My Paradise

I wake up this morning to the sounds of birds and in the distance I can hear the gentle lapping of Lake Huron.  We have arrived.  We are at Deer Park - the cottage resort where Nate and I met ten years ago.

Time has flown.  Ten years.  I've graduated high school, then college, got engaged, married, diabetes, pregnant, had a baby boy, got through hubbie's cancer and now I'm a pregnant with our second child.  What a ride!  How much I've grown, how much I've changed... yet at heart I am the same.  The same giddy little girl that once dreamed of what life would be like at 25 (going on 26), the same hopeful, optimistic little girl that God loved enough to bless immensely.  The same...yet different.  I would have never believed it if someone told me.  How much can happen in 10 years. 

I am the first to wake up this morning and the cottage is still.  I open the windows, turn off the fireplace and have a banana.  I settle down with the laptop in a cushioned "log" chair and begin to wonder.  Today will be fun.  Noah will continue his adventures in the sand, daddy will take a nap on the beach and mamma will get a little tan... I will be applying sun like one might apply ice - 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off.

I head down to the deserted beach and step out on the cool sand.  I stand at the water's edge and look out at the horizon.  The sun, just peaking over the trees far behind me, is making his ascend into the sky.  Everything is still.  The waves are small, but the sound is still one that calms my heart.  I plop down on a fat piece of drift wood and ponder.  I think of those ten years again.  What life will be like for us in another 10 years.  Noah will be a teenager (a scary thought for sure), Nr 2 will be 10 and hubbie and I in our late thirties.  I wonder if we'll have more kids.  I wonder what we'll look like.  I wonder what our family dynamic will be like.  I wonder about my diabetes.  Will insulin pumps be really that much more advancedt?  Will sensors survive more than 6 days?  Will there be a cure?

I expect my parents to arrive shortly.  They are visiting us for the day.  On Monday they are departing to Europe for three months.  They should arrive back in Canada about a week before Nr. 2.  They will be missed so much.  But for this weekend, Noah will once again be surrounded by grandparents. 

We've had visitors all weekend.  Yesterday one of my childhood best friend Andra and her hubbie, stopped by with their three-week-old, Anthony.  It was fun just catching up and holding that little bundle of joy.  Today my parents are visiting as well a family from the small Slovak church.  I love sharing this place with friends and family.  It is such a place.  Where coming alone is nice, but coming with others or friends and family visiting makes Deer Park magical.  The cottages dance and the trees sing.  Sounds corny, but to me - this is the ideal destination. 

I stand up, dust off my pj pants and start heading back up to the cottage.  I'm sure the family is up by now.  We drove up here with Nate's parents.  They are both wonderful people and we enjoy spending time with them.  Noah and his grandpa, Apko as he calls him in Slovak, are best friends, "just like McQueen and Mater" as my son says.  They played together most of yesterday, Apko building sand castles and Noah jumping on them with both feet.

My little bundle of joy is kicking and kicking.  Nr. 2 loves it here too!  We are Deer Parkers for life.  I imagine I will one day come here with Noah's kids and Nr. 2's kids and I will be the grandma.  What a thought.  Noah married... me, a grandma to his kids.  Nope.  Can't see it, even if I try.  I wonder how I'll be.  I wonder if I'll be around.... with the diabetes, you never know...  But being ever-optimistic, I have faith that I will be around for a long long time.  Clicking away at my pump and not allowing the 'betes to tell me what to do. 

I picked up a nice pair of designer sunglasses at the optometrist office yesterday.   He took some retinal imaging and he said everything is super, super perfect.  He showed me the retina of a 40-year-old diabetic who was in to see him for the very first time and it was a mess.  He showed me that as a way to show me just how good my eyes were.  I was excited.

And as for the speck - it's a "floater".  Totally harmless, totally natural.  I thought, "Cool," and picked up a pair of "prescription" sunglasses.  Thank you insurance company.  Sometimes they DO come through for me.

Now back in the cottage the family begins to stir.  Although today's weather forecast boasts 28 C (82 F), the morning air is crisp.  With the windows open and the fireplace off, the cabin has cooled off.  I will soon start on breakfast - eggs and bacon with orange juice and coffee.  Breakfast of champions... or of vacationers.

Later on today I will continue working on my novel.  It's been a fun ride so far - this life of mine.  Even with the 'betes, the cancer, the letdowns - I know we have a God that has brought us through it, a God that is so much bigger than me, my broken pancreas, or any illness that life throws our way.   I have learned to trust him.  "Never will I leave you, nor forsake you," he said and he never has.  Even in our darkest moments, he remained the only bright hope.  And over and over I thank him for this life.  I will never be able to thank him enough or give back even a small fraction of what he's given me - but that's the amazing part - that is not what he wants.  He wants my heart.  He wants me.  He is a God that loves and a God that created us to seek him.  "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."  (Jeremiah 29:13)

Broken pancreas and all, I will praise him over and over.  He is wonderful.