A Different View

Sometimes you have to look for the rainbow in the midst of the rain and you will find it. Having a child with Type 1 Diabetes can be that way. Our son has had a pump for almost a year. They are a great invention. He doesn't have to give himself shots, it works more like your body with a continuous delivery of insulin, better control, etc.

There is a downside to the pump. When you take shots, you are on two kinds of insulin, a long lasting insulin that helps cover the day, and a short burst of insulin you take with food. With a pump, you have one kind of insulin, the short burst. This is because of the pump delivering insulin to you throughout the day, the long lasting isn't needed. The downside to this is, if anything goes wrong with the pump and it doesn't deliver correctly, you don't have that background of insulin helping you through the day, so pump has to be carefully monitored. Checking your blood sugar consistently is very important. This means even in the night. Tubing could get kinked, your sugars could spike because of activity during the day, a number of things could do wrong during the night.

This means that he needs checked during the night. Considering he is only11, and still needs his sleep, my husband and I check him. We are up every night at 12am and 3am. It's like having a newborn, except there is no hope of him sleeping through the night in a few weeks. This can get draining, but we've learned how to cope. We've learned who does better getting up at what time and we've learned, sometimes it's okay to skip either one check or both. After about a year, my attitude is getting better with this also. Sometimes.

The other night it hit me, I get the opportunity to see my town as few other people do. We have a window on our porch that doesn't have any covering over it that I always glance out of as I'm getting things ready to check. This particular night it was foggy out. I wondered to myself if it would be foggy come morning and that's when I realized it. If the fog wasn't there in the morning, how many others would know about it besides me? Who else would had the opportunity to see the that halo around the streetlamps? Or the pretty orange/pink color the fog and street lights gave everything?

And I decided something at that moment. From now on, I would consider myself blessed. Blessed to be able to get up in the middle of the night. Blessed that my son had medicine that helped him live. Blessed to have him home with us and not in a hospital. Blessed that he has a great attitude and tries to take care of himself. Blessed we have a God that knows all and sees all and will never leave us. Blessed that when God looks at our lives, He has a different view of that life than we do and he knows it's perfect for us.