My iPod's stuck on replay

I thought I'd pass along the lyrics to this song that I've been listening to over and over because it just gives me great peace and comfort.  I've been listening to the BigStuf version off their Storms album.  

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." - Matthew 11:28-30

Embracing the future

I am up at 5:30 everyday now so that I can start my routine with a dose of iv antibiotics, which sound horrible, but I am a morning person.  I LOVE to get up and started to maximize every second of my day.  I am also a very rigid schedule keeper, often to the annoyance of EVERYONE around me.  (I can sort of be cranky when people are late).  I usually have every minute of my day planned; it makes me happy. This morning, I woke up way early because my mind was just racing with all the things I wanted to do today.  Call me crazy, but usually when I wake up in the middle of the night or just can't sleep, I feel like it's God's way of getting me to acknowledge something I hadn't made time for in my busyness(this happens to me a lot).  So, I prayed and asked God to show me what was really bothering me.  And it became clear to me instantly - I have to embrace my situation.  An odd thought, considering I have spent the last 8 months trying to embrace the situation at hand.  But something else jumped out at me - I have spent my whole life fighting against allowing a disease to define me, but I have also not embraced the fact that this makes up part of who I am and a LARGE part of the story God gave me to tell.  I am learning that embracing Cystic Fibrosis doesn't mean allowing myself to act sick or be pitied by others.  It means being courageous enough to say I need help when I need help.  Asking for help is so very hard for me because I sometimes feel like I need so much help that it would become a burden to others.  And sometimes I feel like no one will be able to offer me the help I need.  Slowly (I am hardheaded)  I am learning that nothing could be further from the truth. 
I am in the midst of, possibly, the biggest changes of my life, but the plans are slowly forming before me.  I had to take one really big step yesterday without being able to see the ground in front of me.  But I had an army of people praying for me as I went, and God delivered.  I didn't get an answer that I am yet able to talk about freely, but God met me and gave me a supernatural peace and levelheadedness about it.  I hope I will be able to share soon what things are happening in my life, but for now, I am content to know that my first step in faith was the right one.

Clearing fog

First of all, I want to say a HUGE thank you to Maureen Goodwin for "shamelessly" plugging my new blog.  I love her dearly and she is the one who spurred me on to do this.  SO, I hope I can live up to the hype :)

I am leaving the hospital today after another 12 day stay.  Whoo hoo!  I HOPE this will be the last one for a while.  Dr. McKean is confident that he has found the source of the trouble and that I will be good as almost new very soon.  I can honestly say that I finally feel like the fog has started to clear in my life - not just the mystery of why I have been so sick but also the fog that has been clouding my ability to see God's hand in my life.  I think I have said before that I am a DOER.  In my heart I know that God is really big and can work through anything, but in my head, I feel like it's my job to do everything humanly possible to help Him.  How silly of me to think that He who created the universe and everything it in, from the largest piece of rock to the most intricate of animals, would possibly benefit from my help in anyway!  I can count on one hand the times in my life when I have known so securely that God is totally in control of my life, not because He hasn't always been but because I'm pretty stubborn.  I always have a plan, sometimes two or three plans.  I explained it to my Nonnie - my grandmother and kindred spirit - like this: I feel like I am constructing this house of cards.  Each card requires very careful planning and extremely cautious execution.  If I plan for all contingencies, I can keep my house of cards standing even when some of them start to fall down.  This time, God blew up my house of cards with no warning!  I had no time to plan for what I would do if... But, that's where God wanted to me.  I am perfectly content to keep trucking away on my life the way it is even though I don't totally love everything I'm doing. But, God wants so much more than just what I am capable of doing all by myself.  My dad has said several times in the last 8 months that he feels like God has something big for me, and I have been really hesitant to believe that.  What do I have to offer?!  I struggle to believe that I have anything great to say, do, or be.  I'm just me.  Plus, I feel like I have all these obstacles that God has to overcome to be able to use me.  Oh DUH - God already knows about those and they are anything BUT obstacles to God.   I am still hatching a plan in my head of what I want to do and what I want to be.  And it is entirely possible that those plans won't ever be anything real, but I am much more at peace with allowing God to guide my steps even in the fog than I ever have been before.  I have no idea what the next step is or when it will come.  But, Dustin and I are praying about it and doing things that we know we can to be prepared for our lives to change.  I won't say it isn't scary because that would be a lie.  I start to think of all the details and I get totally overwhelmed.  I just know that no matter what lies ahead, God is there in it with me and even before me. And for that, I can praise Him no matter what the weather :)

Managing Expectations

So, it's been awhile since I had anything to share, well not really, but there's been a lot going on that I haven't been emotionally able to share.  I've been on a health roller coaster since late September - been in the hospital twice and had multiple rounds of home iv antibiotics. And, last Thursday, I started to feel really not well again.  My spirit was almost instantly crushed at the moment that I realized that I had no choice but to call the doctor.  I was so scared that I made Dustin call.  Sidebar: Praise the LORD for a husband who is willing to roll with the punches where my health is concerned and to pick up the slack when I am in pieces.  Anyway, of course the doctor wanted to see me in his office on Friday.  My immediate thoughts were - "Please Lord. PLEASE. Not again. I can't do this again.  I can't live everyday in fear of getting sick and never getting better."  We were supposed to go to the ice rink for practice Thursday evening, but I completely panicked when I got in my car and just couldn't do it.  Knowing that I had been fine 10 weeks ago and now was at a point again where I needed more antibiotics, oxygen, steroids, the whole bit was just more than my tired and battered brain could take.  I called Dustin literally in hysterics to ask him to come home.  I was so panicked that I nearly passed out in my kitchen floor (yes, I know. Drama Queen!)  When he got home, Dustin decided that what we really needed to do was get out of the house for a little while to avoid dwelling on the "what ifs" - I am a champion worrier.  So, we took a drive to Target a

Is it bad to be almost 30 and have no idea what I want to do with my life?

Yesterday I took the first (tiny) proactive step towards figuring out what my next career should be.  I looked up "patient advocate" and "lobbyist" on the internet.  And they both sounded a little scary, so I turned off my laptop.  Here's the problem, most of the really smart people I know have master's and doctoral degrees.  And since I have neither, I feel woefully unqualified to do anything. At all.  I don't have any qualms about returning to school to get a higher degree, but I can't, for the life of me, figure out what I want to do. It's like being 8 all over again.  Only when you're 8, it's cute to want to be a professional shopper one day and a whale trainer at Sea World the next (even if you can't swim!).  But, when you're almost 30, it tends to make you look wishy-washy.  Also, it feels very selfish to think about walking away from a stable job with good income and great benefits when people I know are losing jobs they like.  And it's not that I hate my job, either.  There are parts that I love.  But I feel like there are crucial parts of my personality that are neglected.  And I know that no job will every be perfect.  So, I find myself making deals with God - "if you drop a job in my lap that I can do from home making $60K a year with health and retirement benefits, I'll take it" or "if you just put someone in my path to offer me the job of a lifetime, I'll take it".  It's all out of fear! I know in my heart that I want to make a move, but my head has convinced me that I need to be pragmatic.  All of this keeps me from trusting God to show me what I am really meant to be doing and what my next steps are.  I am trying not to feel guilty that this is hard for me because I know there are other people out there in the same situation.  I am so fortunate to have never had to really look for a job or work for what I wanted, but it has made me soft :)  I'll keep on praying for courage and guidance and keep on working towards this goal and hoping that I don't get in my own way.

Prayer - it ain't a one time thing

PUSH - Pray Until Something Happens.  We've all seen those bracelets/bumper stickers/bible covers.  And the cynic in me bristles when I see it! Sorry.  Just being honest.  Here's why I dislike it - the slogan oversimplifies something so vital and complicated.  Not that prayer itself is a complicated procedure, but it's purpose in our lives is multifaceted.  We pray before we eat; we pray before Bible study; we pray after Bible study; we pray for the sick/hurting/lost.  But prayer is so much more than just that.  I have discovered that prayer is a near constant thing in my life lately.  Sometimes I have to pray about every 10 seconds over my attitude!  I can't even count the number of times that I asked God to heal me, each time wondering if He heard me, or if I just didn't have enough faith for God to actually be able to heal me.  But looking back, I really think that God was using that time in my life to teach me to TRUST that He would heal me; it just may not be when I expected it.  When I spent three weeks in the hospital, I prayed all the time for everything - patience (be careful with that one!), healing, strength, wisdom for my doctor, wisdom for me, to learn whatever lesson God was trying to teach me, for my lungs to heal, to gain weight(yeah, I said GAIN) - you name it, I prayed it.  And something did actually begin to happen - I had PEACE.  Whoa. That was a new one for me. I am a worrier by nature; I feel like worrying gives me a sense of preparedness.  If I worry about everything, I can never, ever be blindsided by anything.  And I totally bought that lie I had sold myself.  I had completely missed that God was always there with me as I was asking God where He was in all this.  I had missed it because I didn't look for Him.  And that is what I learned by praying whenever I feel scared/happy/directionless/angry/restless/empty... Praying, for me, has become as simple as thanking God for letting me wake up in the morning.  But it has also been as complicated as having to come to Him saying "I don't even have any idea what to pray today, Lord, but I know it's something because my heart feels all stirred up and 'magenta'(as Blanche Devereaux would say)."

Beginnings

There is a line in the movie Hope Floats  that goes "beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it's the middle that counts the most".  I can certainly attest to beginnings being scary! As a self described adventurous person, I despise change.  I like status quo, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.  I love my house in the suburban area that I have lived in since I was 11.  I like that I teach in the same school district that I attended grades 6-12.  I like that I have friends that I have known since middle school.  I even order the same flavor ice cream at Baskin Robbins every single time and have since I was little - pralines and cream.  But from time to time, I get this powerful restlessness that I can't ever explain or figure out.  And I discovered that it isn't change I despise; it's change that I have no control over that I can't handle.  I am a control freak.  I know. It's hard to admit it.  But it's so true.  When God brings me to changes or new situations, I spend a great deal of energy trying to get around it.  Recently though, God brought me to my knees, literally, when I spent three weeks in the hospital after 6 months of wrestling with being sick.  I refused to slow down, but God brought me to a place where I had no choice but to stop.  Through that illness, He has shown me that there is some change in store for my future and that I needed to be still and listen.  This is the beginning of a new journey for me.  I have no idea where it will take me or what will happen along the way.  I only know that I have God leading and my family and friends walking beside me.  I am spending time rebuilding and redefining my life.  I have NO IDEA what I am doing, but I am learning that it is okay not to be in control.