maybe not the best idea we've ever had

Cancer was not in the plans. I specifically scheduled my surgery before the holidays so I could recover and be on my merry way. I had also previously scheduled to have our kitchen cabinets redone in white and I was going to redo the countertop all in September before my surgery. But then the mold and Joshua's surgery put us back a bit.  So I thought no problem we'll just have the guy come out the week after I have half my thyroid out and then I'll have a new kitchen to look forward to.   Plans. Ugh. Well the man we paid money to come do it kept giving us excuse after excuse why he couldn't come. After a month of it I finally told him, "if we're laying all our cards on the table I have CANCER and would just really like a white kitchen!" So Josh had to get tough and supposedly he is coming in January to finish them. Anyway back to the countertop paint box that has been on my counter since August.   Since I have been off my meds and on this uber fun low iodine diet for almost two weeks I have been sluggish and just really down.  It's like I'm stuck in a giant mud puddle and walking or lifting my arms take extra, extra effort. Even my brain is filled with mud and I try to search for words or thoughts only to come up with muddy empty hands.  Enter my prince in shining safety goggles.  He got up on Saturday and asked how I felt and I was feeling not too bad. He said good, because you need a distraction,  let's paint the counter today.  Well if he was on board then I knew he could muscle all the prep work and I could do the fancy painting and we could get it done! After all the tutorial video said new counters in a day! And I watched her prep, prime, paint and top coats all in just 15 min! Piece of cake.  Here's what we had to work with:

 See that not so pretty strip of wood along the counter? There were places it was a big divit and needed to be filled. My husband is a genius and got some great stuff called Bond-o. Great name. For the spy or a really unimaginative creator.  But it does exactly that. Bonds things together, smells like noxious fumes straight up, and sets up like a speeding bullet.  You seriosuly have seconds to get it how you want it to look or you're in trouble.  While Josh is doing this i'm scrubbing the counters and cleaning things to get them ready for the primer. Josh then asks, "since we're doing this why don't you go pick out a new sink and some other things we need at the hardware store". Um, yes. So before he could realize what he said I went to Home depot. I sat in the sink isle and stared at all the options and picked my favorite and had a nice gentleman put it in my car for me. I was exhausted and we hadn't started painting yet!   I get my new beautt home and we size up the sink and it won't fit, because it's in a tight corner. And before I can even start to be upset Josh says,"no worries,  it will work fine." And he gets out his hand saw and starts cutting things. 

Now we are into mid afternoon and the planned Farmington Santa outing got nixed and all the counters I had scrubbed had sawdust everywhere! Everywhere I tell you! So we start again prepping.  I wash everything down and fill in some more cracks we find.  We had the ward  party at 5pm and Josh had to be there because he was leading the music. I stayed home because it's really hard to be around people eating food you can't.  Just a small form of torture. (What I would do for a glass of milk right now.....) Anyway by the time he got home and we put the kids to bed it was time to prime.  That's when we read that the primer has to wait 8 hours to dry before you can start painting it. Of course it does. 

Now another juicy detail to this story is that this is usually the weekend I do the kids photo books on Snapfish.  When we started this process I just figured I would do them during the drying times.  So while Josh primed I scrapbooked our memories.  That was wonderful and hard at the same time. I have amazing, wonderful, beautiful children.  I love documenting our year but it was really hard and at times physically painful to see the old mom.  The before mom.  I thought sometimes to the picture yes you were stressed that day about pictures or schedules or other hard mommy things but you had a VOICE!!!! You could go into public and not have an anxiety attack every 3 minutes.   You were carefree in the fact you didn't have cancer and the stigma and fears that go along with it.  So as I went through picture after picture I decided that next year when I do the photo books I promised myself that I would have a year filled with pictures of a happy and loving mom. Filling my kids books with memories of good times. That although their mom is defective she is still the same mom she was before.  (Joshua jr explains it by cupping his hands together back and forth saying this is how my throat works....and this is how my mom's throat works,  and keeps one hand still while moving the other.)  Josh and I went to bed that night exhausted but had the kitchen primed, a hole for the sink, dishes in the bathroom, and no oven. Cue murphy. 

Sunday morning we ate in the living room and I kept scrapbooking away. We had decided it was a day of rest and we just pretended were camping.  Then the mudroom started flooding because our water heater was leaking. So all the mudroom contents came into our little dining room and I said we had to move to higher ground and we put the kids in the car and headed to Provo. Grandma's house. My sweet, sweet husband packed me food to take down and started to make me a steak when he realized the salt he had used was iodized and looked so defeated.  He was so upset. I told him not to worry and locked myself in another room and kept on scrapbooking and enjoyed my bland salad. We drove back home late dropping joshua off at cousins. Now the coupon ended midnight on Sunday so at 11:58 I had finished and clicked order now.  That's when one whole book I had been working on in Provo deleted. Lost in the vast emptiness of internet never to be recovered. And I wept. Wept and cried and yelled (only I knew it was yelling), and carried my sore carcass up the stairs to sob into my pillow.

Monday morning came like it always does and I had a lovely 8:30 doctor visit that is so, so, so horrible it's funny and if we are friends ask me and I will tell you and we can laugh together but it isn't something I can readily post.  

After the good times that morning I was in a lot of pain but bound and determined that no other catastrophe could stop me from slapping some paint on those countertops and claiming my kitchen back.  So I painted, and I sponged, and blotted, and poured and I mixed and I loved it.  I had a vision and I knew what I wanted it to look like.  I could see the end result in my mind I just had to have the strength to get there.  And layer after layer I began to see what it was becoming.  It was becoming something beautiful.  And as I would stand back to see the big picture I began to feel like that countertop.  I began to compare my imperfections to things that weren't given to me to defeat me, but to make me beautiful.  That the filling, and the sanding, and yes even the sawing and cutting was part of a bigger picture that I couldn't see. We were made to go through life and trials. It's in our blood and it's in our spirit. Our glorious Heavenly Father made our bodies be able to heal scratch after scratch. We are not given a limit of scratches or a limit of how many bruises we can have.   Now my body cannot by itself heal this cancer, and my cut nerve may or may never heal. But throughout this all I can know joy and I can have hope and I can create. 

Romans 8:  18 "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us"

I just read this this morning and it spoke to my soul. Straight from the bible. (But in my mind I hear it in the voice of Andy Griffith from Mayberry) And knew this post had to be shared.  Glory. It's there in all of us and one day it will even be in my kitchen. Yesterday proved to be a harder day as I learned you can make mac and cheese in a rice cooker and grilled steak and veggies in my George foreman on my dryer and last night we were ready to install the sink. (Because we read again after starting this whole process that even if you are done with all the top coats that your husband stayed up all night doing you have to wait 24 hrs before you can use the counters.)  Midnight found us once again but alas, the sink has won.