First of all, I ordered a Catholic planner for the 2016/2017 school year. I have 2 January-December planners right now, but now that I'm living life by the school year again, it was necessary. I feel like a little kid waiting for a Christmas present, I am so. darn. excited. There's my nerd moment for the day.
My prolonged absence from blogging has been due to: A) writer's block, B) trying to savor my bit of downtime before summer gets all crazy on me, and C) some personal losses and struggles that I didn't want to blurt out and make a mess of in blogging until I'd gotten a handle on them and grappled with them a bit on my own.
This past weekend was a very sad weekend. If you're on the internet or see newspapers or anything of the sort, you've been bombarded by the news and aftermath...you get it. I had a personal struggle as well going on, so I was just mopey and sad this entire weekend. And then Monday night.
I will not be sharing this on Facebook for family privacy sake, but feel comfortable enough with my fairly small audience on this forum to talk about it. I was settling into my evening routine when my mom called about 7:30. She called in tears...her second oldest brother has been losing weight in an unhealthy way and had some collapsing spells. After a spell on Monday he was taken into emergency surgery and a large tumor across his abdomen was discovered. The initial estimate was 2-7 days.
I could have waited until my day off on Thursday to go to see him, but I did not want to risk losing my opportunity to see him. I left in a matter of 30 minutes of my mom's call with the help of Matt getting me sent off, and arrived in Wichita at 11pm Monday night. My uncle was still pretty sedated Monday night, but Tuesday morning I was able to see him again. After they took his breathing tube out, he was off talking and teasing a mile a minute. It was so good to see. I was able to talk (and tease) with him and tell him I loved him. Another oncologist has given an estimate of 2-6 weeks. I may still have time to quickly go down again, but I'm so glad that I was able to talk to him at least once more. Please please pray for his family at this time.
After staying at the hospital for a couple of hours, I drove straight back to KC to work for a couple hours on Tuesday afternoon. On 4 hours of sleep. I've made wiser decisions. I think most of this week I've been trying to recuperate from my messy, exhausting beginning of the week.
On the trip down to Wichita, all I could dwell on was my anger at God for all that was occurring in my life at that moment. I needed music, but funny enough all I could listen to were Christian songs because anything else on the radio seemed too shallow. In my struggle, I thought about the prayer exercise where the leader will ask you to imagine Jesus in your heart, going through the "files" of life events and talking with Him one on one. Except all I could imagine was locking Jesus out in frustration. I wanted Him out. If this was how things were going to be, I wanted Him out. But at the same time, I imagined Him on the outside, looking how He must have looked at Golgatha, and pleading with me in His eyes to let Him back in and Him sitting patiently outside the door of my heart, waiting for the opportunity to be let back in.
I can't say there was any point where that relationship was instantly healed, but the peace that came with seeing my uncle in good spirits, being able to tell him I loved him at least once more, and seeing how his family was supporting each other...somehow all of that shifted my perspective once more. We have to live for those little bright moments when we're in the storm.
The weekend tragedy had non-believers livid at those praying about the tragedy on social media. Prayers don't get laws passed, they said. Prayers to lead to equality, they said. Prayers don't lead to change, they said. Well, maybe from their perspective. But true prayer is leading to conversations. Sincere prayers lead to changed minds and hearts. It's true those prayers shouldn't stagnate into good intentions. Those prayers should be letting Jesus into the heart so He can heal it. And healing hurts. My gosh, it hurts. But without prayer, that healing, that change, those conversations, they will stagnate and be ineffective. So while you don't have to show it on social media, do continue to pray. Bang on Heaven's door for some answers. Let Him into the mess and see what He does with it.
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