deeply touched, too. in his pete kind of way he has used much humor about keeping the readers satisfied. he says i must fulfill my responsibility to the readers until the story is finished being told, so in case you are deleting this link because you think the story is over then think again and stay tuned. and in your own humorous way please reassure pete that i'm putting out enough quality content to keep you coming back for more so he won't lose confidence in my abilities. :)

i won't waste this

as many things have overwhelmed me this week, i am also overwhelmed at how many big and little things have happened over the last 2 years but especially the last 2 weeks that have prepared us for this crisis. mostly they have been little things like pete feeling so insistent about getting cell phones last week and the plan he felt strongly that we needed to sign up for; thank goodness for that- it definitely added convenience to my week. there have been many things that i hope to jot down somewhere, but the most important thing i will share here is not as tangible as all the other things but maybe even more important.

pete and i have always had a fantastic relationship, but i, like any person, found myself getting annoyed with him on occasion for sometimes very unimportant reasons. a lot of times i let it fester and turn it into a much bigger deal, and then i would have a lot of regret, and a lot of hoping that that wouldn't be a time for a tragedy. i had 2 of these instances the day before and the day of that turned it into a major preparation and comfort for this event. it may seem insignificant, but i knew in each of these instances that it was something very personal for me.

the first event was something so silly. we were going to the park, and he left with sam without me and will. he was under the impression that we weren't coming; i should've let it go, but instead i mumbled around about how dare he not check before he left just to be sure. i packed will up and took off after him just getting madder and madder. in that moment i should've been hit over the head with a stick this impression was so strong: "you can waste this moment by being angry or you can seize this moment by letting go." i was stunned and realized how silly i was being; i let it go. the next event was the day of when we were setting up our christmas tree. i was irritated that he didn't spread the branches out better on the tree and that he went downstairs to play a game with the boys without helping me. i found myself getting madder and madder. again it was as if a voice was screaming in my ear: "you can waste this moment by being angry or you can seize this moment by letting go." i let it go again and knew this was too strange and it meant something for me. the exact impression of "you can waste this moment" was the critical part of this experience.

it proved to have a double meaning for me throughout all of this. the moments that i was calling 911 and trying to get his body in the right position for cpr his eyes connected with mine with an intense amount of fear, and in that split second i had the impression again to not waste this moment so i went to work doing exactly what i needed to do. i came home from the ER at 5:30 to check on the boys; during this time i had major impressions that he needed to be moved from the hospital he was at. i kind of stalled around waiting for the boys to wake up so i could see them, but i had that impression again to not waste this moment. because this was an impression that was becoming eerily familiar to me i knew i had to start to acting, so i made all the inspired arrangements to get him out of there as soon as i could. that truly paid off to be one of the most important miracles in all of this. his lung collapsed on the way to the new hospital, and i'm certain the old hospital never would've known. i was also told shortly upon arrival that had i not moved him exactly when i did he would've been dead by dinner that night. the doctors also told me that the best thing that pete had going for him up to that point was that not one second was wasted and had even one of those seconds been different the outcome would have probably been very different. thank goodness for that impression to not waste a moment.

in an even more personal way that impression brought me an overwhelming amount of comfort during that 1st day when the outcome seemed so bleak. i will never forget sitting in the floor in the waiting room telling my friend how grateful i was that i felt peace with how well we had gotten along lately and how grateful that i let the anger go and didn't spend my last moments with him being angry. i would've had regret the rest of my life. for some odd reason that was the only thing that was bringing me peace in those critical moments was knowing that i made the choice to not waste the moment.

i know this is a lesson that will bring me peace and prompting all of my days. as i am relishing in the new depth of our relationship i am making every effort to not waste any moments with him in any form. i have never been so grateful for a God who doesn't waste a moment with us. sometimes we get it and sometimes we miss it, but i have an undeniable certainty that He never wastes moments with us in preparing us to do all things. i feel like i will always be living proof of that.