On the Mend

This week brought more blessings. On Tuesday, I visited the nutritionist I began to see when I gave up on traditional medicine to help me after my third miscarriage. My doctor had already told me I was anemic. Her prescription: more iron. When that didn’t do the trick, her best advice was even more iron. But despite my best efforts, I couldn’t seem to get enough iron, and there seemed to be more wrong than just that. There were more questions being raised than answers found.

The miscarriages were devastating. I was basically told to give up. But I knew something was systemically wrong with me.

Since seeing the nutritionist, I knew things had improved. I could tell by the appearance of my skin and hair and the improvement in my energy level, among other things. Because of the way this nutritionist does her testing, I can actually see with scientific proof how I’m improving. It’s so wonderful to have it confirmed: I am on the mend. So the first thing I am thankful for this week is:

40.  I am finally on the mend.
41.  I received much-needed encouragement this week, and heard from readers of After the Snow Falls with their accounts of how the book has touched them. So wonderful!
42.  Despite significant financial challenges over the past year and a half, we have never gone hungry. We have never really wanted.
43.  Our kids all passed their swimming levels this week! This was a big hurdle, and something they had begun to be discouraged about it. I’m so thrilled for them.
44.  We’ve made friends at swimming lessons we plan to stay in touch with as we leave. Our kids are friends with their kids, and we hit it off with mom and dad. I love it when that happens.
45.  We are on the home stretch. Though packing is never my favorite thing, the end is in sight.
46.  It looks like some of our challenges with figuring out the visas we need for our trip are being sorted out and we may actually book tickets by the end of this week!
47.  I was able to interview one of my favorite authors for my Friday Fiction Fix last week.
48.  I am very energized, working on my next writing project.
49.  I’ve been excited about developing a freewriting habit at 750words.com
50.  We had a chance to reunite with some wonderful friends this week for a bit of a sending-off.
51.  Despite the pain of having to decide what toys stay, get given away or get packed, my kids are doing better than I am about it. I am blessed with three wonderful children.
52.  I have been following along with 31 Days to Build a Better Spouse, and have been blessed every day to realize what a great husband JavaMan is.
53.  We had some car trouble this week, but some great neighbors and a wonderful mechanic stepped in to help.
54.  I have wonderful parents, who pitched in to help on the weekend when we packed. Without them and JavaMan, I couldn’t have gotten through the day.
55.  We had a bit of a financial breakthrough this week–something we’ve been waiting for for quite a while.
56.  I have arranged for a number of reviews for After the Snow Falls with bloggers, but once they have it, I simply have to wait until their finished reading and the reviews come out, but three reviews in a row came out last week. That was a nice surprise, and they were all five-star reviews. That was an even nicer surprise!
57.  I found a great substitute for the big heavy timeline book we were going to have to drag to China with us. I’m going to blog about it sometime soon, it’s so wonderful.
58. My recent review of Junior Writer has become very popular, and has found the attention of the children’s book publisher who brought it to the web. That was nice.
59.  Today, my parents helped my kids with homeschool while JavaMan and tied up loose ends at the house where we’ve been living. The house was so quiet. I realized what a blessing the laughter of children–and even a little chaos–is in the house.

How about you? Have you counted your blessings this week? I’m counting to a thousand with Multitudes on Mondays and Ann Voskamp’s lovely blog: