- 04
- Jan
The last two days have been a bit rough around the edges in our house. I slept about 90% of both days, save for drinking gallons of water (and the consequential million bathroom trips). Finally, at about 11:00 last night, after 15 days of labor, Stonetta joined big brothers Stoney and Stoney, Jr in Stone Heaven. I’m not grieving the loss of her in the slightest.
I got the first pains from this stone the day after Christmas break started and it went away the day before break ended. I feel a bit rotten that my kids spent most of the break taking care of me, but this is life, right?
With the help of Percocet, we managed to have Christmas @ the orphanage, a Boxing Day party, and an insane New Year’s Eve party featuring a total of 48 guests smashed into our far-too-small-for-48-guests 1100 sq foot apartment! Not too shabby.
Some (yes, some- there are several guests not featured here!) of the guests:

It was a tight squeeze, but it worked…

I always love to admire the pile of shoes when you gather a crowd indoors in China. Everyone, young and old, sheds their shoes instinctively as they walk in the door.

I think there was room for more in the kitchen!

On New Year’s Day, I had an acupuncturist come to the house. He is Family and he was really nice. I’d never had acupuncture done to me before, so I was a mixture of skepticism and nerves before he showed up. But it didn’t hurt and he ended with a really nice therapeutic massage. It cost $10 and he came to my house. I mean, really, can you beat that price? I doubt it! And disposable needles, so that’s a bonus. I’m all about staying disease-free!
He spoke a decent amount of English and talked to me a lot while applying the needles and then during the waiting time before he took them out. The Chinese have ways of reading the human body that amaze me. During foot massages, I’ve had them tell me I’ve got a problem with “X” and 9 times out of 10, they are completely accurate. I’ve even been told in advance that I had a kidney stone coming (Sadly, they were right on that one). Isn’t that amazing? Just from touching my foot they can tell that stuff?!?
Anyway, he looked at my tongue and felt my pulse and felt various spots on my feet and calves. He told me I was falling apart- that my kidneys and liver and heart were pushed too far. He was telling me that I’m too busy and I do too much and that I can’t push myself while I have the stones. It was something I *know* in my head but I have a hard time obeying. I like to push myself a bit too far. I’m not into sleeping for a whole week and losing what feels like days upon days of time that I could be *doing* something.
But he was telling me different ways that my body is falling apart due to the stress of pushing through the pain. And he reprimanded me that instead of taking painkillers so I can “keep going” that I need to listen to my body- if it is in pain, I need to give it time to heal and not push push push. And if I don’t obey that and I push push push anyway, I’m going to break down.
I think I push myself even more here because I feel a certain responsibility to “do” things. And I look outside and see the trash guy biking his trash cart around in the snow, loading up mounds of trash day in and day out. Surely he’s got back pain, sore feet, and a laundry list of other complaints. But he’s there every day doing his work. And so I think I have to do the same. But sadly, that pushing comes at a cost- the life expectancy for a manual laborer here is not that great.
So I slept the last 2 days. I gave myself permission to just stop and not “do”. The world won’t fall apart without me!
So that’s my New Year’s resolution. To chill out. To rest in Him. To trust that His plans don’t include me pushing myself to exhaustion.







































