Autumn Calvert

Category: Faith

  • Fresh Pain and Paint

    One day several years ago, my husband and I decided our home needed a little “pop”.  From that moment, we have been working on painting different areas of the house.  Each time we finish a room, we sit back and enjoy the rewards of all of our hard work.  As time passes, we walk into a room without a thought to the colors around us.

    Then, day before yesterday, I walked through our beautifully painted living room to our pantry.  I reached in to get something, bumped the brand new bottle of Ragu, and got nailed on the top of the foot.  I stood there a moment wondering whether or not I needed to call for help or just suffer for another couple of hours till my husband got home from work.  After a while, the pain stopped, I limped around for a while, and now, I’m back to normal.

    I know it seems like a stretch to compare these two concepts.  They are such a contrast to one another.  However weak the link, I have been pondering on this idea of how people just do not understand a feeling they have never had.  Before my husband and I painted our home, I had never painted, thus not understanding that particular feeling of accomplishment.  Before that Ragu bottle fell on my foot, I never understood how people feel like they want to throw up when they hurt themselves severely.  You just do not know till you feel it.

    Then the unexpected happens.  Like a sharpened pencil, you write those memories down in your mind, the feelings become dull just like that pencil.  They are still there, but they have lost the intensity because of time.

    I do have a point to all of this.  We go through this pain and triumph for a reason.  Maybe for many reasons.  I do believe, however, that part of the reason is to be able to not only help someone out, but to also really and truly comprehend the gravity of the situation.  And though it may not be fresh pain or paint, we can still relate.

     

  • The Mountain

    “Son, we have talked about this!  Do not play with the trash can lid!  Come on, lets play with your cars.”  As usual, Asher turns around and goes right back to the trash can, and the conversation begins again.

     

    Though my child is much like others in that he continually falls into temptation and fails to resist, he has always seemed a bit different.  When all the other kids his age were turning over and trying to crawl, he was perfectly satisfied to lie on the floor and stare at the lights.  When his peers began to crawl and pull up, he was content to push with his legs and scoot across the floor on the back of his head.  He would not even pull up to a sitting position on his own till he was 12 months.  At 14 months, he had gained the ability to scoot across the floor on his booty.  He had finally mastered pulling himself to a standing position in his crib.

     

    By his second Christmas, he began to toddle about most uncertainly.  At 17 months, he was finally walking.  We would silently giggle at his gait, frequently stating he looked like Fred Sanford.  It was cute.

     

    Then, the falls started.  One big bad one a week causing a monster sized goose egg on his forehead.  Same spot every time.  His new doctor had consistently commented on his head size.  After all of the falling down, strange gait, and overall wobbly walking motion, she scheduled an MRI.

     

    This week, we went in for the test.  Of corse, a 19 month old and a MRI machine are not a match made in heaven.  For the test, they had to sedate him.  I kept telling him it would be ok, and that the drugs they would give him would just make him very sleepy.  One mommy, one daddy, and 3 nurses held him down for the IV.  He may be a bit behind in some things, but that boy has one serious fighting spirit.

     

    After the test, Asher woke up loopy.  It was kind of funny the way he was playing with the nurse’s name badge though she insisted he stop.  I held him in my arms and waited until they said it was time to go home.

     

    A couple of days later, I called the doctor to see if they had the results.  I was not expecting the news:  he has a cyst on his right temporal lobe and a small amount of water on his brain.  WHAT????????  This test was supposed to come back NORMAL!!  I asked a few questions to the doctor, told her thank you, hung up, and called my husband.

     

    If you have ever been sucker punched in the stomach, you will understand the feeling I had when they told me the results.  I wanted to throw up, scream, cry, and pitch a justified fit.  However, the only thing I could do was dial my husband’s phone number.  I held it together for maybe 3 minutes before the tears came.  I called my sister and she kept saying, “Autumn!  Calm down!  I can’t understand you!”  It is all consuming fear.  It is just all consuming.

     

    Once I pulled myself together, my husband had gotten home from work.  “I’m going to the store to get diapers.”  I drove along in a numb state.  At the grocery store, I pushed my cart to the familiar aisle, stared at the diapers, and pushed back the tears.  “Autumn, do not loose it in the grocery store!!  You have to see these people all of the time!!  HOLD IT TOGETHER!!”

     

    I left  the grocery store, made it home, walked inside, and crumbled to pieces in my husband’s arms.  How could my precious little boy have something growing in his brain that should not be there?  I wanted to fix it.  I wished I had the power to reach into his head and remove that damned cyst and water so he would be ok.  But, I couldn’t.  All I could do was stand there.  “Function, Autumn…YOU HAVE TO FUNCTION!”  And, so I did with the added weight of a rock in my gut and a knot in my throat.

     

    At this point, we were uncertain of whether the cyst was benign or malignant.  We did not know what it meant as far as his development was concerned.  All we knew was the basics, and the basics were just not good enough.

     

    The next morning, my very distressed husband called a friend who is a neurologist.  He was so kind.  This wonderful doctor actually pulled the MRI results, read them, and called my husband to tell him the cyst was not malignant.  Praise God!!!  He also stated the water around his brain could be causing the developmental delays, but there wasn’t enough to warrant a stint.  However, Asher’s neurologist would have to read the MRI himself to decide.  We still have to wait till the end of June to find out.

     

    In the meantime, Asher had a follow-up visit with this primary doctor to check his ears.  We talked for a while and made tons of appointments to help out my little man.  First one was the ENT.  After our visit there, the ENT decides Ash needs tubes.  This news seemed like rose petals and bon-fire songs compared to earlier in the week.

     

    So, now, we just push forward with doctors appointments for vision, hearing, early intervention, neurologists, and out patient surgery.

     

    My beautiful, wonderful, sometimes sneaky little boy is the highlight to my life.  He is the underscore to my lovely poems.  He is the smile on my face, and sometimes, the roll of my eyes.  My husband and I will push down the mountains if it means he can live a happy and healthy life.  Though we will have to call in the reserves to help us push and call on God to give us the strength and faith to keep going, those damn mountains are coming down!  Of this, I am quite certain.

     

  • A Story from Mama

    A few years ago, my mother came for a visit.  Whenever she comes, we always make a trip to the local Bible book store.  She likes the Gaither music books.  During this visit, she found a Bible she really liked.  It was one of those cool designed thin lines.  She really loved that Bible.

    My mother and step-dad go to a little country church in South Carolina.  If you have ever been in a country Baptist church, you have seen this one.  They are a tight little community of believers who truly activate the idea of prayer.  One Sunday, she and Charlie, her husband, went to Sunday school as they had many times before.  One of the younger members commented on how much he liked her Bible.  Mom said she sat there the entire time thinking about whether or not she should give him the Bible.  Right before the end of class, mom felt a voice in her heart telling her to give him the Bible.  So, after class, she walked up to him and said, “Here, Mike, take the Bible.  I want to give it to you.”  She said his eyes welled up with tears.  “Really?”  “Of course,” said she as she handed him the Bible.  Mike didn’t have a melt down, but she said she could tell he was really touched by the gesture.

    The next week at Sunday school, he asked her to write her name in the front of the Bible.  She wrote, “To: Mike, From: Charlie and Patsy”.  Then he began to tell her something she did not know.  With tears welling up in his eyes again, he said, “Patsy, I don’t think you know this, but I can’t read, but I have decided to let my girls read to me from this Bible every night.”  My mom told him it was a great idea and that most parents do not read the Bible with their children at all.  They would be making a great memory together.

    Every Sunday after that, as they were filing into church, he would catch mom’s eye and hold up his Bible.  Mom told me this story, and I was touched to the point of tears.

    Earlier this week, she told me of a man in their church who had been in a motorcycle accident, and she asked me to pray for him.  He had 3 little girls at home.  Tonight, she told me that he died.   She also told me that this man was Mike.  Mike.  The same man who she gave the Bible to a few years ago.

    My mother has always been someone who gives to those who are hurting, and this time is not unlike others, but much different at the same time.  Mom and Charlie took food over to Mike’s mother.  As soon as mom got there, Mike’s mother immediately began to talk about the Bible.  She said, “If you had given him a million dollars, it wouldn’t have meant as much to him as that Bible did.  He cherished it.”  She went on to say, “I want you to know I now have that Bible, and I will cherish it the rest of my life”.

    It made me wonder.  While the printers were printing off the pages of that Bible, did they know how much it would mean to someone?  While the binders were watching the Bible go down the line, or while the shipping department was handling the Bible and packing it up for delivery, did they know what new story of God’s love and gifts would be told through this Bible?  I certainly didn’t know when we purchased the Bible.  I don’t believe my mother knew it either.  It just goes to show that the contents of what is written in the Bible isn’t bound by bonded leather.  These truths live, breathe, and move without words.  Does someone need to be an educated theologian to enjoy God’s blessings?  Can someone who does not know how to read the written word be touched by God? Should we be more aware of God’s word that is written on our hearts?

    No one knows but God the nature of Mike’s heart.  But, I will say this, my mom certainly experienced something supernatural with one simple gesture towards this man.  Legacies of Christ did not stop with His written word…these works continue through us.  I hope we can all be authors of God’s word by listening to His still small voice and going ahead and doing the strange in order to become a part of something strangely amazing.