Bruised Eye, Bruised Ego, but it's not all about me

I've had something to post here for a few days, but yesterday morning's "incident" kind of threw our schedule out of wack.

Yesterday morning at 7:30 I was walking out the door with Reni in tow to take Ellie to school.  I don't exactly remember where or how, but the next thing I knew, I was experiencing great pain in my left eye socket.  Reni has this very pretty blue Nalgene sippy cup (a gift from his cousins in VT) with a hard tip on top.  As best as I can figure it, either for fun or in shifting position, he rammed that hard tip right into my eye.  The pain was immediate.  I was trying to communicate to Nathan, already in the car that I was hurt and missing my contact.  By the time I could give him our squirming son, all hopes of finding that lens were pretty much gone.  We looked and looked, but I had no clue where (between the door and the driveway) the collision occurred. I sent Nathan on with the kids to deliver Ellie and I decided to search for a spare lens I thought i had somewhere in a bathroom drawer.

It didn't take long to determine that locating a replacement lens was the least of my issues.  My eye discomfort was not going away so there was no way I'd be inserting a rigid gas permeable lens in there anytime soon.  We called the eye doctor and he worked me in that morning.  I was diagnosed with a corneal abrasion (scrape) and contusion (bruise).  If you read this blog outside of this page (i.e. through a feed), then you may not have read in my Twitter feed that this is apparently a common occurrence for parents with young children (to be socked in the eye with a hard object).  I was assured the eye heals pretty quickly and I'd likely be doing better the next day.  I was given a soft contact lens "band aid" and told to take some Tylenol if I experienced any pain.

I went home feeling better for the time being.  However as the day progressed, my sensitivity to light increased, my eye was watering, turning a shocking shade of red, and by evening, it started oozing. I could only keep my eye open in very dim light, if at all.  (Sorry if you have a squeamish stomach -- I get squeamish thinking about it).  I was back in the office again this morning, this time seeing another doctor who has given me two different bottles of eye drops. Apparently now my iris is swelling and I won't describe what he said the tissue looked like.

Meanwhile, I have a great excuse to lie in a dark bedroom with my eyes closed, but our lives don't easily allow for this!  For example, I took my eyes off Reni for 5 minutes this afternoon and in that time he proceeded to color in half a dozen square tiles on our bathroom floor with crayon.  Thank you, Picasso!  Can you please tell me where you did find those crayons since we tried to hide them from you?  But really, I'm more than happy to stay at home where I won't make people cringe or scare small children.

Now, since I don't like to write posts that are all about me, here are some great reads of much weightier subject matter I've found in the last week or so....

From Adeye of "No Greater Joy Mom":

"Last week one precious family traveled to a land far away to adopt their sweet little boy. They went to court. After five hours of being questioned by the judge, the answer was NO! They were denied. They were told that they could not adopt sweet K. "Sure--go ahead and adopt a 'healthy' child. But children with Down syndrome are better off in an institution." 

So sad.
The little lovie was denied the RIGHT to have a family.
Oh, God in heaven! ...

Anyone who has ever stepped out to adopt a child can testify to the fact that from the moment you say, "Yes" to that child, all hell breaks loose.  Why?  Because "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms," as it says in Ephesians.

The enemy HATES adoption! Every family enters into an intense spiritual battle when they try to adopt a child. The enemy WILL throw his fiery darts their way. He will try everything possible to get the adoption to fail. It is a fact! 


Adoption is not just about bringing a child into the loving arms of parents--it's about snatching a child out of darkness and bringing them into HIS glorious light..."


Click here to read the full post.  Click here to read more on this particular family's case.  The next 24 hours are crucial to this little boy's future (and the future of other downs' kids in this region).  Linny over at A Place Called Simplicity (link over in right sidebar) is also tracking this story.


_______________________


Then by Jed Medefind on the Orphan Alliance blog yesterday...


"...Truth be told, from the fundamentalist to the atheist, we all hold a theology.  We each have ideas about God—whether we see him as a holy-but-loving father, a distant clockmaker, a doting Santa Claus, a deadbeat dad, or a capricious judge.  These ideas, in turn, shape not only how we approach “religion” but all of life beside.  Whether or not we “like” theology, we are all theologians.  Our choice is simply whether we’ll form our ideas about God thoughtfully…or merely be influenced by opinions that we thoughtlessly absorb.

This reality carries consequences for all facets of life—perhaps especially the realm of adoption and orphan care.  If our theology envisions an absent or indifferent God, then we have no reason to be anything but absent or indifferent when it comes to children that don’t share our genetic material.  But if we truly grasp that every soul bears the image of God, everything changes.  If God pursued and adopted us at infinite cost to himself when we were orphans of sin, then we can do the same…with joy at getting to mirror the heart of our Father...."

Click here to read the post in its entirety.

_______________________