Gag over sillyl stuff...

Gaga over silly stuff…

That’s me, the new grandmother going gaga over every little whimper our new granddaughter makes. As I shared with you, this new stage of life brings out the nutty reactions I’d apparently stored in my heart. Guess they were reserved just for such times as when I hold that warm little body in my arms. And she'll be at the top of my list of blessings this Thanksgiving Day.

Now, I’d like to introduce you to another person like me, except he’s a grandpa. His story will touch your heart. It did mine.

So, here it goes. (If you enjoy his story, write him and tell him).

Janet

A LONG HARD JOURNEY BEGINS

I have my 55th birthday this month. I’ve been thinking about something for a while, and today seems a good day to actually start my idea.

I have been thinking of writing down some of my thoughts and emotions as I have embarked (along with the rest of our family) with Amanda and Daren and Jenna on the journey Amanda started in June of this year, when she was diagnosed with leukemia.

Daren is one of our three sons. We also have one daughter.

Daren and Jenna (his wife) received a diagnosis that their baby girl Amanda has leukemia - on Amanda’s first birthday.

Everyone who loves her (and there are many) are taking part of this journey with her. According to how close we are to her, and how much we can be there with her, we will all experience different amounts of this journey with her.

Most of it Daren and Jenna will experience more, just because they are her Dad and Mom, and they will be with her the most.

Some of the journey she may feel she is traveling alone, like the minutes today when the nurses had to take her into a little procedure room at Children's Hospital and restart her VAD (a special access device in her chest for IV’s). I heard her crying in there, and my heart ached for her.

Many times I have held her in my arms since this started, and wished I could make this all go away and be better for her. But some of the road she will feel she is traveling alone.

I hope and pray that she will sense the presence of Jesus with her, and even though as I write this today she probably doesn't understand much about Him -- she is only 18 months old--, I still hope and pray she will feel the peace and comfort of sensing that

Someone is with her even in those lonely or scary minutes or hours when none of us can be there. And that as she grows up, she will come to understand and love that Person in return, whose Name is Jesus, and who loves her with a perfect love.

It is my hope that some day -- maybe when she is 10, or 12, or 13, I will be able to start sharing these journal entries, or stories, or letters, with her that I hope to keep writing. It is my ongoing prayer to God our heavenly Father, that He will bring her through this, and heal her completely of the leukemia that was diagnosed in her body on that day in June, 2002. I believe He is doing just that.

Today my wife Beth and I drove in to the Children's Hospital and visited her and Jenna for an hour or two. She was sleeping in the hospital bed where she and Jenna sleep together.

Beth and Jenna talked, and I was happy to kneel on the floor beside the bed and watch Amanda. When she woke up, she gave me a weak, tired, tiny little smile, then lifted one foot off the bed. One of the games we play is that when she does that I hold her foot up to my nose and say, “Pew - stinky foot!” We all play this game with her. She always smiles, and holds up the other foot for a repeat.

She was tired, so she just lay there on her stomach. I stroked her back. That seems to relax her, I’ve noticed. She lay there and seemed to enjoy it, and her eyes closed a few times. Finally she woke up, and when I asked her if she wanted to get up, she nodded “yes.”

I got to hold her for just a few seconds, then she wanted Jenna. That’s natural. But I love it when I get to hold her in my arms, and love her, and whisper to her how much I love her, and pray for her, and sing to her.

She told Jenna (by pointing) that she wanted to go out of the room, so we all went to the playroom for a while. She sat in the middle of a train set, and I pushed the wooden train cars down the wooden track with her, and she smiled...

Later she had a whole slice of toast with peanut butter and jam.

Part of that time I got to hold her on my knee. When I asked her if she wanted Grandpa to sing to her, she nodded her head (once, like she does), yes. So I sang the 4 or 5 songs I always sing to her, and she seemed content. Then Beth and I had to go.

When I have to say goodbye to her, she leans forward in Jenna's arms and offers me the top of her head to kiss like a regal princess offering her subject a gift or a glance. And indeed she is like a princess to me -- a precious princess who I am privileged to know and love and hold in my arms.

Much love fills my heart for Amanda, and I look forward to a day when she will sit in my arms years from now, and she will read with her Grandpa stories or journal entries like these or letters I will write just to her, and we will enjoy looking back on how God brought her through a dark valley into sunlight and joy and laughter.

I am privileged to be her Grandpa, walking down this road with her during the second year of her life.

(LOOKING BACK.... - written December 15, 2002)

BIO – “Days in the Life of a Grandpa” is an on-going compilation of stories. After 29 years of a challenging career as a paramedic responding with emergency lights and sirens to serious car accidents, suicide attempts, drug overdoses, assaults, and a variety of medical emergencies, his career came to an abrupt end one day when he was injured in a serious accident. Unable to return to the work he loved, he found a new “occupation” that helped fill his days and bring joy and purpose to his life. That new “occupation” was enjoying regular times with his increasing family of grandchildren.