Mondok Blog

This is one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met. The ministry Pastor Joel leads at Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale has given back to us a crucial part of our lives.

My kid's have done nothing but make me look bad on Mother's Day. I usually get my wife a card from the drug store, but they always make something awesome which makes me look cheap. Thanks guys.

My son Aaron created a very cool video for the Charming and Beautiful Susan this Mother's Day that I've embedded below. He started texting her before the sun came up this morning to let her know this video was posted for her online.


Maybe you don't have the skills to give your momma a video like this, but write your mom a note. Here are some things you can tell her on the phone or write on a piece of paper:

• Tell her your earliest good memories of her.
• Remind her that she shaped and influenced you.
• Let her know that you've never felt more loved or protected than when she took care of you.
• Think about her cooking. Tell her about how your mouth is watering right now as you think about it.
• Mom always believed in you. Think about that for a second and tell her about an event or period of your life her faith in you helped you weather.
• She worked hard and taught you to work hard. Now you provide for and take care of your family. Give mom credit for that.
• Are you creative? Do you like to read? Did mom teach you that? Remind her about it. She probably still has some of your school art projects some where. She'll pull them out and have a good cry.
•  Tell mom how much you love her.

Allie has brain damage so seizures are a part of life. So many of our friends have stood with us in prayer for Allie over the past five years since she was hurt so badly. An assault against her at ten months of age resulted in an oxygen deprived brain and coma that lasted ten days. She emerged from the coma as a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy. Since then, she's had seizures.

Her seizures have not always looked the same. When Allie was one, she had seizures that caused head to jerk left and her arm to spasm in kind of sideways punching motion. That really freaked us out. We lived in rural Northern California at the time and the nearest neurologist was 275 miles away in San Francisco. We tried to describe the seizures to him, but our description fell flat. He was baffled.

The brain is a complex organ. When the brain sustains damage, technology only helps a little. Doctors are often left guessing and experimenting. Allie's seizures come and go. Sometimes seizure activity is high and frequent, sometimes she goes months without an episode. We've tried to manage her seizures with various prescriptions and mixtures of drugs with little effect except that she is often left lethargic and dopey. Drugs have not made a measurable impact.

Controlling the stimuli in Allie's environment has made the biggest difference. We noticed that Allie was having more seizures at home than at school. This was confusing to us. We thought it should be the other way around. For awhile, Allie had the highest occurrences of seizures in the morning when we were watching the news. We turned off the TV for several mornings and her seizure activity decreased dramatically. So we cut the cable.

When we shared this information with our doctor, we made the decision to start weaning her off of the medicines. She was taking three different kinds of meds at the time which meant we had to have her blood tested regularly to make sure she wasn't suffering tissue damage in her major organs. If controlling her environment achieved better results than drugs, we wanted to get her off the drugs. People with cerebral palsy have short life spans due to organ tissue damage, a common side-effect of drugs.

The recent bout of seizures Allie had on Friday started when she was in the sensory room at school. We're not sure if one caused the other, but it is the first time Allie has had a seizure at school in six months. She had five more throughout the day.

Friday night, I enlisted you all to pray. Saturday morning, Allie had one seizure as soon as she woke up and that was it. We had a quiet day at home that included a stroll through the neighborhood. She was fine all day. She was even ready for church Sunday morning. Usually, when she has a day of seizures, she has at least a week of them. Not this time, though, so thanks for your prayers.

Here is some more information about what Allie's seizures look like.

Startle Epilepsy
Startle epilepsy is a type of reflex epilepsy in which seizures are provoked by loud noises or sudden surprises. Most patients with startle epilepsy are only sensitive to one sensory modality (i.e. temperature, taste, sound, pressure); however, it is the unexpected nature of the stimulus, rather than the sensory modality, that characterizes startle epilepsy. (More...)

PTE
Post-traumatic epilepsy (PTE) is a recurrent seizure disorder that apparently results from injury to the brain. This injury may be due to head trauma or to an operation on the brain. (More...)

Reflex Epilepsy
Reflex epilepsy is a condition in which seizures can be provoked habitually by an external stimulus or, less commonly, internal mental processes. Individuals with reflex epilepsy may have seizures exclusively in response to specific stimuli and not suffer spontaneous seizures; alternatively, reflex seizures may coexist with spontaneously occurring seizures. (More...)

Let me share this last piece of information with you. This isn't scientific, but it is something Susan and I have observed in Allie's life. When Allie goes through a growth spurt, sometimes that, we think, contributes to increased seizure activity. On the other side of it, we see improvement in Allie's cognitive abilities. So, as horrible as one imagines these seizures may be (and they are horrible to watch Allie go through - we just hold her and pray), we wonder if they are a part of the brain getting better.

Yesterday was the five year anniversary of the first day of the most horrible season of my life. (read more here)

I got a call from my daughter that my granddaughter was in an ambulance. She was not breathing. She was brutally shaken and her breath was squeezed from her lungs leaving her body limp and her heart racing. She was ten months old at the time. Now, five years later, that little girl is almost six. Her injuries that night left her with cerebral palsy. She is a quadrepelegic. My wife and I adopted her. Allie is our daughter now. 

She is the center of the universe. Five years have brought a tremendous amount of healing into our lives. Many people have stood with us in prayer and God has been faithful to answer those prayers.

God is good all of the time. 

I was asked recently, after giving a talk, about forgiveness. Have I forgiven the young man who did this?

Talk about forgiveness dredges up painful memories. Extending forgiveness to someone that's flipped our lives upside-down has been difficult but not as difficult as you may think. Self-preservation is elemental in extending forgiveness. My wife and I learned that we couldn't heal and partner together to care for Allie unless we let go of the offense that ruined so many lives. There's no going backward to fix this. We could either exist in survival mode or we could trust that the Lord is up to something that can only be used for good. We can't hold onto our pain with closed fists and expect to receive anything good from God because to receive from Him you have to hold your hands open to Him. We needed to receive from Him because that is the only way that horrible can become amazing.

My wife is amazing. For Christmas, my wife bought the young man who did this a Bible. She couldn't mail it to him because he's in prison and is not allowed to receive mail from individuals, but inmates are permitted to receive packages from Amazon.com. So the Charming and Beautiful Susan ordered him a Men's Devotional Bible and a couple of other Christian biographies. When he received them, he wrote us a nine page letter thanking us and asking for forgiveness and the possibility of building a relationship with him someday.

Relationships matter more to God than the pain we've inflicted on each other. Justice isn't only punishment. Lady Justice stands, blindfolded, holding scales. She doesn't hold instruments of punishment. Justice is about bringing things into balance. Punishment and paying a debt to society are often part of bringing things into balance. But it is only a small piece of what the Lord intends for making things right.

I don’t know if you guys have ever watched a Jullian Smith video, but this cat is funny! You’ve all experienced the slow buffering of a video – heck, it probably happened to you today. You’ll love this.

Here are some other must see Julian Smith videos:

• Racist Coffee
• Hot Kool Aid
• Reading a Book
• James Cameron’s my BFF

Fanboy: a person willing to defend and promote the object of his affection regardless of fact and objectivity. UrbanDictionary.com

I laugh at those guys that pitch a tent and wait in line for the newest iGadget. But if I’m honest with you, when I look in the mirror, I see a pathetic goof that is just as silly about the Boss’s music as those waiting for the next Vampire Dairies thing to hit the streets.

But you have to take Springsteen seriously, right? Who else has a finger on the pulse of the American working man like Bruce? “I always try to gauge the difference between American Reality and the American Dream,” Springsteen said in an interview with Jon Stewart in the March 29, 2012, issue of the Rolling Stone.

It’s going to be tough, but I’ll try to be as objective as possible. Wrecking Ball is the best album the Boss has put out since The Rising, that piece of work haunted by ghosts from 9-11. In Wrecking Ball, Springsteen animates the statistical victims of the American Economic Crisis with flesh and blood.

The music in this album will bring to mind Springsteen mega album, Born In the USA. You’ll hear gospel, rap (Yes! Rap!), and New Orleans style slow marches in the mix. Poetic and passionate and as familiar as someone in your neighborhood.

The Big Man, the late Clarence Clemmons, laid down tracks you’ll hear on this album.

I doubt it’ll happen, but the Boss can stop now. Greetings from Asbury Park and Wrecking Ball make a nice book ends for Springsteen complete collection.