Sunday afternoon blessing

Hard Weekend

​So, without going in to too much detail, this whole weekend has been really hard.  My husband went on an hours long rampage yesterday that ended with me taking the kids out for dinner at 8pm and then another 2 hour long lecture so we didn’t get to bed until almost midnight.  Then, today was the last Sunday the family of the boy my daughter likes were going to be at our church because they are going to attend a church closer to home.  They just this week were allowed to start texting each other but last night my husband decided to put the breaks on their relationship and took her phone away.  There is so much drama going on in our house right now and I am so mentally and emotionally fatigued.

This is a weekend where MS prevents me from enduring the marathon lectures and hours long intense monologues.  I can’t keep up with all the words and I end up making things worse because I can’t follow the long train of thought.  I sit quietly and yawn like nobody’s business and I can’t help it.  My husband calls it “power yawning.”

I am tired.  I took a nap in my son’s room after church today because my husband had locked me out of our room.  I slept so deeply that when I woke up I had no idea where I was.

But I will say that our pastor’s message on Ephesians 6:12&13 was really good and I feel like it was exactly what I needed this weekend.  And he said we would spend the rest of the summer on the armor of God which I am REALLY looking forward to!

A couple of blessings to report:

1.  Yesterday one of our neighbors gave our daughter a blouse her granddaughter had bought new but decided she didn’t want.  Our daughter loves it and wore it to church this morning where she got several compliments.🙂

2.  This afternoon the same neighbor gave us 2 big bags of veggies - 3 kinds of little tomatoes, big tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini, a yellow squash, huge green salad onions and green bell peppers.  Such a wonderful and generous neighbor!

I had a friend stay and talk with me after church today just because she could tell I didn’t want to be by myself.  She’s a fairly new friend but she seems to understand me pretty well and I appreciate her so much!

Tomorrow is a new day.  Praying it will be a much better one!

Saturday had Finally Arrived!

​​It’s funny because I don’t have a job and it’s the middle of the summer so there’s no school and yet I still look forward to the weekends!  Part of the reason is that I look forward to the Lord’s Day (Sunday) and gathering with the Lord’s people at church each week.  But today is Saturday.  I just feel this sense of relief.  That I survived another week filled with appointments and activities.  This is the day I look back on my week and marvel at all the Lord helped me accomplish and all of the special interactions that were unplanned and reminders of God’s care for ALL the details in our lives.

Our new mattress arrived yesterday and I feel like it was an improvement over our old one.  But the real story is the way God perfectly orchestrated the delivery.  It was supposed to arrive between 9:30 and 11:30 and my husband was supposed to be home from his trip at about 10am (depending on traffic between the airport and home).  I had the bed stripped and ready for the old mattress to be taken out but our bedroom is upstairs and there is a light fixture on the wall that my husband removed the last time we got a new mattress and I didn’t know how to deal with disconnecting the wiring so I didn’t attempt to remove it.  But it’s really hard to get a big mattress through that narrow area without wiping that fixture out.  Well, the Lord brought my husband home about 10 or 15 minutes before the mattress delivery guys showed up and he was able to quickly remove the light fixture and we got our mattress delivered with no damage to it or to the house.  🙂 I know, it’s a little thing.  But God’s hand is in EVERY little thing.  I love seeing Him in the nitty gritty details of the mundane things in our lives as much as in the bigger, weightier things.  We have such an AWESOME GOD!

My stomach was HORRIBLE yesterday but it’s much better so far this morning.  My husband is working on his bid for his schedule in September.  He has to submit a bid every month for his schedules.  It’s a long and tedious process but since the schedules are assigned by seniority, if he takes the time to carefully evaluate the available schedules (and there are over 400 schedules to review and rank), he can generally get a good schedule.  

The kids are still sleeping.  It’s almost 9am but they were up late last night because they went to a youth group “Bond” fire which was a lot of fun!  They only do these events once a month (for the most part) in the summer so it’s always fun for them to get together and goof off.  My son has recently started making friends with one of the boys in the youth group which thrills my heart.  My son is friendly to all and will talk to anyone but he is very careful about who he considers a close friend.  It takes him a ling time to develop trust because he has not been treated well by boys his age in general.  I have really been praying he would make a friend or two at church.  I specifically spend some time praying he would make a friend at the BBQ our church had after the service last week and much to my delight he connected with a kid sitting next to him and he gave him his email address and it was HIS house the kids went to for last night’s “bondfire”.  The kid even gave my son a hug when it was time to leave.  I am praying these boys will be able to develop a good bond of friendship!

My daughter has lots of friends at school but only a couple of friends at church.  She has 1 good girl friend at church who has been on a family road trip most of the month so they hadn’t seen each other in a few weeks until last night - they came home a day early from their trip and so she ended up going to the “bondfire” which was so exciting for my daughter who ended up bear hugging her when she got there! 🤣. But the main thing I have my eye on and my prayers focused on for her is a relationship she has with a boy at church.  They are not allowed to date until she is 16 (in 2 years) but they only have eyes for each other.  I am praying for her heart, her mind, for judgment, wisdom, discernment.  I am regularly pointing her to the Lord and reminding her that if it’s the Lord’s will and the relationship has Christ at the center there isn’t anything that can stop them from being together in the future.  But if they lose that Godly focus, satan can wiggle in there and corrupt their relationship and tear them apart or worse.  His family is changing churches after this Sunday so they will see each other even less after tomorrow and especially once the school year starts.  I just pray they will be able to maintain the sweet innocence of their friendship so far and not let their feelings get too carried away.

Well, not a lot of this has anything to do with MS.  Do you see how really insignificant MS can be in my life even though I know it has a huge impact on me and my family.  I just don’t let it rent space in my brain - ha!  Well, there ARE those pesky lesions in my brain but I don’t let MS linger in my thoughts - the part of my brain I still have some control over.😉

It’s Friday!😃

​I am going to something differently here today.  I am going to tell you about some of my physical challenges so you can know a little bit more about why I wake up each morning looking forward to seeing how God is going to carry me through my day with joy.🙂

I slept terribly last night.  We spent a lot of money 3 years ago on a mattress that was supposed to solve all our sleep issues and it made them worse.  We finally couldn’t take it anymore and on Tuesday we went mattress shopping, ordered a new mattress and today it is supposed to be delivered!  But the mattress wasn’t my inly problem.  I have been experiencing a lot of problems with my stomach.  Since April I have experienced everything from nausea to burning feeling to bloating and gas to diarrhea and/or constipation.  Right now my stomach is making all these gurgling noises and I just feel really uncomfortable.  I had a colonoscopy in April that was clear).  I've been to the ER (in May) and had a CT Scan, bloodwork, urinalysis and even a pelvic ultrasound.  Nothing unusual in any of the testing.  Next I am supposed to have an endoscopy but I am weary of all the appointments and testing and expense.  So I am holding off and praying things will start improving soon.  Tums help.😉

Aside from these issues that seem to be unrelated to MS, I have limited energy (even when I sleep well) and when it’s used up, my fatigue is so bad I stop functioning and HAVE to take a nap.  I can’t “push through” like normal people can so I really have to pace myself and take regular rest breaks.

I have more lesions in my cervical spine than I do in my brain and one of those lesions is causing me to lose partial feeling down the entire left side of my body.  I am actually losing feeling everywhere but my left side is where I notice it the most.  I have a foot drop because my brain can’t get signals to my left foot fast enough so I can’t get my ankle to function properly.  Getting dressed in the morning or getting changed at night is a challenge because of the loss of feeling and function but also because I have very poor balance.  I have to lean against a wall to steady myself or I will fall.  Speaking of falling, because of my foot drop and inability to lift my left foot up high enough, I trip a LOT.  I haven’t fallen recently but if I lose my balance, I can’t recover and will fall.  I tripped over my son at Costco once and fell pretty hard.

Taking a shower can be exhausting but I love showers because I am cold ALL of the time.  Some people with MS have heat intolerance but I have a cold intolerance and I feel cold deep inside and have difficulty warming up.  I also have Raynaud’s - something I developed just in the past couple if years.  It’s an auto-immune disorder that effects circulation so I often lose circulation in my fingers and hands - even in the summer - especially in air conditioned places like the grocery store or our house.

There are other challenges but these are biggies and some of the main reasons I rely so heavily on the Lord for every moment of every day and why I get so excited when I watch Him working everything out so perfectly!

Today is going to be a great day!

Good Evening 😉

I've had another day filled with love.  ❤️. I had a wonderful morning with a friend.   It always feels like our time together is so short!  I think we need a whole day when there has been so much time before coffee chats!

I picked my daughter up a little early from her last day of Volleyball camp because there was going to be a police training session on campus at Noon so the kids had to clear out before then.  We went home for lunch and after that I ran a couple of errands while the kids stayed home.  My daughter had a gift she needed to finish making for her friend's birthday party this evening.   She taught herself how to crochet and she has been creating these beautiful flowers and cute octopi.  She made an octopus for her friend while I was gone.

We all loaded up into the car to take her to the birthday party this evening and my son and I had a little dinner and movie "date."  I had never seen the movie "Onward" before but my son recorded it when it was on TV awhile back.  Ita really cute movie and much to my surprise, I actually teared up at the end. Surprising for me these days - I used to cry so easily - even at some of the more touching commercials.   But MS has really robbed me of a lot of my ability to cry.  My son was pretty surprised, sorry the movie made me cry but also glad, I think, that I liked the movie enough to get involved emotionally in it.  He used to like me to read the books to him that made me cry so he could comfort me.  He is such a sweet boy and he's so good at providing comfort to people who are sad.  You should see him with little kids who are crying.  He had a tender heart and is excellent at cheering people up - especially the very young and the very old - as well as his Mom.  🥰

I'm looking forward to seeing what tomorrow holds!

It’s a Beautiful Day!

​Good morning!  I just finished my Bible reading.  I read every morning and am so enjoying it!  I keep adding things to read.  I am reading through Oswald Chambers “My Utmost for His Highest” in addition to the J Vernon McGee study on Revelation.  I am also working my way through the Old Testament on my own - just finished Haggai.  I read the One Year Bible with my son every night - this is our second time reading through it together.  

I am excited for what today will hold.  I am dropping my daughter off at her last day if Volleyball camp and then coming home to meet a friend from our church.  It will be her first time to our house and I am going to make coffee for her with the espresso machine we bought ourselves as a Christmas gift last year.😋. It is always a sweet time when we get together for coffee and I am really looking forward to her visit!

My daughter has a birthday party to go to tonight too and I am looking forward to seeing some if the Moms if her friends as they drop their girls off at the party.

Well, time to wake the kids up!  I will post an update later to let you know how the Lord orchestrated my day!  😃  

Lucy the Alligator 😃