Easter Morning

It's quiet here right now.  Most are still sleeping.  The sun has risen.  I have time to think.

But I'm going to be real here, sometimes thinking is not what I want to do.  It's easier to deal with pain, worry, frustration, fear if I can stay busy, always be rushing, be concerned with "doing."  

Thinking, that's hard. 

It's been difficult here, here in our home and here in my heart.  Aaron has not been doing well.  It started oh so slow that we didn't really recognize it at the beginning of the year.  Then like a train gathering steam, it chugged on, accelerating, pretty much rocketing out of control by mid-February.  We (kinda) got it under the danger limit by the end of February, but still, that train kept moving.  

In reality, it's been moving since the moment of his conception.  We didn't actually realize it until that first ultrasound.  Like all of us, that train moves constantly in the direction of death, but for some, it moves at a much faster pace.  Sometimes we get to glide gently and smoothly into the station.  Others face derailment, catastrophic overturns, or other painful ends.

But sometimes, that rough track eases up, the vistas open, and the ride isn't quite as rough as it has been.  In looking at Aaron's medications, there was one that was well below a therapeutic dose for his weight.  We increased that.  We considered the tightness of his muscles, especially when storming (hypertonia and spasticity) and added another drug.  This one was purposely dosed at below a therapeutic dose to see if he could even tolerate it.  A known side effect is depression of the central nervous system.  Also a known side effect of a couple of other meds he takes.  We'd be a whole lot more worried about that if the vent wasn't already breathing for him, but even so, we wanted to make sure he didn't knock him out too much.  

That scenery?  It's looking a lot better now.  The train is still moving, but the speed seems to have slowed a bit.  The increased dose of his first medication helped ease a lot of the pain he seemed to feel.  That second med has made it so his legs and arms move more freely and without pain.  He might be a little more tired, but pain is also exhausting.  

We're getting laughter and smiles again.  

He's going to church today.

It's Easter Sunday.  Good Friday must have been a truly awful day.  Their Friend, Savior, Messiah had died, was lying in a borrowed tomb.  Saturday would have been lonely, scary, where do we go now?  Will this pain ever stop?  How do we go on?  But then Sunday came.  Sunday always comes.  

Because of Him, we will live again.  The grave is not the end.  This life is not all there is.  Pain will depart, bodies will be whole.  We will live with our loved ones and enjoy their company again.  Because of Him. 

He is Risen.