Monday, February 28, 2005

My Goal

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what is my will and what is God's will. I know what my will is. Complete and total miraculous healing done right now. The second part of the thinking is much harder. I cannot see right now how a 2 year old with a life crippling and shortening disease can be better than a happy healthy toddler. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the fact that I'm looking at life from a human perspective rather than an eternal one. What I don't get is how to get that other perspective. It would make things so much more bearable to understand why.

In Luke 22:42 Jesus prayed a very simple prayer. I have a feeling it is exactly the prayer that I'm supposed to be praying right now. In it, Jesus asked "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me". That part I've got down. I can pray this one easily - and I'm getting lots of practise. He followed up with "yet not my will, but yours be done." That part is a bit of a show stopper. I can pray the words, but I don't mean them. I'm still praying "yet not my will, but yours be done - as long as it involves healing Doug right now". The verses following, an angel from heaven is sent to strengthen Jesus. Oh, how I need that too. But I can't pray that second part. I know I need to, I know how freeing it will be, but I just can't get there. Pray for me that I can get there. I know it will change the way I live life.

Monday, February 21, 2005

What can YOU do?

We frequently get the "if there's anything I can do..." question. We appreciate all the offers. In fact, sometimes the offers themselves offer a ray of sunshine to our days. We will take some of them up.


The things we need most is prayer and understanding. Here's my shortlist:

  1. Healing for Doug - God can do it.
  2. Faith for me
  3. Strength and Energy for all of us


As far as understanding goes, it's basically this: We're in a holding pattern waiting for referals and confirmation of diagnosis. We don't know anything new, and in fact we pretty much don't know anything at all. There are no pressing urgent matters to take care of right now, so we're exploring the "Ignorance is Bliss" statement. Unless we initate a conversation on the latest MD news, please don't. I know you mean well, but we're going to wait for the information to come to us through the regular medical channels. A few more weeks/months of not being experts won't harm Doug and may save our sanity.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

It's as bad as being Pregnant

Why do we agonize over the simplest things? We haven't told more than our family and a couple of really close friends about what is going on here. It's not that we want to keep this as a secret. It's not something we're embarassed about, or scared of what people will think. On the contrary, we would love to have people's prayer and support. But telling people is so awkward. I don't have enough emotional strength to tell people one at a time as we meet them. It would drain me completely. But if we do it "en masse" in an e-mail or something, it is cold and impersonal. People need more information, and having them contact us for it would drain us just as badly. We're barely holding our heads above water here on our own.

Our pastor has offered to let our church know for us. He's pretty good at stuff like this. I guess he's had more practise than we have. It's not going to be this Sunday - there's a kids programme going on, and Samantha is in it. She doesn't know yet either. How do you explain something like this to a 5 year old? Anyhow, he'll do it for us next week. That's a massive load off our shoulders. Thanks Wes.

Monday, February 14, 2005

When it rains...

This isn't really related to Doug, except that for the timing.

This week at work sucked. Our major client was having intermittant server problems - on the other side of the world. We could not reproduce it to save our lives, yet the server was crashing regularly. Oh yeah, it was a peak processing mission critical time there. Major stress. These guys are our bread and butter, and on top of everything else that was happening, having to fly off to fix a server wasn't really high on my list.

Would you believe that it turned out being a combination of a JDBC database driver bug (that only occurred in the most rare cases) and the wrong version of SQL Server being installed? Sometimes I want to laugh, and other times I want to strangle someone. But mostly I just feel drained.

Sunday, February 6, 2005

"Hi. How are you?"

Casual greeting, or do you really want to know? Why does our society use these four simple words as a casual greeting? Do you have any idea how hard it is to choke out a "Good, and yourself?"? Oh, I know that you mean well. It's not your fault at all, but wow - everything has changed. Simply greeting people is enough to put my heart through a ringer. I'm not doing fine, but I'm not ready to talk about it either.

We sang "It is Well With my Soul" this morning. I wish I could sing along - but I can't. It is not well with my soul right now.

Thursday, February 3, 2005

The End of the World (As We Know It)

Have you ever wondered what kind of sound is made when your world comes crashing down? Me neither - but I can certainly recognize the sound now.

We got a call from the doctor today. He was "on his way home" from the office, and "about 4 minutes away". Would it be ok if he "dropped by" to give us some test results? It's a good thing we keep parts of the house messy for occasions like this. We had 4 minutes of mad cleaning instead of 4 minutes of fear and dread.

We were expecting bad news. Doug had been having balance problems, and we suspected some sort of earish related bad news. Surgery maybe.

This was worse. Much worse.

After a preamble that I really didn't listen to, I picked up the words Muscular Dystrophy. I don't know much more than the name of it, but it sounds bad. That's when I heard the sound of the world crashing down. Everything I had planned for life was now turned upside down. My mind pretty much shut itself down on overload. My whole being went numb, and I began to shake like a leaf. THIS I was not prepared for. How can you be?

I'm thankful for a doctor that cares. I can't imagine going to his office and hearing this news. I can't imagine trying to drive home afterwards. I can't imagine much anymore.