Trophies

It has been way too long since I have been on here and I am going to do my best to catch up.  With some of the events where I have pictures I'll add those later as separate posts.

This summer hasn't been all that we had hoped in the Franke house.  June 9, I woke and got ready for our VBS celebration at church and my throat felt weird.  I didn't really have the time to worry much about it and went on with my morning.  After church we took Caleb and the boys to see Thomas the Train in Baldwin.  My mom had found when he was coming and got some tickets as part of Caleb's birthday present.  It was a great day but I'll post about that later.  However throughout the day my throat was getting increasingly worse and by the time evening came it hurt to swallow.  The next day I was in so much pain I gave in and we went to the doctor.  He said I had a bad case of strep throat.  He gave me a shot to help with the infection faster than what a pill could and then a prescription to follow up and help attack it quickly.  Oh and some pain pills too.  The next day, which was my birthday, was horrible.  By the end of the day I really felt worse and was questioning whether it was just strep.  By Wednesday the doctor was concerned at the lack of improvement and sent me in for blood work.  And Thursday they had set up an appointment with the ENT because my white count was so high and should have come down with the meds and shot they gave me.  We went to the ENT and it turned out I had an infectious abscess on my tonsils and they needed to come out.  They put me on a steroid as well as the other meds I was already taking and more pain pills.  Over the weekend I started to feel a little better which was nice.  By the time the day came for surgery I wasn't doing too bad.  The surgery went great.  We didn't get to keep the tonsils and I remember them telling me they showed them to me however the infection was still so bad they sent them off to pathology.  Its been 1 1/2 weeks now and we haven't heard anything so we are praying that no news means good news.  I can finally talk, not loudly and some words hurt to say, like the formation of my mouth.  It doesn't take long for me to get tired.  I've even enough jello and mac n cheese for quite a while.  My parents and friends and church family have been a huge support with meals and taking care of our boys.  It stinks that basically all of our June has been spent with me sick and we haven't been able to do anything we wanted to do this summer.  And now July is starting tomorrow and I'm still tired and not able to eat normally.  I know I will get there, I just hate that the boys are missing out on the fun summer stuff.  And thankfully they have been super great.  They have helped clean and have been really great at playing well together.  They do what they can to help take care of me.  I couldn't be prouder of them for being such great sports.  And hopefully their last month before school starts we  can go and do some of the fun things we wanted to do.

When you are sick you have a lot of time to think.  I can't sing yet and at church today they sang the song, The Old Rugged Cross.  The chorus had me thinking.  The words, I will cherish the old rugged cross, till my trophies at last I lay down.  I was sitting there thinking, what trophies do I have that I need to let go of.  And I don't mean the trophies my kids get after tournaments and things.  But what are those things that I make more important than everything. What is more important than my relationship with Christ?  We all have things, what was mine.  As everyone sang I thought about that.  I admit, food use to be a trophy.  Even with as hungry as I've been the last few days because of my jello diet, I haven't worshiped food and put it above everything else, but sadly there has been times in my life that I have.  Money is a trophy.  Always wish we had more so we can do this or that.  There was a time it consumed my thoughts more than anything.  Paying this bill or that bill.  Using it to purchase things.  And most of the time probably things we didn't need.  If we look hard we all have trophies.  Or maybe you don't have to look hard, just look honestly.  I know I'm looking at myself today, I have trophies I need to lay down.