Encouragement

I was reading the McLinkey blog hop about encouragement and decided I would put something on here to go with it.

We could always use encouragement. I get a ton of mine from family and friends. I also listen to praise and worship music. There is just nothing like it. I can be in a sad state and when I listen it just picks me up. Sometimes I get encouraged from the ones that I get discouraged with.

Grace is a great encourager. She writes me notes (see this link), and tells me jokes, and dances for me.

Yesterday Emily was quite the encouragement. She had the hiccups terribly. I was giving her evening meds to her and even though I poured 2 ounces of water through her feeding tube the hiccups didn’t stop. So I showed her how I get rid of the hiccups. I hold my breath. At that point I puffed my cheeks out, held my breath for what seemed like the right amount of time, and then with a noise let my breath out. I did this twice and explained to Emily that if she could hold her breath it might make the hiccups go away.

Well, I KNOW she can’t hold her breath, she can hardly breath deep. So I wasn’t expecting her to do anything. However, the next thing I saw was Emily making a funny face, turning her head to the right, and sort of sticking her tongue out. Instantly I thought, “OH NO, she’s not holding her breath is she?”

She moved her tongue around a little, and continued to turn to the right. Her eyes were getting bigger. I looked for her breathing pattern. Yes, she was still breathing. And then she stopped with the funny look. She turned her head back to normal, and the hiccups were gone!

Wowwie! She did it! I know she didn’t hold her breath, but what ever she did, it worked! We both had a laugh about it. And to me, that was encouraging. My child, who can’t do much more for herself but breathe, actually followed my directions to help herself! Wow. Now that’s pretty cool, and encouraging.