Gratitude...

I am so sorry I am just now...a week and a half later...updating.  Life in the loudest house on earth sure is crazy.

I wish there was a bigger phrase than "thank you".  I have spent the last week and a half more grateful than there are words on this earth to tell you.  Thank you for praying for us and our family and for our sweet boy.  Thank you for the texts and tears and cards and money and hope and laughter and emails and Facebook messages and places to sleep and meals and hilarious group messages and baskets of treats.  Thank you for being the kind of community that loves deeply and loves well.  I keep saying it, and I keep meaning it, I feel like the luckiest girl alive because of how much you have loved us.  And...to sweet Virginia and Drew and Molly and the Seitz family, who fed and bathed and watched and cared for Campbell and Graham:  I love you all so much, and life is so much sweeter with you and your amazing adventures and homemade pizzas and 7 bean soups.  To the Village...I'm convinced on one on earth has friends like you.  To my parents...thank you for Nashville, which we quite literally couldn't have done without you and for all that you gave up to love us.
From all five Mizells, thank you ALL for everything.

As for Huckbot (his new name)...he is awesome.  His brothers think his "computer" is the coolest thing of all time and I think they are both asking for one for Christmas.  He, for the most part, seems unaware of his big giant monitor and only the stitches and his brothers' constant curiosity and wonder seem to bother him.  He is back and he is amazing.  I really think he might be cuter than he was two weeks ago.  We are very thankful that Dr. Fish decided to put stitches, derma bond AND steri strips on his incision because little man does not like to be slow or still.  We will see Dr. Fish again next Wednesday and check out any episodes on his monitor and talk about a new plan then.  I will keep you posted!

In watching God put back together the heart of my boy, I am overwhelmed by how he has put back together my own.  I never imagined that problems in Huck's heart would expose so much in me.  So much fear and selfishness and control.  But, God, rich in mercy and overflowing in love has spent the last month doing what he does:  putting all of us back together.  Every night when I check to see if he's breathing ten million times I am reminded.  Every glimpse of the giant bump in his chest.  Every time someone asks how I am.  Every cough.  Every cry.  Slowly over this lifetime, we are being put back together.  My boy's heart is better than it was last week or two weeks or a year ago.  And so is mine.

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” 

-C.S. Lewis-

Today was a good day...

It's been a good day. We took naps. We watched The Blacklist (so good). We talked to Camp and Grahambo. We even went out to dinner. I think we all needed to get out and feel normal.  Today just felt normal.
Today was a good day.
Praying for sleep and sweet dreams for a tiny #hucknation.

Home away from home

We are out of the hospital and recovering perfectly at the home of our sweet friends the Taylor's. We are so grateful for a place so close to the hospital to give us one more night if fever-free before we head back to east TN. As you can see, huck has made himself right at home. ;)

Good Morning...

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.

-Anne Lamott-

It is incredible how new the morning feels.

This boy.  He is amazing.  The fever broke in the middle of the night.  He woke up playing and smiling and acting like Huck.  It has been a wonderful thing to see. 

We just spoke with Dr. Fish and we should head out of the hospital this morning.  That is a really good thing.  Huck is over the wires.  And the beeping.  And the constant assessments.  

Today feels more like hope.  Hope feels like a little boy doing gymnastics in his bed right now listening to the Boxer Rebellion.  Hope feels like Dr. Fish reminding us this morning that Huck does not have Wolff Parkinson White anymore.  Hope feels like sharing a twin hospital bed with Daniel and feeling so safe and loved.  Hope feels like a God who never lets go.

The work isn't done.  Hope is a us warring against our fear constantly.  Hope is remembering what my dear friend Tom emailed me this morning...that God is trustworthy even when things are confusing and hard.  

Thank you for your prayers and messages and love.  I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

Thoughts From a Dark, Quiet Room on the 6th Floor...

 It sure has been a long day.  I'm the only one awake in this dark, quite room on the sixth floor.  Deep long breaths from two of the best men alive, one with a giant beard and the other a tiny heart.  I am not sure how much I have processed today.  I keep saying it has just been a roller coaster.  One minute it is good, good news.  The next we are in tears and afraid.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.
I do not know what was hardest about today.  It was hard to leave him in the nurse's arms for surgery. It was hard to wait on phone calls from the doctors and nurses.  It was really hard to hear that they didn't find a pathway to fix.  It is hard to think that our next step is just waiting to see if Huck will have another episode.  It was hard when his fever got so high and he was so miserable.  It was hard when we went back to recovery and saw our scared little boy with a big bump on his chest full of a monitor that he will wear for four years.  It was hard to watch Daniel cry through my tears as we literally felt the fear we had in our hands as we rubbed them over the bump.
I do not know what was best about today.  Maybe the morning, singing to my boy songs of hope and glory.  Maybe it was my family that is always there no matter what.  It was so good to walk out of the  surgical area and see what looked like Kyla's head and cry the happiest tears when I was surprised that it really was Kyla's head.  It was good to find out that my boy does not have a pathway that needs to be fixed.  It was good to trust Dr. Fish.  It was good to remember who God is when I am afraid.  It was good to rub my fingers over the bump in Huck's tiny chest and be reminded of where we have been and hope for where we will go.
Today has been so full of information...medical and emotional and spiritual.  The good and the hard have been so swirled together that it is hard to begin to understand what I am feeling.  Or thinking.  Or fearing.
But God...rich in mercy has drawn us to him more deeply and more fully than yesterday.
I have been reading Mark 5 a lot lately, where Jesus heals the daughter of a man named Jairus.  But before he brings Talitha back to life, there is a moment for Jairus when he finds out his little girl is dead.  When the hopes and the dreams that fill a father come spilling and crashing to the ground.  In that moment Jairus looks to Jesus and Jesus says only one thing:  "Don't be afraid.  Just believe."
For the next four years, my son will have a bump in his chest.  It will get harder to see as he changes and grows.  But one layer down, under his pale skin will sit a reminder of the God who knit his heart together, who drew us in, and who rescues even us.  A reminder that I will see every morning as I dress my boy to offer the invitation into a life of adventure, just as he did to Jairus:  Don't be afraid.  Just believe.

“I want to write something

so simply

about love

or about pain

that even

as you are reading

you feel it

and as you read

you keep feeling it

and though it be my story

it will be common,

though it be singular

it will be known to you

so that by the end

you will think—

no, you will realize—

that it was all the while

yourself arranging the words,

that it was all the time

words that you yourself,

out of your heart

had been saying.”

-Mary Oliver-

Still fever-ing.

Huck's fever isn't coming down quite very well. Trying some new medicine. He ate so much macaroni and cheese though! And...even
playedwith us for a minute. Then he started feeling awful and so the cardiologist has just visited and written for new medicine. Praying we can get his fever down!!

Fever....

We are settling in the room but sweet Huck has spiked a 103 F fever. They've given him medicine and are listening and watching him very closely. They tell us this can be normal after surgery. Please pray the Tylenol gets this fever down!  Around 6:30 we will get him up and he can try to eat (cheese of course!) and maybe cough up some of the goop making his lungs sound so crunchy. (Official medical terminology haha) for now he is in and out of snoozing and not wanting to let go of GiGi's hand. I think that is ok with GiGi.