Patience

August 16, 2008 at 9:54 pm (Blessings)
Tags: , , , ,

This blog is about the good things I find in life. I really should blog about it more because I have so many good things in my life…which may be why I have such little time to blog about them.

Today I was amazed at my own patience. There has been quite a bit of bickering and arguing going on in my house lately. With the car breaking down, Sean passing away, Sharing a small house with my mother, Kevin breaking his thumb, medical bills, my own sleep deprivation and the new demands of having a child tensions are high and life is hectic, it’s to be expected. Not that this makes it okay, just normal.

Well, I don’t want to be normal. I want to be better than that and I know that myself and my family can be. For the past few days I have walked away from numerous arguements. Things that usually would have escalated have instead gone no where because I’ve refused to take part in it. This is so not like me, and I realized that today after walking away from an arguement.

I never realized how much having a harmonious home means to me. I’m changing the way I’ve been for as long as I can remember so that I can have the peace in my home that I so strongly desire. Of course, I think walking away from things may just cause them to build up within myself so things will need to be addressed at some point, but for now the thing I want most is a peaceful place for myself and those I love.

I thought I would have felt more resentment towards the people I’ve been bickering with, and sometimes I do feel like I’m the only one really making an effort to put an end to the fighting, but I’m surprised at how much patience I have. Sometimes I feel like I’m letting myself down, putting up with things I’ve always said I would never put up with in my home, but earlier this week I finally turned things over to the Lord and maybe that is why I have found myself with so much patience.

Sometimes it only takes one person to make a difference, I suppose I’m the one with the power to be that person. I just pray that the Lord will allow me to keep from being a doormat and letting others walk all over me just to keep from arguing.

I’ll keep it up as long as I can, though somehow I need to get everyone else on the band wagon so it’s not just my responsibility. After all, school starts in a couple weeks which will be just one more added stress for me every day and will strain the patience the Lord has blessed me with.

I love my family and all that they do for me every day. I’ve been blessed with a wonderfully diverse family and they keep it interesting to say the least.

Comments

A Time to Say Goodbye

July 27, 2008 at 4:42 pm (Difficult Times)
Tags: , , , , ,

We went to Sean’s funeral yesterday. It was lovely. It was very light-hearted compared to other funerals I’ve been to. Most of the flower arraingements had  sun flowers in them. I really liked that. I love sun flowers and I hope I can have them at my funeral some day.

Kevin is holding up so well. I’m really proud of him, I just hope that it’s not him bottling things up. I’ve asked him to let it out if there’s anything and he assures me he’s okay.

When Sean was dying, after he had decided he didn’t want to fight cancer anymore, he just kept asking his family if they were alright saying “Are you alright? Are you alright with this? I’m really gonna go here.” He was so concerned about everyone else. I think it was good for everyone to be willing to let him go. He said something so powerful before dying. After he asked his dad if it was okay for him to go his dad asked him if he was alright with it. Sean said “Yes it’s okay, I know where I’m going and I’m worthy to go there.”

He also said something to Amy before dying. She walked into the room and his face just lit up and he said “There she is! There’s my wife, the center of my universe, directing traffic!” What a touching way for her to remember that she is the center of his universe.

My heart truly goes out to Amy. How hard it must be to crawl into bed alone. How difficult to take care of Sean’s medical bills must be, or to go to church alone. Sean will have turned 30 in September, I imagine that day will be a difficult one for her.

They were married only about a month longer than Kevin and I have been. I can’t imagine what a short time with Kevin would leave me feeling. She’s strong, and I hope she clings to the church instead of rejecting it. I’m sure she’s the type of person that will hold strong.

Sean had a police escort, and salute for his funeral. They presented Amy with a flag. How special for Sean to get the respect that he deserves.

He’ll be greatly missed. We’ve been so richly blessed to have Sean in our lives.

Sean wrote a poem, it’s touching.

Friends in life we sometimes find
Their spirits great among mankind.
We see through their body worn
To find a hero, whom now we morn.
Yet still alive through memories
This friend we adore has been set free.
Free from body that kept them here
Close to our hearts, but far from our tears.
For in fighting each day their life became
An inspiration for all who saw their pain.
Blessed may they be as now in peace
Their bodies are filled with joy complete.

 

We love you Sean Sivertsen.

1 Comments

Moved On

July 24, 2008 at 8:05 am (Difficult Times)
Tags: , , , , ,

Sean died yesterday…sometime around 1 or 2 pm. Kevin is holding up amazingly well, he was glad he got the chance to say goodbye. How grateful I am for the plan of salvation. I am so grateful that Kevin and I know death is not a bad thing. Sad perhaps, but not bad.

I wonder who was there in heaven to greet Sean and show him around. He’s touched so many lives that I’m sure there were a lot of people to welcome him home. I’m so glad he’s no longer in pain, I pray Amy will be able to grieve in a healthy way.

As terrible a thought as this may be, I hope Kevin dies before me because I never want Kevin to go through what Amy is going through.

Please offer prayers on Sean’s family’s behalf. I know Heavenly Father is very aware of them right now, but every little bit helps.

Rest in peace, Sean.

Comments

A Hero

July 23, 2008 at 8:39 am (Blessings, Difficult Times)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My husband has a friend from high school, Sean, who is a real life hero.

9 years ago Sean was diagnosed with melanoma, skin cancer, on his back/shoulder. He had it removed and went through chemo and more or less beat it. He was 21 at the time. Shortly after that, I’m not really sure of when, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He went through treatments and beat that as well. I first met him when he was 26. Even before I knew that he’d beaten cancer twice, I was absolutely amazed at how full of life and how positive this guy was.

Sean worked for years with special needs kids. That in itself requires a very special person and personality. Sean was the epitome of this person. He just seemed always happy and it was pretty well contagious. He was larger than life every time I saw him. He always seemed on top of the world. There was always something positive in every situation.

He met and married a wonderful companion for him, Amy. She is just as high on life as Sean is. I love watching the two together because they are always joking and give a good feeling just being around them. They’re always laughing, always smiling. She had a 5 or 6 year old son at the time from a previous marriage and once Sean and Amy were married, Sean was proud to call her son his.

Within a year of meeting him, his doctors discovered a growth on his lung. I believe this is around the time that Sean was able to receive a priesthood blessing from one of the general authorities. It was decided that the doctors needed to perform surgery and look at, and possibly remove, the growth. Once they got in, they could not find anything. There was no growth, no abnormalities. They couldn’t explain it. I believe it was the miracle healing power of the priesthood, but that is me.

Sean joined the police acadamey, he started out in dispatch but what he really wanted was to be an officer and so that was going to be his goal. Nothing could bring him down. He began training, but shortly after beginning training he started having migraines that just wouldn’t ease up.

Finally, the migraines got so bad that Sean went to the hospital and what they discovered were many, many tumors in his brain. There was one specifically causing the migraines. When they took it out they discovered it was the size of a racket ball. Within only a couple of days Sean was doing so well that he was back home to finish recovering.

Sean continued to go through the police acadamey and to train. He got into the best shape of his life, running 5+ miles a day, up hill. He had muscles built and looked so healthy and wonderful. He graduated from the acadamey and became an officer. But within months of having his first brain surgery he had to go in for a 2nd surgery to remove some more tumors. That was difficult for him but he pulled through. He was going through radiation therapy and fighting to beat this cancer like all the other times. Within a few months of that surgery he had to have a 3rd surgery and more aggressive treatments. Sean was fighting with all he had to beat this, and still he seemed to be more positive about life than myself, with no problems close to cancer.

It was also discovered that Sean has 2 tumors on his spine. One, towards the bottom of the spine, has atrophied one of  his legs. The other is farther up on his spine. It seems like no matter how hard Sean fights, the cancer is stronger and won’t leave him be.

One night Sean had multiple grand mal seizures. One of the seizures he quit breathing for at least 6 minutes. Amy was terrified and said he was totally blue. When that seizure stopped Sean did not know who he was. He didn’t know who Amy was and he was fighting her because he was so freaked out. She couldn’t leave him to go get the phone because he kept trying to walk through a big mirror they have in their bedroom. Eventually she was able to get the phone. The ambulance was busy with a “real emergency” and didn’t have time to come get “the seizure guy.” Amy’s dad came to help but Sean was fighting and didn’t want to get in the car. Can’t say that I blame him, he still didn’t know who he was or who these people were. Her dad then said, “Officer Sivertsen, get in the car!” and Sean immediately quit fighting, walked over to the car and got into the back seat so they could drive him to the hospital, where he had his 5th or 6th seizure.

Sean has gone downhill recently. He requested not to be taken to the hospital, but to just be allowed to die at home. Sean is finished fighting. I certainly do not blame him. Kevin and I drove down late at night to see him because Amy was afraid he might not make it through the night. I was heartbroken to see him so sick. He was so frail, he was like a bag of bones. He hardly had the energy to talk and his logic was not very logical. He was hallucinating. He got to meet our little boy for the first time.

Despite all of this, Amy and Sean found the good in things. Even though Sean was hallucinating, he said some things that really touched Amy and she shared them with us with a smile and even some laughing and joking. These two are amazing.

I am so grateful for the gospel and that Sean and Amy were sealed in the temple. Amy says she knows that Sean has a big job to do in heaven, and even though she doesn’t want to be left alone, she knows she’ll see him again and that he is going home. She knows death is not the end. She knows that families can truly be together forever.

Sean did make it through the night, Amy says she will call us if his condition changes. As much as I want him to stick around for Amy’s sake, I hope that he will go when he’s ready. I am so blessed to have known him and gotten to spend time with him. He has been such an inspiration and the world will feel a great loss when he’s gone, but he needs to go home and have a body as healthy as his attitude and that matches his outlook on the world.

Comments

Weekend at the Lake

July 14, 2008 at 2:39 pm (Blessings, Vacation)
Tags: , , , , , , ,

First of all, what a blessing sun block is! Kevin, Chris, Spencer and I went to Bear Lake for the weekend with the in-laws. The sun usually bakes me within the first 30 minutes of arriving to the lake. However, I took care to make sure sunscreen was applied liberally, especially Saturday when we spend all day at the beach and playing on the boat. Now that I am home, I see I’ve returned with sun-kissed cheeks, arms, knees and feet but crispy, I am not. Chris, however, would put a lobster to shame, I think he is border blisters. Poor guy didn’t do so well applying the sun block and he only applied it once. Kevin did an excellent job not getting burnt. However, his sister assisted him in applying sunblock to his back and now he has sunburnt blotches.

Kevin did a fantastic job water skiing. He tried kneeboarding too but wasn’t as successful. I have done neither, but through my observations knee boarding looks much more difficult. While I didn’t see anyone crash while water skiing, the crashes I witnessed while people were kneeboarding look disturbingly painful! I have videos, and if I ever get the time to put those onto the computer I’ll post them here. I’m glad everyone was safe and there were no accidents.

Camping with Spencer for the first time went pretty smoothly. That little boy does not want to miss a thing so he didn’t sleep much but he was in a fantastic mood, considering, anyway! He also did a great job being passed around so much. Hopefully as he gets older he will continue to enjoy new faces. He did get sunburnt just ever so slightly on his cheeks but not too bad. I’m glad it wasn’t worse. He waded into the lake and I helped him sit in it for a few minutes. We also have that on video. He looked so darn cute in his swim trunks and water shirt and sun hat! He’s going to be a lady killer.

I had a good time talking with my mother-in-law on the beach. I’m glad I have a mother-in-law I can get a long with and enjoy her company. She has so many wonderful grandma ideas, it will be so fun when Spencer is older and can make some of those ideas a reality. One night we made bead bracelets. I’ll take some pictures and post those up.

The morning of Kevin’s birthday we made eggs, sausage, bacon, hashbrowns, and french toast. It turned out totally delicious. That night we had dutch oven. My mother-in-law made some kind of chicken tortilla dish that was delicious. The potatoes my sister-in-law brought did not look appetizing at all. She had cut them and then froze them so they were BLACK! Of course I tried eating some anyway and they weren’t bad, though I could taste zero seasoning so they seemed like pretty plain potatoes. We made dutch oven s’mores. They turned out lovely, though we’ve learned that they need to be eaten while warm or else the marshmallows get crunchy, interesting.

I enjoyed our first night there were we had tin foil dinners. We used potatoes, onions, bell peppers, radishes, cheese, and hot dogs in them. Not to mention plenty of salt and pepper. They were delicious! Then we sat around the fire and talked, joked, and just enjoyed the evening and the company.

I’m also grateful for how well my allergies behaved themselves. I have extremely bad hay fever and there was cotton all over the campground. It was so thick that it went up to my ankles when I had to walk through it, and when the wind blowed it seemed like it was snowing. But aside from a few sneezing fits, only a couple stuffy/runny noses and hardly any itchy eyes, it was great. I am unable to take my allergy medication because of nursing Spencer so this year has been a little difficult for me. I’m so glad I was able to enjoy the weekend without killer allergies.

I also have to thank whoever invented indoor plumbing. I will rough it as rough as you want, except for the toilet. I really like my flushable toilets! I know how silly this is, but when I was 6 or 7 my parents built a house. During construction we just had an outhouse until the plumbing was finished, which we moved in before all of that was totally complete. I hated going to the outhouse early in the mornings and late at night. But one time I opened the door and there were spider webs with their accompanying spiders all over the place, including a web made in the whole of the seat! I was absolutely mortified. Since then I have had an issue using outhouses. To make it worse, I saw an episode of X-Files where there’s this white, albino, creature thing that gets into something. While I don’t remember exactly what it was, my 10-year-old brain remembers it as looking like the catch basin of an outhouse. This thing ate people, my memory tells me. Whether this is really what the episode showed or not, I have since been even MORE scared to use an outhouse! And I certainly don’t like squatting in the wilderness either! I love my husband so much for making sure that we had flushable toilets while camping, and that’s not the first time either.

So it was a great weekend, we had a fabulous time and are looking forward to going back next year!

Comments

A much needed evening

June 20, 2008 at 11:50 pm (Date Night)
Tags: , ,

Tonight Kevin surprised me with a much needed date. Oma took Spencer for us, so appreciated. :) We played miniature golf, received a coupon that will give us a free game next time we go. We went to the place out in Providence. It was all good except for when the guy started mowing his land just next to the holes we were on. I did great not letting my hayfever get out of control but I ended up with a few rashes on my arms and hands from it. We went to CAL Ranch where I found a hat I really wanted. It’s a Stetson Crushable hat. Love it. Pictures later. Then we went to Maverick and got their frozen yogurt. It was Very Strawberry and Original Tart. It was like eating strawberry lemonade frozen yogurt and it was delicious!

We went and got dinner. I had a scrumptious chicken caesar salad, burbon chicken, cauliflower, greenbeans, and beef stroganoff. Yummy :)

Afterward, we were supposed to stop and get a Redbox to enjoy at home but we both knew there’s no way we woulda stayed awake. We got home, I wrote a paper for my Art Symposium class on a horrible group called Root Beer Reunion and then crawled into bed shortly after 9pm for a nap before officially going to bed. Oma already had Spencer asleep in his cradle so that was WAY nice!

I really enjoyed the date and getting to spend time with my husband. The only thing that would make this night even better is if Spencer would go right back to sleep. I woke up to feed him, he couldn’t even stay awake. However, he is currently kicking away in his cradle, wide awake.

Comments

Beau Jest

June 19, 2008 at 11:39 pm (Date Night)
Tags:

Tonight, my husband, Kevin, and I attended a play called Beau Jest. It was quite an amusing play with a serious story. The main character is Jewish, with very Jewish parents. She begins to date a nice young man who is not Jewish. After she tells her parents about it, they freak out. They freak out so much that she tells them she broke up with her boyfriend, Chris, and then continues to date him on the sly.

After she “breaks up” her mother begins setting her up on numerous dates and to stop that, she invents a boyfriend whom she met at a friend’s wedding. This invented boyfriend, David, is a Jewish Surgeon which thrills her parents. After hounding her for quite some time to meet said boyfriend, she calls an escort service and hires an actor, Bob, to play David. He’s a hit with the family, or the parents at the very least. While it was supposed to be just a one time gig, he comes back again and again to play David. Remember, this whole time she is still dating Chris, who does not approve of what she is doing but supports her anyway.

Eventually she falls in love with Bob, who plays David. She begins dating him, however, she does not tell Chris about it and after telling her mom that David had proposed (without telling Bob until the last second). Naturally, everything spirals out of control and unravels in one scene, which was my husband’s favorite.

 Her parents are so wounded by the fact that she would lie to them that her father has a “warning” heart attack and her mother almost can’t speak to her. In the end they display acceptance, they agree to set everything out on the table and be upfront and honest with each other instead of holding back, always worrying about another person worrying.

I enjoyed going to this show with my husband. Oma, my mom, kept Spencer, our 3 month old, so we were able to go which I trully appreciate. I love going to plays and other performances but don’t get to go as much as I’d like.

I am grateful that there are still people that enjoy performing live theatre. Not everything is slipping to movies as I once heard an older couple saying. I don’t think theatre will ever disappear because there are too many people that enjoy a live performance.

Comments

And so it begins

June 10, 2008 at 9:18 pm (Announcement)

I have been richly blessed in my life. I spend time at the end of the day just recognizing my blessings. Yesterday, after a conversation with a friend I felt like I can’t continue to keep my blessings to myself.

So this is where I will share the happy things in my life. The things that make my life as good as it is. Hopefully it will help others look for the silver lining and not pass it up just because they are expecting gold. Please feel free to share with us the things that make your life happy, it may help others recognize the little things in their life that makes it all worth while.

Comments