The Power of Paint

I am typing this on my phone as I return from a conference in Canada (the bus is all over the place making it difficult) With this in mind, please forgive any grammatical errors and spellings but I did feel it would be a good time to share the power of paint!

Ever since Mandi and I found out about baby Claire's condition there has been this measurable understanding to our willingness to proceed with the understanding that one day our baby would be coming home to Fieldcrest Dr. Were we willing to move forward and prepare in many ways for the welcoming of our young one? With Colton, it was all new and fun and expected. What would he wear as his first outfit? What color were we to spend hours preparing his room for years to come? I observed as slowly Mandi crafted his second floor room into a personality. Pictures of sports went on the wall and she spent an entire day manipulating fabric to spell his name. Great thoughts and dreams were crafted in this development. Envisions of future conversations, playing with trains and reading books in the glider that we debated how much should we spend for this comfort during an ever important bonding time for our family each night. Great thoughts all under the expectation that years of me
mories would occur within this room as long as we lived in Delaware. Each layer of paint allowed for more predictions of life, expectations of conversations and exciting adventures that are to be expected as a new life is brought into this world.
Now how do you take this previous experience and continue this newfound family tradition with your new baby girl when you don't know foresure if in fact she will ever set foot into a home in which a special room was crafted specifically for her. The implications of Mandi and I working for hours and hours on a room was difficult to capture with the hovering possibility that our little princess might not be able to marry her prince (me) in her magical room, or sit and enjoy a wonderful cup of tea with cats, dogs, elephants and whatever the new wave of popular stuffed animal may be at that time. To get to the point, I have come to understand the power of paint. Mandi and I have gained more and more confidence in the comfort of Christ and the trust that all things work out for the good for those that love the Lord. This was not a radical / single day transition as occurred when the doctors words were shared back on that December day. With time, conversation and the purchase
of a variety of materials - our vision of beauty as represented in the life of Claire Elise Frame grew with the addition of each color. I look forward to the day when our baby girl enters the sanctuary her mother and I have crafted specifically for her. Truly a room made for a princess

music from heaven

I (Amanda) got Josh for christmas Mark Schultz's new CD and with our busy schedules lately we haven't had a chance to listen to it. While I was at work on thursday Josh thought it would be a good time to pop it into the cd player and listen while he was doing dishes. That night as Josh was tucking me into bed for work the next day he asked if I wanted to hear a "song that was going to make me cry." For anyone that knows me could tell you that I have no patience and couldn't stand waiting till the next day so Josh brought the CD upstairs and we starting listening to "What it means to be loved"....For five months eight days/ my wife and i had waited/ getting ready for our baby girl/ but when he called the doctor said "I need to see you"/ and "could you come in soon"/ something died inside of me to sit with him and hear/ a test had said our baby might not live to be a year/ and turning to wife he said/ what do you want to do?/ CHORUS I WANNA GIVE HER THE WORLD/ I WANNA HOLD HER HAND/ I WANNA BE HER MOM AS LONG AS I CAN/ I WANNA LIVE EVERY MOMENT, UNTIL THAT DAY COMES/ I WANNA SHOW HER WHAT IT MEANS TO BE LOVED so we spent each day/ watching every minute/ and praying for our baby girl/ i will not forget the way i felt that moment/ when she came into this world/ but they took her from the room as soon as she came into this world/ and watching through the window i could see her holding on/ when a voice inside me said/ CHORUS / well ever since that day/ we got to bring her home/ she's been out to prove the doctor's wrong/ you should see her now/ she's as pretty as her mom/ and there's a boy outside waiting to take her to the high school prom AND HE WANTS TO GIVE HER THE WORLD/ WANTS TO HOLD HER HAND/ AND SOME DAY SHE MIGHT GET A WEDDING BAND/ BUT SHE'S GONNA LIVE EVERY MOMENT/ UNTIL THAT DAY COMES/ AND WE'RE GONNA SHOW HER WHAT IT MEANS TO BE LOVED/ SHOW HER WHAT IT MEANS TO BE LOVED/ WHAT IT MEANS TO BE LOVED......the tears immediately starting streaming down my face and Josh and i held eachother and listened to these amazing words written my mark shultz as a gift from God. How could you say that God doesnt speak to us? These little tokens of God's love are getting Josh and I through this difficult time. He is listening.
Click here to hear the song, I think you will like it.

Our "Famous" Angel

Last weekend Mandi and I had to decide if we were going to go down front and ask for prayers from the congregation at Delaware Christian Church. I thought about it a good bit before talking with Amanda on that Sunday morning. Mandi was the first to bring up the topic during our short commute to DCC. She mentioned that it would be rather selfish and prideful for us not to share this cosmic change occurring within our lives. I agreed.
Mandi prepared a short message and had me read it before we made the trip to the front row. Al Perry met us with a smile and open arms as I shared with him the abbreviated news about Claire. He then asked the congregation to come and lay hands on us and pray for us and our baby girl. It is rather comforting to hear the words of others praying for you. To be honest, it is also rather uncomfortable to publicly make it known that you need something from someone else. In our culture of competition and hierarchy, I feel that Christians have a rather difficult time proclaiming a need for someone / something outside of themselves. Needless to say, Mandi and I appreciated the support we felt from our fellow brothers and sisters from Delaware Christian Church.
After the prayer, a young girl decided to give her life to Christ in baptism. Now try to put yourself into my shoes as I dream about someday assisting Claire in her walk. To listen to her proclaim that Jesus is Lord of Her Life. To hopefully step into the cold water with her and whisper in her ear that I am proud of her and that I love her. To talk her through the procedure of baptism and share in the milestone of her Christian walk and personal relationship with Christ. I hope this dream becomes a reality.
After the service, we were greeted with a number of individuals...most of whom we knew. One older lady did approach us after the service. She had gray hair and was wearing an unassuming flanel dress. There was no distinguishing feature of which I can remember. She shared one sentence with us that was memorable. Her words, "God's story will become famous through your little girl." Why would anyone echo these words to a hurting family? On the surface, it appears rather weird.
I knew right away why she said this and I looked to Amanda to see if she heard the message as clear as I did. I knew if she knew the deeper meaning of this rather misplaced statement, she would not be able to hold back her tears.
If you remember back to my previous post I talked about the difficult drive down to meet Mandi after we had found out about Claire's heart. On that drive down towards Columbus, one of the thousands of thoughts that came to mind is that this little girl better be a Fighter. That lead me to question, what does the name Claire mean? Could it mean fighter, passionate, savior? Now I know that most of you will get on me for this, including Mandi, but I looked up the meaning of Claire on my phone while driving down 23. Come to find out... Claire means Famous.

Back to that older ladies words..."God's story will become FAMOUS through your little girl." The deeper meaning of her words was unveiled. The message was heard loud and clear. I decided to share with Mandi that the unassuming lady had a message with a deeper meaning. Mandi's facial expressions changed as the words left my mouth. The tears did flow as I originally thought they would with the newfound information. The meaning of the words took on a completely different meaning. So much more personal. So much more real. As if it is a proclamation of the Truth. A prophesy? Who knows.

In a conversation later with my best friend Nate, I shared that part of me would like to talk with this unassuming lady again and part of me does not. I asked him... do you think this was an angel of God? Could it be this gray-haired lady was at DCC on that Sunday morning to attend to our aching hearts. We had no way to answer that question but I can tell you that both of us agreed that we hope we do not see that lady again... hold that thought... Angel again.
~Josh

Baby Claire - from Dad's perspective

As most of you who will read this know, shortly before the Christmas season Mandi and I found out that our new baby is going to be a girl. Claire Elise is expected to arrive on April 26th 2010 which just so happens to be Colton's birthday. After a series of pretty tough days and doctors appointments, Mandi and I have come to call her our "high maintenance baby girl." I am sure that Mandi will go into more detail on one of her posts but we found out that Baby Claire has one working ventricle in her little heart. At the ultra sound to determine the gender, the technician and Dr. Jones recommended that Mandi have a fetal echocardiogram because they were having problems seeing all the parts of the heart. At this point, Dr. Jones said there was nothing to worry about but he just wanted to double check and make sure that the heart was developing as it should. Mandi scheduled the appointment for what she thought was Jan 15th to later find out that the nurse made a mistake and it was actually Dec 15th. She headed down to Riverside for her late-morning appointment by herself and we were both praying a lot that day. I received a text from her earlier that morning and then a phone message midway through the day in which I knew something was wrong. I called her right away and she told me that something was wrong with Claire’s heart. I left work and headed to meet her. Needless to say, it was a very difficult time. Thousands of thoughts running through my mind on the drive towards Columbus.
I have read a good number of books on apologetics (defense of the faith) and each time I knew all the book answers to the question – How can a good God allow bad things to happen to good people? – but I have never experienced it. As I used to read these books, I always wondered what would be my challenge. Never in my life has anything compared to the things I found in these books. On the drive down to meet Amanda, I knew the book answers but the inner struggle of - Why me? Why us? Why my baby girl? – was starring me right in the face. To be honest, I am glad that I am typing this now and not in the state of mind I was while driving south on 23 that day.

Mandi was finished at the appointment by the time I was approaching Delaware so we decided to meet at Polaris before picking up Colton from Tuesday School at Spring Road. We parked at Target and struggled through this difficult time together. One thing for sure, it is best to have someone with you in the storm and I am so glad that we are in this together. We were in this fight together. The news from the Doctors was obviously not what you want to hear about your next child. On top of the heart problem, the neonatal doctor shared that congenital heart disease may be linked to chromosomal abnormalities. This was a crushing blow on top of the other news. Could our dreams for my little girl be shattered? Each developmental stage and life point was being reworked in my mind. The normal, the expected. What is to be? Could the parents dream still become reality?
Now try to add to this situation the difficulty of vocalizing the condition to those closest to us. We knew that our families and friends would want to bare our burdens and help us carry the newfound weight of grief yet it was so difficult to share. I am the type of person that once I start to cry, words just won’t come. Luckily, each time we shared the story, it did because easier to discuss. The prayers that were lifted for us did allow for a unexplainable peace to reign in our hearts. Peace and pain – can they be found at the same time?

Mandi and I traveled back to Riverside on Thursday Dec 16th for a follow up appointment with a specialist. We sat in the dark room watching the fetal echocardiogram technician scan Claire’s heart for about an hour while the Doctor was trying to determine the location of all the veins and arteries in this tiny heart that has not formed properly. Hard to believe that some developmental mistake in the first 4-8 weeks of her life has caused such a tremendous hazard to her ability to survive outside of the womb. After some time, the doctor stepped out and traced a picture of what seems to be Claire’s heart. He started by stating that she has a complicated developmental problem but quickly shared that he always remains optimist about children. Claire will require three surgeries with the first being shortly after she is born. He was very positive and informative. He did mention that Claire’s heart abnormality is not in a high risk category for having chromosomal problems which was a relief. Mandi and I were very thankful for the optimism that was shared with us as we left Riverside that afternoon.

There were many more thoughts I will share as they come to me but this is what I could remember at this time (and Colton just woke up from his nap). We appreciate your thoughts and prayers for Claire Elise Frame.
~Josh

The First Blog

Mandi and I felt that it would be nice for us to start a blog to help everyone out there in cyber space keep up with our family.



Christmas 09

Welcome to 2010. The current Frame family just had an great holiday season together. Colton got to have 3 separate Christmas experiences (one at home, one in Wooster, and one in Galena). Santa brought some exciting gifts to each of which it could be defined as a Thomas and Cars Christmas. He continues to ask me each day to "Play my Choo Choo?" Pretty fun.

Before my break, I built him the train table you see in the picture to try and keep all of the Thomas things in one area. Funny story is that I was almost finished with the first design when Mandi said it was too big. So I had to take it back apart and re-cut some of the boards to make it smaller. Eventually, I did agree with her that the first size was just a little too big.


We had our own family Christmas the first saturday of my Christmas break. Mandi was scheduled to work on Christmas day so we decided to have Santa come to our house early so all of us could enjoy the gifts longer. Crazy but I could not sleep very well the night before because I was so excited to see Colton enjoy his new toys (pretty sad huh?) When Colton got up, we come downstairs and opened up the gifts. he was pretty funny to watch. I am pretty sure that he got too many gifts because eventually he was asking Libby (our dog) to open them for him. I started the long and teadious job of unpacking all of the gifts once they were opened. Why in the world does each toy need to have so much tape and ties holding them into the original packaging. Tough job for dads that just want to play with their kids.
Believe it or not, Colton does play with these trains more than any other toy I have seen. He spent about 2-3 hours the first day playing with the Thomas and Friends. Good times.


We traveled up to Wooster on Dec 23rd to spend some time with my family. Colton and I went up early and Mandi come up after she got off of work. We mostly just sat around and enjoyed each other during the day. Colton had his first experience of icing cookies with Mama, Jazzy, C.C. and grandma that night. He ate more than he iced and probably had about 20 pieces of mms. We went to Heather's house the next morning and opened presents and had what is quickly becoming a Wooster Christmas tradition of Hop Hing. That evening we went to the Christmas Eve service at my parents church where my dad was a wise man and my sister was a sheppard girl (i think). It was a good program to help us focus on the reason for the season. Mandi was scheduled to work on Christmas day but got a nice gift for Riverside and was called off so she got to stay and be with the family. We had a good dinner with my family and then went to see the new Chipmonk Movie. We headed back to Delaware after the movie.


The next morning we work up and went to the Martin's house to open gifts and enjoy the family. Again, Colton had a good time and was fun to watch. We had a great meal and hung out for most of the day. I did have to showcase my Guitar Hero talents. I told Mandi I could easily become addicted to that game. Yet again, a great day with the family.
~Josh