Go Billikens!

Adah and Eamon found the Billiken during SLU's homecoming soccer game.

 

While driving up to campus, Eamon identified familiar landmarks like "church," "water fountain," and "airplane."  Upon dropping Eileen and Adah off behind Griesedieck Hall to register for Homecoming, Adah's very first words were the exclamation, "Wow Mommy, the grass is all cut so well!"  (Fellow SLU alums know I couldn't make this stuff up!).

 



THANKS

Fair warning, I am not as eloquent, deep, or polished as my husband.  Words have never been my thing (just ask my High School AP English teacher, God rest her soul) but I feel like I need to say some things. 

The last 5 years have slowly gotten harder and harder.  For a long time Pete and I struggled to maintain our “normal” life by ourselves by altering our expectations and roles in our family.  It was hard for Pete to admit he had to change the way he lived his life and he hated to see how that in turn affected the rest of our little, growing family.  Slowly we allowed close family and a few friends in on those struggles, allowing them to help a little more here and there.  Each month and year got harder and we asked more and more of family and friends.  As our needs grew so did our support system.

When I looked around the church last Saturday I saw the many faces of friends and family from all our different circles.  I saw a church full of people who have been praying for us non-stop.  It was overwhelming to say the least. 

Pete’s reflection was beautiful, thoughtful, and did not have one hint of self-pity.  He addressed the crowd as he does best, using his brain.

I don’t live in my head.  Most of my actions and words are not that well thought out, which has gotten me in more than one pickle, they come straight from my heart.  Some would say I need a better filter.  But right now I need to say what has been pouring out of me: THANKS. 

I cannot say that enough.  THANKS.  I have so much gratitude in my heart.  There have been SO MANY people who have helped us get through each day.  I would have gone completely crazy by now if it hadn’t been for all the people who made us meals, watched our kids, picked up a weekend work shift, cut our grass, cut me some slack when my brain wasn’t working, sent me a Facebook message just to say hey, made or wore bracelets, traveled in for our send-off, sent gift cards or checks, and supported us in so many other ways. 

Now that we have transitioned out to St. Louis life has gotten easier in some ways and harder in others.  Our apartment has proven to be much easier for Pete to live in, no stairs, handicap parking, etc.  I have finally had a moment to stop and think, do a few things to take care of myself, eat three meals a day, and reflect on all the gifts that God has given.  Eamon is just going with the flow.  Adah is struggling to adjust to long school days without Mom and Dad around.  This has been hard on all of us but I am confident we will figure out how to make this new schedule work. 

As we live our advent life, be confident that each day as I am walking in the park, playing with the kids, taking care of Pete, I know that each of you is standing there with me, giving me strength and courage to get through each day.  Someone said recently “Each family has a story.  Theirs is an inspiration.” Well if it is, it is only because of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people supporting us through prayer, gifts, time, and unending love.  You are all the inspiration, the amazing gift from God that gets us through each day.  I look forward to the day we return to Cincinnati and being able to give back to others who find themselves in times of need. 

From my whole being, Thank You.

Introducing a new blogger

While I don't like to admit it, there will come a time when I am unable to write the Born for More blog. (Like when I'm heavily sedated, on a ventilator, in the ICU and recovering from the transplant operation). 

Easier for me to conceive of, there may be a time when my reading audience is just plain tired of my writing.  For those of you thinking to yourselves, "Yeah, Pete that was about three weeks ago," you are in luck!

I'm pleased to present the first entry by the lovely and talented Eileen McGrath Mosher - the super-glue wife, mother and companion who holds TeamMosher together.  Enjoy!

Send-off Blessing

Many who attended our Send-off Celebration at St. Clare asked for the text from the blessing that was prayed over our family.  It was written by my sister-in-law Carrie Meyer who recently finished her dual Masters in Divinity and Spirituality offered jointly from Bellarmine University and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.  The inner and outer beauty that Carrie and her words eminate are especially powerful given her experience from the tragic and selfless perspective as an organ donor's sibling. 

God of All Creation - who is Three in One as a speaker, word, and breath are three in one.

Loving Creator who hovered over the waters of primordial chaos and spoke words of creation;

Word Incarnate who spoke to the winds and calmed them;
Eternal Spirit rushing in at gale forces, touching our faces with gentle breezes.
You are the very Breath of Life.
It is you who animate every creature on earth with a steady inhale and exhale.
 

You breathed the Breath of Life into Pete on the day of his birth and you have sustained him in life to this day through your own Breath and your own Hands. We are thankful for the hands that have healed him and lungs – human or machine – that have supported his own. Strengthen the lungs you knit together for him in his mother’s womb that he may continue speak words of Truth to the world of You, words of Love to Eileen for You, and words of Care to Adah and Eamon about You. And if it be You Will – heal those same lungs.

 

We know you do not abandon the work of your hands. We ask you to sustain Pete in this time of waiting. Strengthen his heart and mind, calm his anxieties remind him that in all times and places we belong to you. Prepare him to receive a gift from you – a gift of healing, a gift of breath.

 

God you walked on the Earth as Jesus Christ. You wept over the death of loved ones. You coughed in the dusty streets of Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, and on the road to the cross. Jesus who is the ultimate healer, if it is not your will to mend what is broken, we ask for a more human miracle. We ask for a miracle both beautiful and brutal. Do what you have done over and again: bring life out of tragedy and death. Move the heart of a family in pain to choose life that Pete might have breath.

 

We pray now in advance for the death that might bring Pete breath. We pray in advance that you pour your comfort on the family who will make a selfless choice for another. Pull them to you even as the will think you far away. We pray earnestly out of our love and deep gratitude for them. Let our prayers create a space for them – this family known only to you. Let our prayers create a space of comfort in your Holy Heart, a space of stillness and peace when their hearts are wild and at war. In this space their gift of love to us will not ‘make sense’ of their loss or purport to assuage their pain, but in this space let their comfort be in You, let their consolation be in the love and relationship they still share with the one who has been taken from them.

You are a God of Good Friday and of Easter Sunday. Hold in tender care each person involved on the day when our Easter Sunday is the Good Friday of another.

 

You are the very Breath of Life.

It is you who animate every creature on earth with a steady inhale and exhale, do not abandon the work of your hands.

Send-off Reflection

Thanks to the hundreds of you who attended our Send-off Celebration at St. Clare on Saturday (and hundreds that attended in spirit). We'll post some photos soon. In the meantime here is the reflection I shared on John 20:19-22 as some of you have requested it.

I want to take just a few moments to reflect on the presence of the Divine in relationship to the Gospel of St. John that Drew just proclaimed for us. In particular, how is it that we come to recognize God in our midst?

No doubt the Sisters of Charity, Franciscan Sisters of the Poor and other women religious would remind us that a few verses ahead this passage, the risen Christ is revealed first to a woman – Mary of Magdala. Yet even this exemplar of womankind is herself slow to recognize Jesus; mistaking Him first for a grave-robber then for a gardener. It isn’t until Jesus calls her by name that Mary sees Him for who He is.

Then there are the disciples cowering in fear. Jesus offers them a simple greeting, blessing of peace and the wounds of His hands and His side as visual proof that it is indeed Him, risen to new life. A few verses following our reading, Thomas, ever-the-cynic, requires even tactile, palpable evidence that Jesus is precisely who He says, with the opportunity to touch Christ’s still-open wounds.

But even the indisputable, divine presence of the risen Christ standing before them is not enough to assuage their fears and anxieties. It isn’t until Jesus breathes upon the disciples that they are animated by the Holy Spirit to unlock their physical and metaphorical doors and to re-engage with the world around them.

Here is the paradox of this passage – that the most impressive and persuasive case for Christ’s divinity, His resurrection from the dead, is revealed to and recognized by the disciples in the most familiar and human of ways. His first-name embrace and simple greetings among friends. His vulnerability to admit, expose, share, and be touched in His broken, wounded, and scarred places. A deep, diaphragmatic breath in… and slow, purse-lipped expiration out - empowering the disciples to be born for a life more fully lived.

Instead of well-tuned trumpet blasts, the tightly choreographed descent of cherubs, lightning strikes or bellowing voices from on high, God reveals the risen Son with a first-name called, a friendly blessing shared, a wound to be tended to, and a breath exhaled.

Where are you looking to encounter the Divine Creator, the Transcendent Truth and the Life-animating Spirit? Do you find these in a friendly embrace, a simple blessing, a vulnerable imperfection, a single, life-sustaining breath? I hope this would be so.

And so until our next embrace, we ask for your blessing over our wounded and vulnerable family, as we seek the gift of new, life-giving breath.

Peace be with you.


Peace, be with you.

First Day of Pre-school at St. Margaret's



Adah, all ready to do some learning!

Recess!

Settling In

Just a fair warning, this post could be a fairly long one.

 

So after a lovely wedding weekend celebrating my sister Katie and her husband Andrew, we packed up the rest of our things on Sunday afternoon and pushed off for St. Louis on Monday, September 9th.  Naturally September 9th and 10th were two of the five hottest days all summer in St. Louis.

 

While Eileen and I headed off to Barnes for another round of testing and doctors visits, her parents, brother and sister-in-law directed the movers, helped with unpacking and kept Eamon and Adah busy.  Thankfully our apartment complex decided to leave the pool open for a bit past Labor Day given the heat wave and our kids made use of it at least once and sometimes twice a day.



Adah takes a few licks on the air guitar.

Then takes the requisite bow. 
Grins to the left, grins to the right.

The tests at Barnes weren't really that different from the ones in June - no better and no worse.  We had some meet and greets and education sessions with a post-transplant nurse, transplant surgeon and another transplant pulmonologist.  While the surgeon qualified immediate outcome data with a lot of the factors going in my favor (age, diagnosis, relative health, etc.), the pulmonologist really hit hard with the risks of the procedure both short and long term. 

 

Obviously our decision has been very deliberate, well-discerned and spiritually-guided, so it would have taken a whole lot to give us any second thoughts.  (Not to mention we had just packed up a four bedroom house, shoehorned it into a two bedroom apartment and brought along a two and four year-old just for fun).  "Yes, Doc, we know what we are getting ourselves into and we are not turning back."

 

Because my milk and lactose allergy presents all kinds of pharmaceutical complexities, I made some extra visits to the pre-op anesthesia department and the local pharmacy to ensure we are all on the same page for before, during and after the transplant.  The team at Barnes has gone above and beyond in this regard, and I have about as much confidence as one can under the unpredictable circumstances. 

 

"But Mom said she wanted a ciabatta, not a boule, Eamon."

With the help of some dear friends we have the apartment fairly well moved into, made an all-day shopping trip for odds and ends on Saturday while Eamon and Adah were occupied with far more exciting things like the park, the pool and the trampoline.  On Saturday night we took the Metrolink down to see the Cardinals play the Seattle Mariners in a 4-1 losing effort.  (I may have cheered on the outside for the Cardinals, but on the inside I was behind the Mariners/Reds all the way). 



A beautiful night for baseball; unless you were a Cards fan.

Sunday and Monday were pretty lousy days for us. Eileen and Adah came down with some sort of nasty stomach bug that had us scrambling to find a local pediatrician and has kept Adah from her first days of school so far. Today has gone better for her with more food tolerance and even a trip to the zoo, too. So off to SMOS it will be on Wednesday.



Adah and Eamon patiently wait by the Zoo's tank labeled "Nessie."

Maybe Sir Curt Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance got there first and cast

a protective spell to ensure a peaceful existence with our underwater ally.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the meantime, I was officially listed for lung transplant as of Tuesday afternoon which comes with mixed feelings and emotions.  I also came down with some chest congestion necessitating another visit to the medical center this afternoon.  I'm on an antibiotic and they are running some tests in the lab to see if any thing is growing in there.

 

On the one hand being only three or four blocks from the medical centers makes these visits a real cinch.  (A healthier version of me would walk or bike, but I've driven or been dropped off).  If, heaven forbid, I'd have another episode of respiratory failure, we're not sure if it would be quicker to call the life squad or for Eileen to dump me in the kids wagon and RUN!  (I'm kidding - mostly).



 

The view of Barnes Jewish from our apartment parking lot.

But on the other hand our proximity to Barnes makes us acutely aware of the frequent aircare helicopters as we watch and certainly hear them make their approach to the trauma center.  With each inbound flight one can't help but wonder what has happened, who is the victim, what is their condition, will they make it... could it be?

 

 

Listed

As of 4:06pm (Eastern). 

(Never give up, never say die)...

The long surrender begins.

Meet me in...

 

#KAWTIETHEKNOT

Congrats to my all-grown-up & married kid-sister
Mrs. Katie (& Mr. Andrew) Wright!

Bands4Life

A great big thank you to my creative and crafty cousin Lily who is selling custom bracelets to support Team Mosher. Check out her site linked on Etsy or Facebook. 

But get there fast.  This entrepreneurial young lady shipped out 50 bands in her first 24 hours! 

Something in Donate Life green is always fashionable!