T Minus 30

Teague’s surgery is scheduled for one month from today, September 19. He’ll have an MRI the day before to determine exactly where they’ll go in (read: where they’ll cut). Then we’ll know if it’ll be behind Teague’s hairline or in front of it, along it, on his forehead, or what.

Surgeons think in terms of the best way in. Moms think in terms of maiming. In my mind I just see this long red scar running down the side of his forehead because that’s where your mind goes when you’ve been stewing on it for the last few weeks and you still have a month to think about it. I believe it will go fine. But the truth is, it’ll be what it is. We won’t know the outcome until we get it.

I’m feeling OK about things generally, but I know I’m not normal. Like, I’m quickly trying to schedule family pictures before they mess up Teague’s face or ruin his brain or both, and that's kind of embarrassing. The cuckoo part of me has created this nasty program that runs in the background of my daily, we’re-all-good mindset. Its message is that we have one more month for things to be as they are.

Time is my enemy. Last time, there was no time. Decisions were made and carried out right then, and there wasn’t room for second-guessing. The worrying came after the fact, when it was all done. In a weird way, it’s easier to make battlefield “Did we just DO that??” decisions than methodical “Is this what we should do?” ones.

Not that any of it is easy. What a weird concept. That’s the word Dr. Cheshier used to describe this procedure. Easy. Because he’s a neurosurgeon, and it’s easy compared to the things he normally does. But it’s not easy compared to the things we normally do. I’m still hung up on the chunk of brain they’re going to remove. It makes me sick, and it scares me.

I have to find a word that makes sense to me that can get me to that “easy” place. Something that lets me be reasonable as I think about the risks. Something that lets me be real without the crazy. “Easy” is  not that word.

Life has hard things in it, all the time. It doesn’t stop. Sometimes you get little breathers, but there’s always a challenge, always a worry, always something beyond your control, always something you don’t feel quite prepared for.

There’s always a reason to have faith that you’re being refined. Faith that through the grace of God, you’ll get the help you need to get through it. Faith to learn better than ever before how to trust God more completely than ever before.

I don’t know where I am with that. All I’ve got right now is knowing that the decisions we’ve made up to this point are the right ones.

(First day of seventh grade was today.)