My family is doing great. After swapping illness around since almost Thanksgiving (coughs, fever, flu, stomache flu, colds--am I forgetting anything???), we are all healthy. Well, mostly--DH rammed an expectectedly strong piece of rusty wire through the bottom of his boot last weekend, and into his foot. He is hobbling around on crutches and is taking meds to fight infection, but really it's not as bad as it could have been. And I managed to burn myself in two separate places at separate times on the same hand, but really it is already almost painless. The weather is pretty nice for this time of year, the little earthquakes we have been having have almost not been noticable (3 last week, I think--I did not notice one of them). . . there is really not much going on bad in my world. . . .
But my world is much bigger than my immediate family, and there have been so many good/bad things going on all around me, things that make me appreciate my blessings even more, and keep turning to God in prayers of thanksgiving and of pleading and of praise.
This was my parents' car a few days before Christmas, when a stag leaped in front of their car as they were driving from their home in Illinois to visit my younger sister and her family in Mississippi for part of the holidays. The state trooper who helped them at the scene told my dad that if the stag had hit the windshield a few inches lower, it would have most likely gone through the glass completely and my mom probably would have been killed there in the passenger seat.
But--thank the good Lord--except for some cuts and bruises (and an understandable touch of post traumatic stress) and getting glass washed out of her eyes at the ER, Mom is fine. Dad is fine. And even the car, they just learned this week, will be able to be fixed, and the insurance company is covering it. In the middle of a scary, terrible situation, there is so much good.
This is an old friend from Colorado, Joanne. Her blog A Simple Wife has graced my sidebar for as long as I can remember. She is a truly lovely person--smart, funny, the epitome of gracious living. She is one of those people who always has a kind and generous word for anyone, and whose home is beautifully decorated, but full of warmth and real life. She is a writer, and a lover of God, and a homeschooling mom to two charming girls, who are about 12 and 10. She is about my same age, so maybe just turned 40. A couple of days ago, her youngest daughter came downstairs to find her mother lying on the floor--having just had a stroke. A bad one. And since then, things have not necessarily gotten better (please feel free to visit her blog to learn more--her husband Toben is making posts there in her absence, and their family welcomes all guests, and prayers). While Joanne's life does not appear to be in immediate danger, her skull is actually open, and so the risk of a life-threatening infection is high. And while they know Joanne has suffered major trauma, she has been in a medically induced coma, so they really have no idea how much she will have lost when she does wake up.
And yet, there is even blessing in the midst of this horrible situation. Because a year ago Joanne and Toben had relocated to Arizona, and only just came back to Colorado this past Fall. The blessing part is clear in what Toben wrote just a short while ago in their shared blog, Our Crazy Marriage:
". . . being back in Colorado has been amazing. The biggest thing is that we are surrounded with Family. Joanne's folks are two miles away. Her sister and her family are another five miles further along. My folks are just down the freeway in Colorado Springs. And then there is the mish-mash of sort-of relatives that live nearby. It's amazing to have so much family so close. We probably see someone from our extended family every day, and it is a treat. The girls are especially loving the time with their grandparents, cousins and Aunt and Uncle. So the family part is great. There is just love and support from family that is special and unique in the world of relationships."
How so much more terrible would this situation be if they were not surrounded by loving, supportive family. That is so huge. And another blessing: they did not homeschool their girls until last year when they were in Arizona. But it was such a great experience for Joanne and her girls that they planned on continuing even after coming back to CO. If Joanne is never quite the same Mom again, those girls will always remember that year and a half of homeschooling with their Mom, all that precious time shared. And now that disaster has struck, the family has decided to put the girls back in the school they had been part of before--so even that choice is not as devastating as it might have been, since the girls are returning to something familiar. I mean, yes this is looking on the bright side, but how much more awful this would be if the girls had always been homeschooled, and then were suddenly--right at their most traumatic point in their young lives--thrust into a whole new and scary and unfathomable world of public/private school.
It's like God gently arranged the details of where and when to make it as easy as possible on everyone.
Some people reading that sentence will likely think, "Well, if God was going to look out for them, why didn't He just stop the stroke?" My short answer = what we experience in daily living is not what God designed for us. But God gave humankind choice, we chose our own way over His paradise, and thus have things gone awry since. The Bible says that all of creation groans under the burden of the "Fall." So some bad things in life are the direct result of people sinning (that drunk driver that kills someone) but some are just the things that happen in a Fallen world (like cancer, and strokes). This is my understanding of the way things are. The good news is that God chose to redeem us, through Jesus, and can turn around anything bad for Good.
Anything. So no one knows what the outcome of Joanne's stroke is going to be, but there might already be stuff happening as a result of this that is truly Good that we may or may not ever know about. This is a silly example, but Toben mentioned in the blog getting condolences from Tiger Woods. Yes, I guess the Tiger Woods. I have no clue how he came to hear of their story, or why he would have been moved to contact them, but that right there is one of those things that proves that more is going on around us sometimes than we ever would have guessed. Anything we do or say or experience has a ripple affect, and we might never know what positive effects came from it. Or maybe we will someday, in heaven, looking back over our lives. But what I do know, and what Toben and Joanne know, is that God is Good, He is completely trustworthy, and that's all that matters for now.
(I had more to share on this topic, but it will have to wait--feeling too poorly to sit and type now. : ) I'll hopefully get a chance to post part 2 in a few days. . . )
Sorry you have been so ill. I think it must be more difficult to stay healthy when you live in such tight quarters. But, who am I to talk. I have been sick since last Sept. Then I got a cold on top of what I already had right after the accident. But I am a LOT better than I was last week. (Did we tell you that Daddy had to take me to the ER a week ago because of a reaction to some new medicines the dr. had put me on -- not life threatening but not good) We are continually thanking God for saving my life, but more importantly are thanking Him for saving my soul so many years ago. All the injuries were superficial and are all healed. I have had to get new glasses because the ones I had been wearing are pitted from the glass shards. I am so sorry to hear about Joanne. I remember her and Toben well. I will add them to my prayer list. I continue to pray for N, S, and baby S.
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