7/30/17

It’s one day until my surgery. This past week I’ve felt pretty good…the countdown was running in the background of my mind while I kept super busy with work, closings, showings, walk throughs, an EEG and a three hour pre-op appointment, not to mention the extreme patience often needed during Reagan’s v e r r r r y lengthy bedtime shenanigans.

As I sit writing in bed this Sunday morning at 7:30 a.m., I know that tomorrow at this time I’ll have an IV in my arm, maybe going to get a final MRI before I’m given anesthesia and am headed back for surgery. I know I’ll have a small posse of friends who want to pray over me before surgery. We’re all hoping and praying the surgery is successful (obviously) and that we get more confirmation it was the right move. We’ve been given confirmation over and over as we walk toward surgery day, I just feel so anxious thinking about being motionless in an anesthesia dreamland, while a crew in the operating room helps the surgeon with whatever he needs in getting a look at the lesion in my brain.

I’m thinking about when the Dr. comes out to give Rob the news, how he’ll feel, what will the mood be like…will everyone breathe a sigh of relief? I’m praying no terrible news has to be delivered, I pray the surgeon says, “we got [insert whatever the thing is here] and she’s going to be fine. she’s already waking up and acting herself.” I don’t want to give life to alternative scenarios.

Even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we fear no evil, b/c God is with us. Right? I’m saying this to myself now…I was about to write even though we walk down this difficult path, we know God is with us. And then verses I’ve had memorized since I was a five year old kid overlap my earthly words and a higher way and thought supersedes my own.

As a believer, I am so glad and thankful that if for some reason things go unexpectedly, that I’m saved and loved b/c Jesus first chose me and I chose to accept his gift of life, salvation and eternity in Heaven. It’s a gift that we have to accept. I can’t imagine if I didn’t have Jesus, how I’d feel…death is not something I’m scared of b/c of the complete confidence I have in Jesus and in what he did on the cross. If you ever wonder where you’d spend eternity if you die, and you don’t have confidence in the answer, man…GET the confidence by accepting JESUS.

Even though for the last several years things have been really tough for our family and just the opposite of what we anticipated in our minds, I pray that we will come through this hurdle unscathed. And not that we are like Job from the Bible or anything, but we understand suffering, questioning, stomping our feet and ultimately surrendering to God’s plan. I know that if we continue to stick with God, he will reward us, whether here or in eternity. I have to believe it will be both…b/c even when Job went through everything, the last chapter of Job says, “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part.”

Maybe one day when Rob and I are 50 years old, we’ll look back on all the trouble we had to go through in our thirties and say, but man, look at what God did, look what he taught us, look how he restored Reagan, look how he moved us toward finding out about your brain when we should have never known. Now I understand…I know God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours. What he knew was coming in our thirties, now we see here standing in our fifties. That’s why you stick when trouble comes, don’t run, lean in. Do the hard work, rewards are coming for your faithfulness. God has shown it time and time and time again over the course of thousands of years. I want to go with his track record for redemption and success, not my own. We’re sticking with God, with each other, forever.