More than “Good Enough”

First I want to say thank you to all of you who have commented, messaged me, emailed me or just offered up a prayer for me. As of right now we are still waiting on THE final test result as far as whether or not this diagnoses is multiple sclerosis. They did an EEG, several blood panels and a spinal tap while at the neurologists office and so far (with the exception of a few blood panels) everything came back normal. We’re still in limbo right now while we wait for the MS panel from the spinal tap to come back. I promise I will update everyone here and on Facebook as soon as we know something.

I’m always amazed by God’s movement in my life.

I’m always in awe when I can feel his presence and his hand in certain situations that I can’t control or that I feel are out of my control. Our trip to Anchorage brought so much of that. We were able to get a place on the Air Force base there for free for the entire duration of our trip, even though we were only initially told it was available for two nights. Our first night there, we ran into a friend and his wife who were stationed with the husband in Florida. We hadn’t seen them in almost five years, and there they were, recently stationed in another area of Alaska and there to have their first child. They were willing and able to watch Noah for us the morning that I had my Spinal Tap, preventing him from seeing a pretty nasty procedure and allowing Josh to come back with me and hold my hand during.

I was a nervous wreck the day I had my Spinal Tap. I’m not really scared of needles, except when they go in my back. I was in tears all evening the night before and barely slept. God brought us a fantastic Neurologist to administer the exam, and numerous nurses and staff to assist in starting my IV and helping with the procedure. By the time the tap actually began, I was calm and knew that I was going to be okay. Despite warnings, I managed to avoid the impending “headache of doom” that follows a lot of spinal taps and only felt the lingering soreness in my back for a few days.

God’s hand was all over us during this particular trip. I felt it through the various tests and procedures, but I felt it in so many other ways as well.

God’ been dealing with Josh and I about how we are living our lives.

Don’t get me wrong, we aren’t bad people. We give as generously as we can give to various organizations and to our church. We raise our children to believe in the Lord and teach them right from wrong. We send our oldest to PreSchool; we don’t hurt people or cheat people out of money; I volunteer at school. Josh is in the military, serving his country. We pay our taxes and we vote.

We do all of the things that you are “supposed” to do to be considered a good and upstanding citizen in this country and we strive to live our lives as morally right as we can.

But God has shown us both that we want more…HE wants more…than just “good enough.”

I admit that the last several weeks, ever since we found out about the possible MS diagnoses, I have been a basket of stress. I’ve been angry. I’ve been rude and ungrateful. I’ve yelled at my children and I’ve yelled at my husband, even though all any of them were trying to do was show me that they supported me and loved me. I’ve taken advantage of the multiple blessings in my life.

We went to Barnes & Noble one night during our stay in Anchorage and I spotted Notes from a Blue Bike by Tsh Oxenreider sitting on a shelf. I had heard RAVE reviews about this book from friends on Facebook and InstaGram. Since I knew we had a flight home coming up, I figured it couldn’t hurt to snag something to read to occupy my time.

You guys…this book has opened my eyes to so many things. So many changes that we needed in our life. From our lifestyle choices and accumulation of “stuff” to how much time we spend vegged out in front of the TV when we could be doing something else instead.

We’ve made some drastic changes and so far, we’ve SEEN drastic changes in our lives.

We boxed up the TV in our living room and put it in the garage until we can sell it. We sold our PlayStation and all of the games with it. We took four boxes of toys and kitchen goodies to the local Salvation Army and changed our eating habits. We have a gigantic plastic box full of pantry items waiting to be dropped off at the Food Pantry when it opens on Thursday.

And we feel fantastic. The boys are doing unbelievably well with having no TV. I’ve seen them interact and play together more since the TV is gone than I have before. They’re playing with learning toys and exploring new games together with their blocks and legos. We’re reading Tom Sawyer to Noah every night and for the first time in a long time, both kids have consistent bed times, where before we (Josh and I and the kids) dreaded the bedtime routine.

Life has taken a significant turn for us and we are so blessed by what God’s doing in our lives.

We still don’t know what the future holds. Whether we will begin to deal with the effects of MS or not, or whether we will be transferring early and leaving Kodiak behind sooner than we anticipated.

But we know that whatever happens, someone much bigger and much greater than US is in control of it. And that’s A-okay with us.