Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Be Patient

Today I feel like David when he looked to the heavens and screamed "How long Oh lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 13). Today I am shaking my fist, enraged that my life is not different or easier. I am indignant that my husband and I struggle within the confines of a debilitating chronic illness, while other newly married couples go to parties, movies, and weekend getaways. I am jealous and I am mad because an expectation I had is not being met. The sermon at church this week centered around unmet expectations and being patient. I am trying to be patient and remind myself that God will show himself in the midst of our distress. We are looking for him, believe me, we are looking. I am comforted to know that the same David that penned the tormented words in Psalm 13 also wrote in Psalm 40 "I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of he mud and mire."
Clay's migraines have been elevated for the past week because we think he has the flu or some virus. Please pray for healing from the virus, continued healing from the migraines, and a renewed sense of strength. I am struggling as well with being tired and frustrated with the continual sickness. I know he is as well. I long for pain free days in which we can be carefree and unburdened. I long to have back the days of our courtship and beginning of our marriage that this illness robbed from us. I hope to have a "second honeymoon", to look back upon this time as a stepping stone. Someone once told me that his migraines were not a life sentence. Some days it feels that way. Someone else also told me we'd look back on these days and say "remember when you had headaches all the time?" Oh that those days of reminiscing would be swift in coming. Oh that the Lord would be swift to come. Come Lord come. We can hardly wait. Haven't we been patient enough?

Saturday, December 15, 2007

The Lord Is In This Place

How do I begin? It is Saturday morning, I have been up since 4:00. I recently took a new job and started working the night shift 2 months ago. I no longer have control over my sleep patterns! I fall asleep whenever and wherever, like during a movie at our friend Jason and Emily's house last night, and wake up at odd hours unable to return to sweet slumber. Today will be interesting, seeing as I will be operating on 3 hours of sleep albeit deep sleep, and we plan to travel to Centerville to visit a new friend of Clay's.
As I type I am sitting on our couch, where I shortly slept last night, and looking over at my husband sound asleep in our lazy boy. The lazy boy clashes terribly with my decor. I have mulled over the thought of getting rid of it and have had many spats with my husband about why I NEED a new chair or NEED to get it recovered. Any woman would agree and identify with this primal desire for her home to match or have some sort of flow. My husband argues that the recliner is comfortable and purposeful as it reclines fully AND swivels, therefore trumping my argument. Needless to say, I am glad we still have it because it has been my sweet husband's place of rest for the past month. It hurts his head less to be somewhat sitting up than it does to lay flat, so he has been sleeping in the ugly, but useful recliner. I choose to sleep on the couch on the nights I'm actually at home because it is lonely to sleep in a bed by yourself when you are accustomed to having a large companion next to you snoring, talking incessantly in his sleep, and stretching out diagonally across the bed (completely cutting off your leg room).
Many of you have been walking with us through the crucible of Clay's migraines for the past couple of years, praying for us, supporting us financially and physically. How can I thank you enough for your love and much needed support? Thank you Thank you Thank you. Last year at this time, my husband's headaches were at their worst, confining him to the couch in relentless pain. He had surgery right before the holiday in hopes to relieve his pain, but it was to no avail. We have a wonderful, amazing and INCREDIBLY intelligent neurologist here in Nashville, who we continue to see every month. We have tried acupuncture, diets, massage therapy, herbal supplements, meditation, and yoga. We have gone to the allergist, to an ENT, had MRI's, CT scans, and a few trips to the ER. We have read books, visited websites, contemplated Headache clinics, and even thought about moving somewhere else. Clay still continues to suffer with little relief and pops at least 30-40 different preventative migraine medications every day. This past year was to be a year of healing. A time to exhaust all possible options. I hoped by this Christmas we would be out of the woods, that his pain would be somewhat diminished if not eliminated--because who has a migraine that never goes away?! Yet here we are a year later, Clay in the recliner and in the same place physically he was last year. I cannot understand empathetically the pain my husband suffers daily. As you can imagine it is devastating emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually for both of us.
I am asking for your continued prayer. Begging for you to intercede for my husband and I before the Father and God of our lives, who bears us mercifully and carries us through this trial daily. Just as Jehoshaphat threw himself before the throne of the Lord and prayed vigorously for deliverance from his physical enemies, I too have been and continue to reside at the feet of Christ throwing my hands in the air daily praying in Jehoshaphat's words "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you." I believe that I have a God who answers, not something I could have said a year ago with confidence. I believe that I serve a God who cares. I do not always understand the whys or the hows, but I am striving to trust in the midst of a situation in which we have NOTHING else to look to or turn to except Christ and pray for his mercy. I am unexpectedly finding this place of humble dependence a joyful place to be. There is no worldly answer for us right now. Our hope is in Christ, in whom both Clay and I have placed our lives, our faith and our trust.
Please pray for continued strength for Clay to endure the daily pain. Please pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit into our hearts so that we might still praise him in the midst of suffering and trial. Please pray for hope to be renewed and sustained in my husband's heart, that the God who loves him has NOT abandoned him and is closer than we know. I pray that daily we would have our eyes opened to the Lord's presence in this situation as Jacob's were through a dream and thus proclaim "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it!"

It is hard for me to reach out and plead for help, but I know many people here in Nashville and in other states have been praying for us. I want you to be informed of where we are in our journey so that you might be able to pray more specifically. I also want to be able to share the many things the Lord is doing so that you will know that your prayers are producing fruit for the kingdom of Christ in our lives. Thank you for loving us so well.

Sarah