Feb 12, 2009

Good Evening KSG,
Thank you for your continued support for our family. You can't imagine how much it helps us to hear from you and to read posts from all of you. We look forward everyday to read your words of encouragement whether it is one sentence to several paragraphs, it is all uplifting.
On to Kolton... he is now off of his ventilator again. He is back onto his C-PAP. I can tell you that he loathes it, he is constantly struggling and fighting with it. When this happens it stresses him out, then it wears him out, then his stats decline. Continue to pray that he relaxes and accepts the C-PAP. I'm a little frazzled tonight myself... it is hard to see your child struggling so hard with something that is detrimental to his health and life. I just want him to grow, stay stable; so he can have his surgery, heal, then come home!
On another note, Gretchen and I were able to get a car this morning, so now we have a way to go back and forth to the hospital. One less thing on our list.
I was also able to finish another book with Kolton tonight, "Season of Life". This book was recommended to me by my brother in IL. A book about "Building Men for Others" (ie - turning boys into real men). A book that I beleive ever father and son should read... it is a quick read and based around football, so pretty easy for us guys. There are 7 topics that go into building men for others:
False Masculinity
The relationships that make a real man
Working for a transcendent cause
Accepting Responsibility
Leading Courageously
Enacting justice on behalf of others
Empathy
I want to touch on empathy and how your empathy has helped us. I will let a quote from the book spell it out for me: "To me, the number-one criterion for humanity has to be empathy. Without that, we're reduced to being nothing more than animals - you know, self preservation, power, issues like that. But when you have empathy, when you can understand the amount of suffering in this world, the pain that so many people are living in, and the causes of all that pain, then you can have a cause beyond yourself. I think the alleviation of pain is a fundamental root or seedbed for understanding some kind of cause." "Yeah, well, it's about getting connected to other people, allowing them to live with dignity and status," Joe said. "It's never enough to just to be sympathetic with the pain others are feeling. You also have to understand what causes the pain, and then you have to do something about it. You have to figure out how you can make changes to help alleviate the pain. And, again, I think empathy has to be the key."
Thank you for your empathy and easing our pain as we take this day by day.
Have a great night!
All of our Best,
The Thompson Tribe