Walking With Grace

CRACK. I was fumbling around for some bagels to throw in the toaster early yesterday morning when the kitchen went white. Strobe-light white. Light is silent (according to my non-scientific opinion), but this light felt loud. I blinked at the toaster for the next couple of seconds, philosophizing over the implications of a silent flash. Was that heat lightning? Can heat lightning be that bright? Does heat lightning preclude thunder within a certain proximity? Can lightning even occur without thunder? Thankfully the absentee thunder arrived and prevented my mind from wandering to any more obscurely existential questions. Said thunder also reminded me that I’d burned up valuable seconds that I should have been using to get to our bedroom.

We’ve learned from experience that I have around 60 seconds between seeing a light trigger and having a seizure – only enough time to find a place to sit or lie down. I’d just wasted an indeterminate number of these seconds pondering the implications of noiseless lightning, when what I’d really needed was to get very far away from all the condo windows in case the rogue lightning strike turned into a rare NorCal thunderstorm.

I shielded my eyes with my hand and groped down the stairs toward our bedroom. Somehow I made it to the bed and tugged off my glasses just before the seizure started.

Between that seven-minute seizure (possibly my record for 2020), the heat wave that impacted Hillside’s second week of outdoor church services, and the pandemic anxiety that manifests in so many aspects of all our lives, the “Verse of the Day” from my Bible app this morning seemed particularly relevant:

“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.” ~James 1:2-3

My health status often makes me feel like a magnet for “troubles of any kind,” so I have to remind myself that Ivan and I have been spared many trials that other people experience daily. I do excel at viewing my troubles as “opportunities,” though. The problem is that I don’t view them as the kind of opportunities James was writing about.

Unfortunately, I tend to view my troubles as opportunities for complaining rather than rejoicing. Counting yesterday’s seizure (and ensuing migraine), or the weekend’s stifling heat as opportunities for joy did not cross my mind. True, it crossed my mind today as I read those verses. But that’s just my point. Offering “retroactive praise” is relatively easy, since I can wait until I’m feeling physically and emotionally stable before I compliment God on a finished product I can already see. Giving thanks when the physical and emotional odds are against me and I can’t see God producing anything good yet? That is a skill I desperately need to cultivate.

So while I doubt San Jose has more spontaneous thunderstorms in its immediate future, and while I hope our  heat wave relents in time for Hillside’s services next weekend, I’m positive that God will unleash other surprises to keep honing my ability to praise Him in the moment. Retroactive praise is important, but present-tense praise is essential for developing that all-important character trait, endurance. That character trait might only feel good once I’m surveying my life from the finish line, but I’m grateful that God continues providing opportunities to consider troubles “great joy” – whether I like those opportunities or not.

Prologue

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…it was a week of strategy, it was a week of speculation…it was a fresh start, it was a final chapter…it was a time of excitement, it was a time of anxiety…it was a period of imagining a golden future and praying furtively against catastrophes that were equally probable. In short, the events of Moving Week felt so much like news headlines that they must be compared – for better or worse – in superlatives.

There was a kitten with a patched eye and a calico cat with a frightened face in an apartment on Charlotte Drive. There was a black cat with a blank face in a condominium on Black Onyx Court. The feline monarchs of both residences were absolutely certain that things in general were settled forever.

***

As much as Ivan and I tried to anticipate every possible moving variable, our two cats remained wild cards. We knew they would accompany us to my parents’ condo, but we knew very little beyond that. You see, my parents already have a cat. While the Crosby/Utomo families have integrated two kitties several times (usually we add a kitten to a pre-existing cat), no one has mixed three pre-existing cats. But in spite of this uncharted territory, we could make some predictions based on personality:

• Zelda, our extroverted kitten, would be unphased and probably end up dominating the other two
• Daisy, our emotionally fragile cat, would probably have a psychiatric crisis but eventually adjust to her new environment
• Scheherazade, my parents’ older cat, might be too apathetic to care about the two invaders. [Note: Her name is pronounced “Shuh-HAIR-uh-zahd,” which is a famous piece of classical music with a violin solo. I’ll let you guess who named her…;)]

My parents (and Anna and Robert) agreed these were fairly educated guesses. How hard could integrating three non-aggressive cats be? We concluded our moving day under the golden impression that worst (i.e. my TBI triggers) was behind us.

And then Scheherazade happened.

‘Herazade is a 14 pound, eight-year-old black cat. Daisy weighs ten pounds and Zelda weighs four, so she’s the size of both our cats combined. Her girth discourages physical effort of any kind, so we’ve come to know and love her as a furry mass that sprawls in various sunbeams around the house or lumbers over to her food bowl for a snack. Occasionally she’ll get up and scream to be held.

We’ve integrated enough cats to know better than to turn them loose immediately. After giving Zelda and Daisy a peaceful night in the “Cat Sanctuary” (aka our first-floor bedroom), we thought it was time for Zelda to meet ‘Herazade. Daisy had lodged herself under a corner of our bed and was unlikely to dislodge herself for several days, given her previous psychiatric history.

‘Herazade’s unseemly girth was sprawled in her “Cup” – a sort of UFO-shaped cat bed stationed in the second-floor living/dining area. Mom found the Cup at Costco last year. It was the only bed large enough to accommodate ‘Hereazade’s size, plus it came with a scratching post. Ivan and I had no trouble coaxing Zelda up from the Cat Sanctuary for a visit. Not only is Zelda hyper-intelligent for a 5-month-old kitten (I blame it on her being half Siamese), but she matches her intelligence with an equal – if not greater – dose of obnoxiousness. Most kittens would have approached the unfamiliar giant tentatively, but Zelda marched straight up to her drowsy victim and bopped her across the face.

This did not go well.

‘Herazade – the cat we believed incapable of anything more than an ungainly amble – shot over the edge of her Cup and across the length of the second floor, driving Zelda before her. If her vocalizations had been transliterated into a human movie, the movie would have been rated R. Zelda slid under a china cabinet just in the nick of time. If she’d been a quarter of a second later, we might well have spent the night cleaning up kitten fur. ‘Herazade devoted the next 15 minutes to screaming and trying to jam herself under said cabinet, most likely to exact a blood penalty for invading her territory. Zelda should be grateful there is a marked difference in spaces that are feasible for 4 lb. kittens vs. 14. lb. cats.

As for Zelda the Indomitable – the kitten who’d terrorized Daisy since arriving in our apartment at eight weeks old – this same kitten had become the terrorizee. Neither Mom, Ivan, nor I could do much about ‘Herazade till Dad got home, but after he removed her and restored order we all admitted that our Worst of Times was far from over.

“Well, what should we do next?” Mom was smiling at me over her Five Cheese Rigatoni. She always cooked the Rigatoni on special occasions, and tonight was our official “welcome dinner.” I looked up at her and shrugged.

“Why is it always me?” I’d been having a terrible week with my TBI symptoms, and as much as I’d have loved to add “Cat Heroine” to my resume, I wasn’t feeling particularly heroic.

“You always know what to do with the other cats. Besides – you got Daisy to get along with Zelda.” I resented the fact that she was right.

“Well, I can’t deal with this right now. Ivan – you’re going to have to take this one for me.” Poor Ivan never had any cats growing up. He didn’t even want to get a cat after we got married. He definitely didn’t deserve being saddled with a cat integration right after our move. But when is TBI ever convenient? Something had to give.

“Umm…okay.” He might have skipped a beat, or his mouth might have been full of rigatoni. I tried not to guess. “Maybe we could try a cage integration…didn’t you say something about that, Grace?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, sure. That way I guess we could keep Zelda in our bedroom all day and then take her up for a visit while ‘Herazade’s in her cage. At least she wouldn’t die that way.”

Mentioning the third cat lodged under our bed was out of the question.

Like all our previous cat plans, “Cage Integration” was not as simple as it sounded. There was ‘Herezade’s profanity, to begin with. Obscenities emanated from the depths of her cat carrier, sounds which sent Zelda scrambling the first few times we introduced her to her caged attacker. As for Zelda, it took her three visits to edge close enough to peek inside. Apparently near-death experiences scar even the most intrepid kittens.

And then there were the stakeouts. Not only had we underestimated ‘Herezade’s speed and verbal ability, but we’d also underestimated her intelligence. She identified both the Cat Sanctuary and our cats’ essential items – food bowls and litter box – then waited for hours outside the Sanctuary door until one of them responded to Nature’s call. If we accidentally left the door cracked, she’d unleash a war cry and charge in using her head like a battering ram. Daisy nearly eliminated litter box trips. I wondered if all were lost.

Never discount the power of a man with his cat.

With only three days until Ivan resumed work at VCS, and under intensifying reminders that Mom and I would not referee a feline civil war, the men reengineered “Cage Integration.” Ivan is the only one who can soothe me during my worst TBI episodes, and Dad posseses a bizarre telepathic bond with ‘Herazade (formed while Mom lived with us in Riverside after the accident). If anyone possessed the emotional intelligence to de-escalate the feline feud, it was probably the men.

I confess that I was too stressed to observe “Men and Cats” Day One, but was encouraged to learn that ‘Herazade only let out a single shriek and Zelda held her ground instead of shooting off to the Sanctuary. I heartened myself to witness “Men and Cats” Day Two, but opted out of active participation lest I reverse the previous day’s good fortune. I also ignored the fact that my default “flight” and “avoidance” responses were starting to resemble the cats’. Poor ‘Herazade demonstrated an admirable amount of tact on Day Two and restricted herself to a couple of low rumbles. Zelda rewarded this restraint by waltzing around the living area, stuffing her face in ‘Herazade’s food bowl, and trying to punch her caged opponent through the carrier bars. Clearly her fear of death had worn off. Ivan finally grabbed her and shuttled her back down to the Cat Sanctuary, but one thing was very clear. It was time to go Cage Free.

“Men and Cats: Cage Free” was to be a study in stealth and surprise. Dad would soothe ‘Herazade into her carrier and Ivan would let Zelda bounce around the living area like the day before, keeping her away from the cage until we were sure her opponent wasn’t going to throw a fit. After Dad unlatched the carrier door? Mom was optimistic about Cage Free’s results, Dad and Ivan were pleasantly neutral, and I was…anxious.

Mom seemed correct about “Men and Cats: Cage Free.” ‘Herazade self-caged, for starters. Fifteen minutes hunting under sofas and chairs revealed she was already installed in the plastic cage that was integral to our 4 pm “Men and  Cats” ritual. Five days of foreign feline invasion and four days of coercion had transformed ‘Herazade into a self-caging kitty. Her pre-emptive gesture might have been more tragic if it had been less practical, but at the time we just clicked her door shut and summoned her arch-nemesis. Zelda was more than willing to repeat her antics from the day before, complete with shloshing ‘Herazade’s water all over the floor and trying to see how much big-cat food she could fit in her kitten mouth.

I looked over at Ivan and Dad. “Do you guys think this is it?”

“I don’t know – you tell me.” Dad was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the cage. “Do you think you can take it? We can wait until you leave if you want….That’s okay, girl!” It suddenly struck me as comical that he was torn between a brain-injured daughter and a traumatized cat.

“What do you think?” I looked at Ivan. He still had to deal with my brain-injured self, but at least his kitten wasn’t traumatized.

“I say we go for it. I mean, we know Zelda’s fast enough to get away. And ‘Herazade hasn’t resorted to profanity yet. But do you need to leave, Grace?”

I shook my head. “I think I’m going to stick this one out. It’s turned into some sort of bad soap opera with this whole self-caging thing.”

“Okay, then.” Dad collected himself from the tile floor. “Here goes.”

Even Mom gasped as the door swung open – thus commencing one of the more notable anticlimaxes in recent memory. ‘Herazade sat blankly in her carrier as Zelda trounced all over her beloved living room. The condo at Black Onyx Court had effectually been ceded to a five-month-old kitten – apparently out of emotional exhaustion.  Zelda’s ego ballooned to about three times its usual size after her cage-free victory, which has blessed no one but herself.

***

Epilogue

The feline monarchs of two residences, having been reduced to the single monarch and two vassals of one residence, are no longer certain that things can be settled forever.

The kitten with the patched eye rules two cats, two floors, two food bowls, and one litter box, and is mounting an attack on the elusive third floor (complete with a third food bowl and second litter box). The calico with a frightened face maintains the same fealty to her patch-faced sovereign that she originally swore in the apartment on Charlotte Drive, and still depends on said sovereign’s protection to venture past the Cat Sanctuary. The black cat with a blank face self-cages regularly and appears to have relinquished all hope of reclaiming the condominium on Black Onyx Court. The sovereign with the patched eye is enjoying the Best of Times.

Yesterday marked the end of our three-year tenure at Ascent Apartments and the beginning of our new life as condo owners. Well, not really. We did move out of our apartment, but we won’t move into our condo until November since it’s under construction. Until then, we’re back living with my ever-gracious parents.

We’ve spent roughly 20% of our five-year marriage living with my family. Most Millennials would consider this decidedly weird (if not undesirable). Most parents would expect their married children to solve their problems on their own. But God’s used my accident to modify our preferences about most aspects of life, and I’m grateful for a family who’s willing to bridge the gap between the end of our lease and the closing date on our condo.

Moving back in with my parents isn’t the only thing that’s caused me to reflect on our lives since the accident. Ivan mentioned in his last post that I was struggling with too many TBI symptoms to spend time on the blog. This was all too true. My “normal day” is streamlined for my brain to navigate as optimally as possible: I follow a detailed schedule from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed, generally do the same activities on the same days each week, and work on school assignments long before they’re due. I keep all my things in the same places around the house, and put everything back as soon as I’m finished. As long as nothing changes in any part of my routine, I function like a normal person (usually).

And then we started planning our move.

Ivan did his best to preserve some semblance of my “normal day,” but that became more difficult as time passed. It wasn’t long before my old traumatic brain injury symptoms started to resurface. While I have occasional mild “episodes” when I encounter an unexpected or open-ended situation in daily life, these are so few and far between that we often forget I have any deficits at all. Now that daily life had become a TBI trigger, Ivan and I were faced with the uncomfortable truth about how much of my brain injury I carry with me. Praise God that we’ve found a way to camouflage it most of the time, but it’s still very much there.

But this post isn’t meant to be a rehashing of my old injury. Instead, it’s a testimony to what God made possible through Ivan’s commitment to honor Him. As much as Ivan understands my disabilities, I know that living with someone whose mental age can change on a dime – or who can panic and not even know why – tests the limits of even the most committed spouse. No one can be “emotionally bulletproof” (to borrow Ivan’s analogy) all the time. But I also know that in spite of the relational and logistical odds against him, Ivan got us moved without losing control of his temper. I’m sure that if the roles were reversed, I’d have lost mine regularly. Whenever I asked Ivan why – or how – he was so patient with me, he’d remind me that God has been even more patient with him.

It would be easy to pass this off as a heartwarming anecdote about how remarkable Ivan is, but I’d like to suggest that this kind of patience is available to all of us. Yes, some people are definitely more naturally patient than others. (I would fall more on the “impatient” side.) Some people are also more forgiving and understanding than others. But no one, no matter how nice they are, is naturally patient and forgiving and supportive every single day…while doing a ridiculous amount of manual labor…while the person they’re forgiving and supporting does almost nothing. (Ivan was the packer-in-chief since I only have one good hand). That kind of patience is supernatural.

Watching Ivan succeed at the humanly impossible this past month has challenged me to reexamine my own approach to following God. I often enter a situation with good intentions, but my efforts fall short because I try to accomplish them in my own strength. Rather than making myself the judge of a given situation, I should consider things from God’s point of view and ask for His help to overcome the selfish reactions that are ready to surface at any moment.

Like Ivan told me, God has shown all of us far more patience than we’ll ever be called to show another person. Even better, God understands our human limitations and gives us more than enough grace to share with others – no matter how challenging our circumstances. 2 Cor. 8: 9 has been one of my favorite verses since I was a freshman in college, but it’s become even more vivid this past month: “And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others.”

It’s the middle of 2020, but for many of us it might feel more like the middle of an eon of undeterminable length. Our familiar boundaries of work-life and home-life have been stretched if not erased, and the hope of returning to normalcy varies by day.

There is no denying the difficulties which have engulfed our communities and our nation, but I am so thankful that God cares for each of us individually. He also wants us to keep encouraging one another, and Grace and I are thankful for your prayers and support which remind us that we have a family of believers who intercede for us consistently.

So a brief update on how Grace and I are doing: healthwise, Grace has had no major changes in her neurological conditions. For now she continues to interface with doctors and maintain a stable baseline. Grace and I are both continuing our online education, and I am preparing to start my fourth year of teaching at Valley Christian in August. Praise God for three completed years! The leaders at VCS have been working around the clock to prepare for the upcoming school year, and while many aspects of schooling remain undetermined due to circumstances, I am thankful for their godly leadership of our school; their love for God and for our students, parents, and teachers is apparent in everything they do.

Finally, Grace and I are excited to announce that we purchased a condo last month! The actual unit is still being built, with an estimated completion date of sometime in November. Our apartment lease is up early next month, so Grace and I will stay with her parents until our condo is ready. Praise God for His provision, even and especially during difficult times. A move is a big transition under normal circumstances, but Grace’s TBI makes it more difficult for her to handle. She’s asked me to share the good news about our move in the hopes that she’ll be able to share more of her perspective in the upcoming months.

Thank you again for your prayers, cards, and encouragement. Please know that every kind word and deed is noticed and so appreciated! God bless us all as we continue to pursue Him first in all aspects of our lives. I’ll conclude with one of my favorite Scripture passages, so applicable right now for many of us:

“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

Hi everyone! It’s the end of June, which marks the end of our third year San Jose. Our life is radically different than I imagined when we made the hot (un-scenic) drive from Southern California three years ago. I imagined completing occupational and physical therapy with Kaiser NorCal’s elite therapists. Once my traumatic brain injury finished healing, I thought we’d explore our new city and integrate with the communities at Valley Christian Schools, Ivan’s new job, and  Hillside Church, where my dad is a pastor.

We found an adorable apartment five minutes away from my parents’ condo so Mom could help me while Ivan was at work, and I picked up therapy right where I’d left off in Riverside. So far, so good! But as most of you know, our “ideal” fresh start lasted only a couple of months. I developed a perplexing (and as yet unresolved) seizure disorder in October 2017, which transitioned into a hybrid seizure-migraine disorder last summer.

But as I reflect upon our journey over the past three years, I’m struck by how many blessings God has showered upon us, blessings we certainly would have missed if our lives in San Jose had gone according to plan:

1. Ivan started his doctorate. He’s always wanted a terminal degree and hoped to begin one after finishing his masters, but we thought he’d have to delay that dream indefinitely when my accident transformed us into a single income family. But God opened some amazing doors soon after he started working at VCS, and he’s close to beginning his dissertation.
2. I went back to school. Although my seizures make it extremely difficult to leave the house, they don’t impair my mental function. We decided to invest in my remaining abilities, and I enrolled in an online BA in English since I love literature and would like to write a book about our accident story. That program went really well, and I’m currently working on an MFA (terminal degree) in creative writing.
3. I’ve laid the groundwork for a book about our accident story. The thesis for my MFA is a book-length manuscript, so I hope to get professional feedback on a first draft of my book. Using our story to share the hope Christ offers to those going through trauma has been on my heart ever since I started the blog in 2017. My degree is 4.5 years long, so the book is still a long way off, but it’s exciting to realize I could begin working on it soon.
4. We’ve developed an unusually close bond with my parents. Most people think of their twenties as a time to enjoy independence and even a little recklessness, but it’s been the opposite for us. From midnight phone calls, to meal drop-offs, to Mom baby-sitting me after seizures (I wish there were a more sophisticated description of that one), they’re only a text or a five-minute walk down the street. Are there times I envy the twenty-somethings who do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want? Absolutely. But I’m so thankful to the Lord for parents who never tire of providing the physical and emotional support we need, no matter how much or how often we need it.
5. We’ve experienced unconditional love from our Hillside and VCS communities. Therapy taught me to compensate for my original TBI deficits, but we still haven’t integrated with VCS or Hillside due to my subsequent neurological disorders. That hasn’t kept them from embracing us, though. Whether through online interactions, short visits, meals, or other creative outlets, we’ve felt connected with them since we arrived in San Jose. Every time we’ve faced a crisis – and there have been more of those than I’d like to count – we’ve received an unbelievable amount of love, prayers, and gifts. We’ve also been humbled to realize that much of our support comes from friends we’ve never met in person.

So I may be writing this hunkered next to the window for natural light (our overhead lights trigger migraines), but I realize how many good gifts we’ve received after moving to San Jose in 2017. It’s hard to believe it’s already been three years, and yet in many ways it feels like we’ve been here much longer. What I know for sure is that we couldn’t have made it this far without God’s blessing, my parents’ commitment, and our communities’ support. These are unprecedented times for our nation and the world, but even amid global transformation I want to pause and commemorate God’s faithfulness in our lives. And as always, many thanks to our blogging family for your love and support!

Hi Everyone! It’s hard to believe I’ve come to the end of my school break. As I said in my last post, my blog plans for this break changed drastically based on the current events of the past few weeks. I’d planned to spend the break posting updates and stories from the past quarter; given the seriousness and and momentum of our nation’s move toward socio-political change, I felt that my original ideas were best left for another time. That being said, I think that it can be good to step away from serious topics for a few moments to de-stress.

So keeping that in mind, I’ve decided to post one vignette from break before I go back to school. It’s not meant to detract from the significance of current events but rather to provide some uplifting entertainment for anyone who’d like a quick break.

***

“Great,” I wiped my nose with my hand. “I think she just went on my leg.”

“What? Are you sure?” Ivan’s eyes darted sideways even though he was driving. A tear slid down his cheek.

I shifted the blue vinyl pet carrier on my lap. Sure enough, there was a large stain on my right leg. It was moist, and it expanded as I tilted the carrier. “I thought this thing was supposed to be leak proof.”

“Well she probably hasn’t gone for, like, a day now,” Ivan sniffed. “Man. I’ve got to get myself together before we get there.”

That morning was to be Miss Daisy Mae’s last. Our beloved fur baby had been sick for a few weeks, prompting me to break my family’s rule of thumb: “Cats heal themselves.” We attribute this rule to Gi, my grandmother and a chronic cat owner. Gi has always been right, at least when it came to minor ailments. (I’m excluding parasites and serious injuries.) Given enough rest and TLC, our cats have pulled through and lived to ripe old ages. So far, my aunt’s cat Cilla holds the record at seventeen years old.

But not poor Miss Daisy. At barely three years old she was crying, eschewing the litterbox, and ignoring to the ministrations of her owners and baby sister Zelda. Off we toted her to The Vet. Five days of oral antibiotics later and…she was worse. Given that the more specialized treatments The Vet suggested over the phone were (literally) above Ivan’s pay grade, a trip to Cat Heaven seemed like the only merciful solution.

Ivan and I both burst into tears after I hung up the phone that morning. This might seem reasonable to all you pet lovers, but Ivan only burst into tears a couple of times in the initial days following my accident, and I have yet to see him cry about it since I woke up from my coma. He took the news about Daisy extremely hard, to say the least. We both did. She’s rescued us from ourselves countless times since we adopted my “therapy” kitten in 2017. My TBI causes separation anxiety as well as difficulty adjusting to any kind of change, and Daisy was there for me when Ivan started working full time. She’s still there for me when he works after school or on weekends. She sits with me during seizures and sleeps with me while I rest afterward. As for Ivan, suffice it to say he was NOT a cat person when Daisy arrived as a furry bundle of energy. But lonely nights when I was in the hospital and tense evenings studying for school soon convinced him just how much he needed a “cat buddy” for his own mental stability. I sometimes suspect she cuddles with him more than with me.

All that to say, neither of us could imagine life without our Daisy, but neither could we imagine life with her in her current wailing, litterbox-free condition. And so we wrestled her into her blue carrier (the fact that we were sobbing probably impeded the process unnecessarily), and began our ominous drive to The Vet.

“She’s getting worse, not better,” I tried to enunciate through my mask. I hoped the large, pungent stain on my leg would prove my point.

“Well, the tests on Monday were very unusual, and if she’s not responding to the antibiotics we could try…” He began listing the dreaded Unaffordable Treatments. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Some irrational part of me had hoped he’d intuit our plight and offer a ticket to Cat Heaven right away. But no. Now we would have to shout our tragic request through our masks and the six feet of requisite distance. I looked at Ivan.

“You see, that sounds too expensive,” he countered. Smart, I thought. I hadn’t considered easing The Vet into it. “Do you have anything else?”

Long Pause.

Thankfully Ivan didn’t crack.

“Well, we could put her on a special diet and an anti-inflammatory for a couple of weeks and just see what happens.” At least The Vet didn’t sound accusatory. I raised my eyebrows at Ivan, hoping he’d get my drift.

“Okay, I guess we can try that. But how long before it would work?” Yes! Dragging this out isn’t very merciful either.

“I’d say give it at least seven days. Then we could do more tests or the…”

“We’ll take to food and the anti-inflammatory.” I was proud of Ivan for holding his own, especially with Cat Heaven lurking just around the corner.

We were mostly silent on the ride home, but we were dry-eyed. The air was putrid now that the heat had ripened the stains on my leg and in the carrier. Neither of us complained about it, though. Daisy was also in that carrier. I glanced at the food and pills in the back seat. She might be on a ticking clock, but at least she was still in the carrier. “Well,” Ivan said finally. “I guess we should pray that the food and medicine work.”

It’s ten days later and Daisy is nowhere near Cat Heaven. Her “budget treatment” didn’t work overnight, but she stopped crying on Day Two and made friends with the litterbox on Day Three.  She’s also back to wrestling her sister, which is a plus for everyone involved. Daisy obviously needs physical activity but we desperately need someone to remind Zelda that she doesn’t rule the world. It’s amazing how quickly a kitten’s ego balloons when she goes unchallenged.

Daisy might not have healed herself per Gi’s mantra, but she is on the road to healing nonetheless.  We hope she has many healthy years ahead of her before joining the family Feline Hall of Fame.

“Kind words are like honey—
sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.” ~ Proverbs 16:24

I spend a lot of time thinking about words since I’m a writer. I also spend a lot of time thinking about health since I’m disabled. This is one of my favorite proverbs since it links the two so beautifully – and so universally, even if you don’t write or face health issues on a regular basis.

My last post suggested I’d spend my June break sharing stories about our recent family developments, especially since I took a bit of a blogging hiatus during the spring. (This was partly to regain emotional equilibrium after Ivan’s fall, and  partly because it’s challenging to crank out blog posts and grad school assignments.)

But plans change, and our nation entered another crisis this past week. Unlike the health and quarantine topics in my COVID-19 posts, I feel that adding my opinion on current events would create more noise than content – especially given the plethora of words swirling in the media and on the streets. And so I’ll let my favorite proverb speak for me, for the time being. Kind words are the best words to bring health and healing.

Happy end of May, everyone! It’s been a hectic month for the Utomo/Crosby families, but it’s been a blessed one, and I’m glad to be back on the blog. 🙂

First and foremost, we’re no longer the Utomo/Crosby families. We’re proud to call ourselves the Utomo/Crosby/Stewarts after Anna and her fiancée Robert tied the knot on May 9th. Uniting their lives in my parents’ living room with Dad officiating and only three live witnesses (me, Ivan, and Mom) is the opposite of the church wedding they’d planned before COVID-19, but I’m SO proud of their maturity and God-focused attitude in the face of this trial. They never stopped smiling the entire day.

On an adorable (but much less life-changing) note, Ivan and I added a new fur baby to our family a couple of weeks ago. Zelda Fitzgerald is a nine-week old Tortoise shell kitten and she has more spunk than Ivan, me, and Daisy (our other cat) combined. I named her after Scott Fitzgerald’s audacious wife and she’s taking her namesake quite literally. (Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby as well as some other great novels and short stories.)

We – and the rest of California – are also excited as sheltering guidelines relax a bit and we begin the “new normal” other states have already implemented. The national revision of church closures is especially encouraging, and I’m proud to support Hillside which has complied with safety regulations throughout COVID-19. But regardless of your religious persuasion, please keep  prioritizing safety as we enjoy more flexibility in public activities and worship!

And that’s all for now. Look out for more detailed accounts of our recent adventures as well as future forays, especially since I’m on summer break!  In the meantime, I’m grateful for all God’s been doing in our lives, as well as the positivity I’ve observed in many of your social media posts. Joy and gratitude are choices – choices we can make each and every day. 

“I woke up to a world I never saw coming, and to medical and social communities that aren’t designed to meet my complicated set of needs. But I also woke up to a world where I experience God’s redemptive work in unique ways that would be unavailable to me if I were anyone but who I am.”

I wrote these words in the introduction to If I Should Die my capstone for the English degree I completed last August. It’s true. I’ve been the “special one” for the past three years, the girl who walks (or rolls, if it’s an emergency), into a healthcare facility and is immediately the top priority. With two strokes, seizures, and a semi-permanent migraine, how much more important could I be? Honestly, I wasn’t even too scared by COVID-19 since I was the special one. Any intelligent doctor would bump me to the top of their list if I happened to get sick.

Until they didn’t.

The week after San Jose’s sheltering order came out, I developed a dry cough. I called Kaiser, fully expecting a test since I was “high risk.” No test. Tests were for higher risk patients like seniors and asthmatics. When my seizure meds stopped working and my cough morphed into coughing fits, I called back. Obviously I was special enough to get tested now. No test. Now they were saving the tests for patients who were candidates for hospital admission. This time the doctor admitted that I’d be a special case under normal circumstances – just not at this point in COVID-19. I’d failed the “special” test for the first time three years. But not to worry, she said, most people like me got better in seven days. Seven days later my seizure meds still weren’t working, I couldn’t get out of bed, and I stopped breathing during my five-minute-plus coughing fits. But the pandemic had intensified to such an extent that even this wasn’t serious enough for a test, much less hospital admission. My doctor prescribed medicine strong enough to keep me breathing during fits and told me to hope for the best. Mercifully “the best” eventually arrived, albeit painstakingly slowly. Even more mercifully, Ivan never developed more than a mild cough. Praise God for His protective hand!

Getting sick was one of the best things that could have happened to me. God used it to remind me that I’m not always THE special one, in spite of three years of conditioning to the contrary. The truth? I didn’t need a test. Would it have gratified my need to feel important? Sure. Would it have helped me get better? No. I also didn’t need a hospital admission. There were moments when we thought I did, but my doctor was right after all. I didn’t need a ventilator or an IV to break a raging fever, and I would have just taken away a bed from someone who did. Thankfully prescription cough medicine sufficed, even if it didn’t always work perfectly. What I did need was to look around me. To remember that my doctor was treating patients even though she had a baby at home. To listen to the ambulance sirens wailing by our apartment every day. To read news articles about the outbreak already infiltrating New York. So many people were more special than me, in one way or another.

And that’s what I’d like to share as those of us in San Jose face another month of sheltering. It’s tempting to read about other states reopening and grumble, “What about us? Aren’t our financial and educational and social needs just as important as theirs?” Yes, our needs are certainly urgent. But there is so much at stake that we can’t see. Our leaders are looking at the big picture, while all we can see are our living rooms and the sky outside our windows. Local healthcare workers are still risking themselves daily to save lives, and if fewer people are dying or getting sick, it’s thanks to their efforts and the strict guidelines we’ve been following since March. So take heart and join me in supporting them and thanking God for our leaders, leaders who are trying to safeguard us even if we don’t always agree with their timeline.

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established…For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. “

~Romans 13:1,4

Politics, masks, vaccines, the economy. Are these the metrics of life as we know it? Life and death and everything in between have been on the forefront of our collective minds for weeks now. The stakes suddenly got higher and we now have so much more to lose.

Or do we? Death has always been around the corner–what are 80 or 90 years compared to eternity? Jobs, relationships, and health have never come with a lifetime warranty. But perhaps what has changed in the past weeks is our awareness of how fragile the pillars of our lives are, how little is actually within our control.

VCS has been on Easter Break this week, and so I’ve had extra time to think about all that’s happened recently. These verses came to mind:

“O Lord, what are human beings that you should notice them,
    mere mortals that you should think about them?
For they are like a breath of air;
    their days are like a passing shadow.” (Psalm 144:3-4, NLT)

What does God owe us during shelter in place? What can we rightfully claim from the world and each other? How much of who we are, what we own and what we enjoy is only by the unmerited mercy and bounty of God?

Nothing, nothing, everything.

I find that I need to be careful not to feel entitled to things for which I actually have no entitlement. All the goodness to be found in life comes not from myself, or from others, but from God:

“So don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession.” (James 1:16-18, NLT)

Hope during times of peace is an ideal; hope during duress is real.

Strength, character, faith, joy, peace, kindness, and a host of other godly virtues can be tested and revealed now in our lives in ways that simply would not have been possible before. Our losses during this time are greater–for some of us, immensely more so–but so is our experience of redemption in Christ.

Apart from Him, these days only serve to remind us how contingent our lease on life is. With Him, these days and all earthly days to follow are just the prelude to our true life.

And for that–for Who He Is and all that He’s done–there’s everything to thank Him for, coronavirus notwithstanding.