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 :)