How great thou art

Cam went to the ENT yesterday for a check-up; the tonsil situation is looking good. And his personality is slowly re-emerging… He was cheerfully eating his supper last night and I remarked that it was only one week until his birthday. He stopped, fork suspended, and burst into real, lip-quivering, inconsolable tears, crying, ‘I’m much too sick to have my birthday!’ I reassured him that another week would surely be long enough to recover completely.

Most happily I can report that Scott is again sleeping deeply, peacefully and right through the night, maybe because he is voraciously eating three meals a day, with snacks in between… The pics are of Scott discovering the world of grand pianos and heavy duty vehicles. J

Lately, I’ve caught Cam singing snatches of ‘How great thou art’. Bizarre – we hardly sing it at church, and it’s not on any of his CDs, but I used to sing it to him almost every day when he was a baby, particularly around the time of his cataract surgery and a few months after that. It was my grandfather’s favourite hymn, and we’ve sung it at family weddings and funerals for as long as I can remember. When I was settling Scott in his cot last night Cam came to sit on my lap. I sang ‘How great thou art’ and he joined in for the bits he knew. I went on to ‘Great is thy faithfulness’ and ‘All the way my Saviour leads me’. It made him go still and whispery, and it seemed to me that God’s big, holy, universe-filling presence was very real – right there in a little giraffe-decorated bedroom in a little house on a little hill in a suburb of a city on the southern bit of a continent…

‘He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn't live in man-made temples, and human hands can't serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist.’ – Acts 17:24-28

Sans tonsils

Even when you’ve just had your tonsils and adenoids removed, there’s always something about life to celebrate. Like jelly and custard, and a new bubble blowing thingy for blowing super huge bubbles. And medical aid funds that miraculously haven’t run out yet. And Nurofen.

Cam has been pretty grumpy since his op on Tuesday. I asked him this morning if perhaps Dr du Plessis removed his manners as well as his tonsils…? The doctor’s receptionist said we are in for a ‘verskriklike tien dae’ and we’re only half way through, so we really need to vasbyt! Cam also reacted to one of the prescribed pain medications and itched all over for two days. Scotty has a bad rash that we are battling to treat, as a result of the gallons of drool that he emits on a daily basis. He hasn’t been sleeping well, either. Teething?

We invited Rob and Helena Henderson, one of our eldership couples at WBC, to our cell group last night and they just shared their life story, really, and their walk with the Lord. We were spellbound, listening to a story of valleys and mountains, challenges and victories, and, in hindsight, seeing God’s glory and His loving mechanisms during times when they couldn’t possibly have been apparent. So, even though at the moment we feel like we are not exactly soaring above the crags like eagles, but rather scraping our wings across the rocks… possibly, in time, we’ll look back and see the workings of His grace, glory and purpose in this season of snotty noses and sleeplessness. J

Two spiritual little Cammy conversations:

Sunday morning:

Cam: Mom, what was the highlight of church?

Me: It was when Uncle Arnold spoke about praying for opportunities to use our spiritual gifts. What was the highlight of crèche?

Cam: Juice.

…

Monday afternoon: (I was feeding Scott his porridge and Cam was talking quietly to himself (I thought) on the stoep)

Me: Hey Cam, what are you doing?

Cam: I’m praying.

Me: Oh sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt you. What are you praying about?

Cam: I was just praying for all my aunties, that the Lord would give them wisdom.

J

Bits and pieces from a week in March

Brothers

I took the boys to St Alban’s this morning to bid farewell to one of the Form 3 Journey groups. They head off into the bush for a 23-day, 500km, bike-riding, trail-hiking, river-rafting, body-pounding, mind-bending, soul-searching, life-changing adventure – a real rite of passage. I so hope our two little ones will have the chance to do it one day. It also made me grateful that Cam and Scott will be a part of one another’s boys-to-men journeys.

Six months!

Scott will be half a year old tomorrow. I marvel at the miracle of him. I keep thinking that he can’t possibly get cuter or more beautiful… but he does! He looks so like Murray J He contentedly sits and plays on his own, grabbing hold of anything and everything (and sucking it…). He is also amazingly calm in the face of Cam’s wild brotherly gestures, like pulling Scott out of his pram, or jumping on top of him to ‘show love’! Despite currently suffering from his first middle ear infection, he still smiles ecstatically – with his whole body! – at absolutely everybody. Daily, I get tears in my eyes just looking at him.

Above: Cam’s latest is dressing up in our clothes…

Say no to germs

At Pick ‘n Pay last week, Cam and I had to take a trip to the (public) loos. I taught him all about germs and toilet seats. At home the other morning, Murray found him padding our toilet seat with reams of toilet paper. When asked what he was doing, Cam replied, ‘We don’t know everyone’s germs!’

Tantrums and apologies

Cam has been throwing some first class tantrums this week. Exasperated, I admonished him severely with, ‘Now just pull yourself together!’ He retorted indignantly, ‘But myself is together!’

He is, at least, fairly quick to apologise after an outburst, and to remind you of the naughty things he didn’t do…

My little Jamie Oliver

This week Cam told me he wanted ‘rosemary and rocket’ for supper, and that he can make roast beef in the slow cooker. He also reckons that tuna mayonnaise and cappuccinos taste ‘quite similar’… Hmmm…?

Goodbye tonsils

Cam goes in for a tonsillectomy on Tuesday morning. Prayers would be most appreciated! We are dreading the post-op wailing and agony, but all the docs we’ve consulted agree that it really is time to get rid of the things… Here’s hoping for a future filled with more sleep and fewer antibiotics.

Realisations

Sometimes I’ll be in the middle of something quite arbitrary, like chopping a tomato, or marking an essay, and I’ll be struck by the sobering realisation that I’m a grown-up. Not sure how it happened. It’s terrifying. And astonishing. And, strangely, quite wonderful. (I’m also glad that the rest of the time, I just feel like me.) Sometimes, when I’ve got an armful of wriggling, giggling boys on my lap, or I’m mopping up vomit, or smearing sun cream on smooth little cheeks, it also dawns on me in a very pinch-myself-to-check-this-is-real kind of way that I have two sons. Freaky. Unbelievably cool. So, so marvellous.

‘God's love is meteoric,

His loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic,

His verdicts oceanic.

Yet in His largeness nothing gets lost; not a man,

not a mouse slips through the cracks.

How exquisite your love, O God!’ – Psalm 35:5-7 (Message)

Definitions

Murray and the boys have been sick this week, and we’ve had some wakeful nights… If you looked up our week in the dictionary, these would be the entries:

sick (adjective) suffering from or affected with a physical illness; ailing

sleepless (adjective) marked by a lack of sleep: a sleepless night; unable to sleep

stress (abstract noun) physical, mental, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension

hope (abstract noun) Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: the faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. (Lam. 3:21-23)

comfort (abstract noun) He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in his arms, holding them close to his heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young. (Is. 40:11)

Cam helping Dad to roughen the deck steps with sand, to make them safer.

Cam laid out his yellow chairs to play church-church… J

Wimpy chips – a treat for getting another ten stickers on the vegetable chart!

Hanging out together in Scotty’s cot…

Visually Extraordinary

I don’t much like the term ‘visually impaired’, though I’ve been using it all the time to describe Cam because I haven’t come up with anything better. ‘Impaired’ sounds so limiting and negative, as do ‘low vision’ and ‘partially sighted’. They seem to put a ceiling on his potential, to clip his wings. I’ve been asking God for new words to describe Cam, particularly because I want him to understand and accept the reality of his poor vision, but I also want him to be proud of his eyes, and never to feel embarrassed or crestfallen when we have to explain to someone, ‘Oh, he’s visually impaired…’. I was driving the other day and it came to me: Visually Extraordinary. His eyes certainly are out of the ordinary – not ‘normal’. But it’s also true that they are part of what makes him extra special, unique, cognitively creative, perceptually sensitive. Extraordinary. I’m hoping that he embraces the terminology and sees his eyes not as the blurry barrier between himself and the clarity of life, but rather as a gateway to deep awareness, appreciation and discernment. I’m reminded of something God revealed to Murray in a dream one night, early on in our journey with Cam. He said we should pray that Cam would live in such a way that others might wish they had eyes like him.

And then here’s a summary of where I saw God’s glory over the past week or so:

Coral and I took the kids to Irene Farm, and I saw God’s glory in cows, greenness, tranquil ponds, doughnuts, scraped knees, tears, wonder. The stuff of little lives.

I saw God’s glory in a Grade 1 class that I visited on Monday morning. The issue of Cam’s schooling has been heavy on our hearts lately, and we’ve really felt that we need to start investigating all our options, even though ‘big school’ is still a few years away.  I wanted to have more of a concept of what mainstream Grade 0 and Grade 1 are all about, particularly in the school environment we’d ideally like to place Cam. I wanted to meet a classroom assistant, and see how many lessons are auditory, and if I could picture Cammy behind one of those little desks, and if his mini TV could be plugged into a Smartboard, etc. So I asked a friend, Lauren Hofmeyr, if I could visit her class. What an inspiring experience… I think there are extra shiny crowns in heaven for teachers who create frameworks of literacy in little minds. To think that today they are learning that ‘dirt’ and ‘shirt’ have the same vowel sound, and that in years to come, those sort of concepts will be the unconscious, taken-for-granted foundations of doctoral theses and business proposals and twitter updates. Man, it made me cry – in a good way.

Scotty has been sick this week, but I’ve seen God’s glory in his resilience and cheerfulness, despite the litres of snot and drool that he has inadvertently emitted… Poor little chap. A result of the snotty nose situation is that he no longer wants to suck his dummy, or sadly, to breastfeed. He is beginning to imitate sounds and gestures, and to communicate, with intentional squeaks and grunts. I can’t be absolutely sure, but I do think that he and Lola had a real conversation the other day. He looked at her and said something along the lines of, ‘Aa-ga ga ga!’ and she licked his head. He has also entered the exciting world of solid food (see messy porridge pictures).J

Cameron continues to say amazingly cute, astute things, like, ‘Scotty can’t greet me. I must teach him how to talk,’ and ‘That’s awesome!’, and ‘Oh my wordy! My enormous tower is collapsing!’ He is also asking lots of ‘why?’ and ‘what’s that?’ questions, and he is seriously testing the boundaries. The other morning he smacked Scott; Murray reprimanded him, so he smacked Scott again, just to see if Dad was serious. He also emptied an entire tin of Scott’s formula powder onto the kitchen floor, then spread it around the house, while I was in the bath… I find myself having to dig very deep for patience…!

‘Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name goes all the glory for your unfailing love and faithfulness.’ – Psalm 115: 1