What do you say to that?

I should be writing about our first Christmas here in Plano. How wonderful it was to have Triann's family here in town, how beautiful the tree was and how excited the kids were to see all that Santa had brought them. I guess I just did and will probably write more later, but the reason I started this was to give myself an outlet to chew things over with my fingers and put the thoughts bouncing in my head into print. As much for me as for anyone else, so here is what is eating me right now.

Emily turned 7 today. Last night as we were all settling in for the evening we asked if she was excited about her birthday. She said she was. When asked why, she said she was excited because when she turned 7 she would be able to walk. Most of you know, but for those new to this or to us Emily has spina bifida and is paralyzed from the waist down. She was born this way and has been in a wheelchair since she was 18 months old. Emily has said many times through the years that she will be able to walk once she is grown up. This has increased some in the last couple of years as she has watched her younger brother learn to walk, run, jump, skip etc. She doesn't understand why she as the big sister cannot do things that her little brother is doing.

When the statement came last night, that she would be able to walk since she was turning 7 it caught both of us off guard. I went in to pray with Emily as she was going to bed and found Triann in the bathroom crying by herself. I asked her what was wrong and she said it was Emily's comment. I held her for a few minutes and then she went to sleep and I went to my thinking chair (too much blues clues). I sat and I thought and I prayed and I thought and prayed some more. What is the right thing to think or say to a statement like that?

I know and believe that God can do anything and that if he wanted her to walk tonight while I was writing this, she could get up out of her bed and crawl up into my lap. I know that he tells us in the Bible that with faith the size of a mustard seed we can tell a mountain to move and it will (Matthew 17:20). But do I have that faith? Do I believe that? I know that it is true, but in my heart do I really have the faith to ask that? The answer is no and I think that is where I really am struggling right now. It honestly isn't an issue of if I believe that or not, it is if the fear of it not happening and building up all our hopes. I have always been afraid to pray for specific things. I know that God can do anything but don't think that we always know what it is that we really need so I always pray for God's will to be done, meaning this is what I would like but you do what needs to be done. So do what do I say to Emily?

I said this has come up many times and usually I tell her that it isn't anything to do with her age but that her body just won't let her do that. We have talked about the physical reasons, spinal cord is disconnected, no nerves firing down there. She knows that she can't feel anything below her belly button and that she has hurt herself more than once and not felt it. She snapped her femur earlier this year and didn't even have to be medicated when they set it.

So what would you do? Do you hit her with reality or do you give her hope even if you don't think there is hope?

I don't have a wise answer for you because I don't know the right answer or even what I think I should do. I guess until I come up with something else I will keep telling her the same thing and hope that my lack of faith or confidence doesn't cheat her out of something amazing.

Eric

How are you guys doing?

This is a question I get daily from friends and family... "how are you guys doing". I give them the pat answer "pretty good". I don't think it is because I don't want to share what is going on, I just don't think I know how to explain it or have had the time to try and sort it out. I am going to try to sort it out now.

The biggest thing Triann is dealing with right now is recovering from her surgery. I have to keep reminding her and me that she had a 13cm tumor (we have named it meat wad) removed from her October 8th, just 8 weeks ago. She is still dealing with a lot of pain and a lack of energy. She is able to get around fine, but she is unable to pick up the kids and hurt herself yesterday picking up a spindle of 100 CD's. She can do some things around the house but doesn't have enough energy to do what she wants to do.

Triann is taking her meds and is up to 4 of her chemo pills right now. The original goal was to add one pill a week until she reaches 12 per day. She is also taking her hormone pills also. She will have to do blood work this week and send it down to Houston to see what her levels are and the doctor will clear her to move up to the next step. She has been a bit nauseous but has been able to keep that in check.

I think she is just tired of healing and tired of not being able to do what she wants to do. I think she is also emotionally wore out also. This has been a bit of a roller coaster ride and she is exhausted mentally, emotionally and physically.

I have been having a hard time lately knowing what to do. I am in a very busy season at work right now, and have been coming home drained and without a lot of support for her. A lot different then when she was in the hospital and I was able to spend hours just sitting and talking. I said it before and will say it again, that might have been some of the best time we have spent together in our entire marriage. So I guess the biggest thing I can do right now is make time to just sit together.

If you haven't guessed by now, I am figuring a lot of this out while I am writing, so probably not the best flowing post I have made, but maybe the most honest.

We went on a "date" last night. Left the kids at home and had dinner and watched a movie. I think we both enjoyed ourselves but it was awkward. There are so many things that both of us need from each other, and even though that was the first time we had been alone since the hospital, I don't think either of us wanted to talk about them because we didn't want to ruin that time. We tried a bit of serious conversation and it didn't go well. So we just enjoyed each others company the rest of the night.

My biggest fear right now is that we get so busy with all of the holiday stuff on top of our already busy lives and we just push this away. But the other side of that is I don't know how to even begin to talk about where we are without adding more stress to our relationship.

I know the right answer, we need to talk about it, but both of us do very well with stuffing things down and acting like everything is ok. I just think it is a shame to do that in light of the gift we have been given. I feel that we have both been reminded that life is short and we need to appreciate every day we have together. If that means a few rough ones while we sort some of this stuff out, then get on with the rest of life, I think it is what we should do.

Easier said (or typed) then done.

That's how we are doing

Shooting for God

I love video games. I have spent most of my life playing games of some sort. It started in grade school playing oregon trial on the apple IIe at school and hunt the wumpas on the TI 99 4a at home. My neighbor had an odyssey and an atari 2600 that we played on and family friends had a commodore 64, a coleco vision and an intelevision. I had games on every computer I have ever had, from might and magic on my 286 to wolfenstein and vga planets on my 486 in college all the way up to half life and unreal on the pentium 4. Of course I played my share of arcade games also mainly wasting quarters on dig dug, icari warriors, 1942 and 720.

As far as consoles go, different friends had nintendo's (nes) and I played my share of the mario games but didn't get my own until after I was married. I owned an NES, super nintendo, sega dreamcast, N64, xbox, xbox 360 and now a wii.

What does this have to do with anything? Well a group of us have been getting together for years to play halo, first locally on the xbox (4 tv's and 4 xbox's in one house, thanks diogi) and more recently playing on xbox live over the internet. Last spring, my good buddy the proud papa (formerly known as honz and gandalf) and I decided to meet weekly to play halo and to use the time between games, while waiting in the lobby to share prayer requests and pray. This was done using the xbox headset so we are able to talk like we were on the phone. We started inviting other friends and ended up with a regular group of 5 guys on monday nights (emsdaddy, the proud papa, ryderlane, furious george, and trinipular). We would meet at 10, share prayer requests, read through a devotional and then pray. We would then head up to live and play Halo3 either by ourselves or online with others. The beauty of this is that we live no where near each other, but can fellowship together online. I was able to take my box with me on business trips and participated from my hotel room.

The highlight of all of this was when people we didn't know would jump into our lobby and hear us talking about God. This was a little hairy at first, expecting people to give us flak, but we found that people would either just leave or they would stay and ask questions about God the Bible and our faith. It was amazing. God used this silly game to plant seeds with folks from all around the world.

All of this fell aside when Triann got sick, but I am excited to say we finally started again this week.

There is a huge debate hiding in this post. Should a Christian be playing violent games online? I can't answer that for anyone, and don't know if I have a complete answer for myself. What I do know is that God found a way to use a group of us to reach some folks right where they are. We don't preach and we don't pretend to be perfect or know everything, but we explain what we believe and explain why WE believe it. Pretty cool in my book

If you are ever on xbox live, look me up and send me a message.

Eric "EmsDaddy" Benson