Change of Plans

When I last wrote I had grand plans for this space and my time here.  I left with the idea that I would take some time away from writing to work on some of the back end stuff that blogging is made of by sprucing up my site and working on my vision for this space. You know, hearing from God and following His lead.

It’s just that life gets in the way of our plans sometimes. Even the best of plans can get sucked into the tornado of life.  Normally I wouldn’t use a tornado as an analogy but boy has it felt like I got sucked into a tornado, whirled around and thrown back out again.  I have the whiplash to prove it and I’m not sure that I landed on my feet.

Just a little bit of the blog tweeking, dreaming and planning happened before the whirlwind began.  I’m not anywhere close to being done but I just have to leave it for now and get to it as I can because I just have to write. The whirlwind won’t let me get out of putting thoughts to paper. It’s who I am and how I process. I must write and I must share it with you.

It all started with my husband.  Have I ever mentioned to you that he is amazing? Simply amazing.  He’s so strong and godly and the greatest gift in my life.  Well, we discovered that he needed surgery.  A buldged disc causing nerve damage was the diagnosis and surgery was recommended as soon as possible. I didn’t think it would be a big deal and neither did he.  But surgery is always a big deal.  Life stands still for a while and strong people become weak for a time.

It was time for me to be the strong one and, while I can do it {and often times try way too hard to be strong}, I wasn’t nearly as good at it as my husband was.  Little did I know that this was just the beginning of enduring hard things.

Less than a week after my husband’s surgery date I got a call that my grandmother had suffered a massive stroke and wasn’t expected to live.  I knew her health had been declining and didn’t expect her to be around for many more years but I wasn’t ready for this news {is anyone ever?}.  I drove the 2 1/2 hours that night to see her as my recovering husband, even in his weakened state, urged me to go.  She died the next evening.

Losing someone you love is always hard. Always. No matter how much hope you have of seeing them again. A wise friend told me that grieving needs rest but I was uncertain of how to rest while caring for my recovering husband, taking care of my children and hosting family for a funeral.  That’s when I got sick.  My kids got sick too but it was mild for them.  For me it was awful.

The night after the funeral I woke up in the middle of the night with ringing in my ears that was so severe I was scared.  After a fitful night sleep I woke with my hands clenched in fists with joints swollen so tight that I could barely move my hands. My normally loose ring was stuck on my finger. As I put on my shoes I realized that my feet were swollen too and I started to be overcome with fear.  I had no idea what was wrong.  Long story short I found out that all of this was caused by fifths disease.  Many people get through this illness with minor symptoms but it was hitting me like a freight train.

If that wasn’t enough I started having dull pains near my stomach. My doctor thought it could be my gallbladder and ordered an ultrasound.  Meanwhile I could barely eat anything without having pain so I didn’t eat much.  I was weak and tired and not much help to my recovering husband.

Can I share that I was feeling so very low at this point?  Desperate and quite hopeless.  Fear was whispering into my ear at each step that something was terribly wrong with me and things were just going to keep getting worse.  Fear bred panic and I began to have multiple panic attacks each day.  Have you ever had a panic attack?  It feels like you are dying.  I’m not kidding.

Obviously perfect love has not been worked out in every area of my life.  I began to realize that I had some very real fear issues that had to be dealt with.  During each step of this whirlwind God was very near and His voice was constant in my ear. I spent so much time on my knees with Him in desperate moments breathing in His truths.  My eyes were opened to pain in my past that opened doors for me to believe lies about who God is and who I am.

The only reason I share all of this with you is because I believe that God will be glorified when I tell you the truths that He spoke to me and the ways He used a hard time to set me free from a lot of fear and brokeness. I’m still walking this walk. I don’t think I’m alone.  We all go through hard times and fear is always knocking on the door trying to get in.  Many of us just live with it, accept it.  We make it a space to call it’s own while insisting that we aren’t fearful people. I know I did.

I hate even admitting that I’ve struggled so much with fear. I would never have thought that I was capable of having panic attacks like I have the past few years. But I have and they make a hard situation worse.

My ultrasound for my gallbladder came back normal.  All of the other tests have come back normal too but the fear that accompanied each step, each doctors visit and each prolonged day of feeling awful, convinced me that things were not okay and wouldn’t be okay.

I’m still not 100%.  I still have moments of the dull pain and the ringing in my ears comes and goes.  My joints are like inflatable balloons and sometimes just decide to swell up and ache again.  But I would go through it all again to learn what I have learned over the past 4 weeks.  I’ll share these things in more detail in the coming weeks.

Some things I want to share with you are the truths that God has taught me through this like you CAN cure panic attacks but the cure is not intuitive. God wants all of us and may use hard situations to get our attention and He makes beauty from ashes.  So I think I’ll let Him burn up the ugly in me more often. I’ll take the refining fire for beauty any day.

What hard thing are you going through that I can pray with you for right now?  I know that I would not have made it through all of this if it weren’t for some very dear friends encouraging me and praying for me through it all.  Let me be that for you today.

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