There have been so many lessons that Lydia has taught me and pretty much each day I think of more and more. However, at times, when I sit down to write, I struggle with what lesson I want to write about or the lessons have escaped my mind. So I asked my husband this morning what lessons he has learned from her. He replied saying that he has learned a lot but have not applied many of them. I had to laugh because I try to apply them, but I also fall short of many of these lessons. I did find, however, that it has been very good to write them down and see all of these things that she has been teaching me and our family over the past twenty seven months.
I am sure that if you write down the lessons that you learn with any situation, it would be very eye-opening to you as well. I would encourage you to. That is why we make mistakes. God wants us to learn from our mistakes. He is so very patient with us and often times teaches us the same lesson over and over until we do learn. Some are easier to pick up on and others take us a long time; maybe we will never get it in this lifetime. I am thankful that God loves me enough to put me in situations to learn and grow. He does it for our good. I have a hard time with that most of the time (just swing by on any given morning when I am attempting to feed Lydia) but when I have the opportunity to reflect it is very eye opening!
Today the lesson that I want to share with you is about thinking outside the box. I have to say somewhere in my life this was like a coined phrase. It was the newest bandwagon to jump on. I think, if I recall correctly, Taco Bell had that motto of thinking outside the bun. But this is no bandwagon to jump on, there is no catchy slogan, this is just life. And we all need to think outside the box to get things accomplished sometimes.
This has been shown to me over and over. Just because something has worked for one person, does not mean that it will work for Lydia. Just because this formula has been proven over and over does not mean this will work for the next person. Because you had good results with many kids, does not mean that your 100th child will experience the same great result. We are all different.
My eyes were first opened to this when we were in the hospital. I thought medicine was a science. I thought there was a medicine for this particular ailment, a formula to get the correct amount, and you give it and poof your condition is better. I also thought things had good fixes for them and they could make just about anything better. After all, you are always hearing about the new advances. I quickly learned that this is so far from the truth. And it makes sense if you think about it. We are all different. Each body is going to react to it differently. The results are for the majority of the group. So what happens when you don't fit in to that majority? Well, you experiment until something works. You think outside of the box and look at all the unlikely possibilities. As frustrating as this was, it taught me a lot! I am sure you can imagine.
We experienced this over and over with Lydia. One night after her connection surgery she was very sick. Her heart rate was over 200 and she would not settle down. She had a blood transfusion, medicine upon medicine and nothing was working. They had the talk with us that they were unsure if there was anything further they could do. They had called in the surgeon to attempt intubating her. However, because of the surgery that she just had this was an extremely risky procedure. I had to call my husband home from work because we did not know if she would make it through the night. I remember sitting there with the doctor and just running through every possibility. She looked at me and said let's try everything we can so we don't have to try to reintubate. At a last ditch effort we laid her flat. She is not ever suppose to be flat because of her new anatomy. Instantly her heart rate came down and she was sleeping, soundly. It was a miracle. But thinking out of the box, trying something that did not make sense worked. We did not give up, we kept going! I am glad the doctor was there because they would have never believed me otherwise.
This past week we experienced the same thing. When getting her braces fitted we were told that she would take off walking and in a day or two things would be good. Not our experience at all. She started locking her legs and turning her toes inward. After asking questions and going with our gut, we found that she was fighting the braces. We then discovered because we had to go up two sizes in shoes, it was too much weight for her small little legs. We got a new kind of shoes and she is doing awesome. Thinking outside of the box and realizing there is no magic formula, there is no cookie cutter. We must experiment and try everything to find something to work for her.
I can think of example upon example of this. But it has given me a new way of thinking. It has shown me to not judge, to keep on going, to never give up. She has shown me a new way of looking at things. When someone says that it can't be done, there is a way that it can, you just have not looked hard enough. What a great life lesson to learn. None of my kids are cut from the same mold, even though they have the same parents. Everything works a little differently for each person. Never give up, think outside of the box until you find a solution. Thanks Lydia for once again teaching you mommy a very important life lesson.
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