It’s been a rough 10 days here in the Venomous Household, ten long days during which we’ve all been learning as much about grace as we have about pressure. Over the past 5 1/2 years I’ve turned to my blog to let off most forms of stress, and you Venomites have been wonderfully understanding and supportive.

I’ve learned, though, that the kindness of friends can sometimes unintentionally add to one’s stress. Repeating an explanation of the situation for the thirtieth time (not to mention the 300th) has a way of trapping a person into a situation, rather than giving them space from it.

I needed space. I needed time to myself in between the time I’m now devoting to keeping my son from dwelling on his grandparents’ health and the time I’m spending trying to keep my husband together, too. So many, many thanks to my friend Kimsch who posted an entry for me last week to let y’all know I was okay.

We are, by the grace of God, doing all right. Yes, we’re still under quite a bit of pressure, but the past few days off have given us a chance to come together and arrange our schedules to get through this difficult time as a team.

The Big-Eyed Boy started school today at a nearby, highly rated school district. We applied for admission under open enrollment last week, and as late as Friday we were still waiting to learn the decision. Come to find out the district had to hire 6 teachers at the last minute just to deal with the kids who live in-district, and as a result they had opening for 4 more kids living outside of it. We learned on Monday we were one of the four and he’s thrilled, as am I.

Of course, we don’t want to go through this every fall and risk learning that there’s no room for him, so we’re now planning on moving within the district limits to ensure he can continue attending there year after year. As luck would have it, friends of ours are selling a large lot in their neighborhood. (They’d bought it planning to construct their own house then purchased one that was already built across the street.)

Taking a huge leap of faith that God will make the money happen, we’re making a down payment on the lot this weekend. The homeowners’ association rules require us to build a residence on the lot within the year, so I’ve been having fun using Sims 2 to design and redesign our “dream home”. (Sims was originally created to be an architectural program, after all.)

Honestly, we have no idea how we’re going to afford this, but somehow things always manage to come out all right. We’re counting on this coming out okay, too. If nothing else, it’s giving us something positive and exciting to look forward to, and right now we need that because there’s not much else upbeat about our lives.

My husband’s father is rapidly going downhill. He needs esophageal stent to move his tumor aside so he can eat, drink and breathe, and so far it’s continuing to work. At some point, though, it’s very likely he’ll need machines to help him with those tasks instead. He’s lost quite a bit of weight, although it’s difficult to say how much of that is simply from draining the fluid that had built up in his abdomen, legs and elsewhere.

We will be grateful if he’s still with us at Thanksgiving. It will be a miracle if we get to celebrate this Christmas with him. As a result, every day is more precious than ever before, and my husband plans to make the most of those he has left with his father.

He’ll be visiting his father in Minnesota most weekends from here on out while I’ll be remaining at home with the Big-Eyed Boy. We do plan a family trip up there for Labor Day and at least once a month I’ll be visiting my mother in Texas, who has just recently finished her own chemotherapy for colon cancer.

In other words, although things definitely feel less nightmarish than they did 10 days ago, it’s not because things have changed so much as we’ve simply resigned ourselves to accept their inevitability. Perhaps that is what “grace under pressure” is all about: knowing that when the situation isn’t going to change, one must change one’s life to rise up to it.

Hence, I am back to blogging, but for the time being it’s going to be something that fits in the spare moments of the rest of my life, rather than being my primary focus. I’m sure you understand, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that. Thank you to all who’ve sent emails, letters and cards. I’ll be replying to each of you individually as I can, but please understand if it takes me a while. Like most people, I need a break from strain now and again, and for me that break has always been blogging.

So let’s get back to it, shall we?

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