Rejoice Greatly!

Well, after months of not knowing what was going on or which direction we would be taking to address these crazy medical concerns, tomorrow is the day of surgery.  It's a different surgery than I was expecting, and I am super grateful for that!  I think preparing myself for something as crazy as open heart surgery has really helped me to not totally freak out over this.  A hunk of my skull? About 4 weeks until I feel like doing things? A gnarly headache for up to two months?  That is a piece of CAKE compared to a year until I am 100% like they promised me after open heart!  I've spent most of my time stoked over the way things have turned out, and I think that was okay.

This week, however, I started to get scared. 

Just being real, here.  I mean, just because it's not open heart surgery doesn't mean it isn't a major surgery!  This is my head we are talking about here!  The tumor is in the skull bone and is currently obeying the "rules" of bone, which means it is growing very much like a bone would and is very hard like bone.  It also means that it is staying inside the bone and has not traveled into the brain at this point.  It is placing pressure on the brain, but not too bad at this point.  Removing it will help with the pressure and hopefully a whole host of other things.  So yay!  Except that when I spoke with my doctor this week he informed me that one of the side effects of cutting into the bone is that sometimes people end up with permanent worse headaches.  

That one kind of threw me.  

A 4-5 inch long patch of hair missing?  I'm cool with that.  I've got a hubs who loves me and a God who designed hair to grow back.  A few weeks of feeling pretty awful?  No biggie, Jesus can handle that one for me.  

A chance of permanent WORSE headaches?  Um, yeah, that one sort of bothers me.

I know that my Jesus is still in control.  I know that He has a plan and that He loves me and that if I end up with these worse headaches He will have a beautiful plan in that too.  I know a ton of the right stuff with my head.  If I could just convince my worried nauseated stomach I'd be grand.  

Then this morning I read this:

And I just knew that The Lord was speaking THIS to ME!

I felt like He said specifically, 

"Rejoice greatly in the face of this scary surgery because I, your loving, powerful, able, caring King, am COMING TO YOU to meet you THERE, in the fear, in the pain."

Honesty alert here: I really don't like it when I feel my trust shaken.

I mean, who does right?!? But still, I hate it when I know all of the right stuff to say or do but I just can't shake the worry or fear.  That's why I am loving this word for me for this situation so much right now!  He is not saying pull it together Jo.  Get with it.  Suck it up. Don't you trust me?

No.  Instead he is saying, rejoice in Me.  I AM COMING.  Rejoice in that and I will bring the rest of it to pass perfectly.

Some days I need to really see how in control God is.  But it's not a complete picture of His power until I see that I have none of my own.  As I face this surgery, which includes 3 hours in the operating room, the rest of the day in ICU ("just in case" my doc said...who likes to hear "just in case"? Ha!) and then one night overnight as long everything goes well, I am nose to nose with my inability to do ANYTHING.  

But I CAN cling to His promises!  And this morning He has promised to meet me THERE, in the surgery, in the possible complications, in the recovery room, in my life!  And He keeps His promises.

So tomorrow morning I show up for a CT scan at 6:30 where they will shave part of my hair and put a stitch in the skin and then be able to use the ct scan like a navigator of old days would use the North Star and his star charts and know exactly where to make his incision. Crazy cool, huh? (Ps talking about that makes me want to watch Prince Caspian or some movie about ships on the sea) My surgery will begin at 8:30 am and I promise that Christian will update Facebook with how things are going. Thank you so much to everyone that is praying!!!  

Oh and please pray for my doctor!  His name is Dr. Malamed and we are pretty sure he is not a believer.  He is super nice and very skilled and we had a total peace about this the moment we met him, but he isn't saved.   So please pray for him to also meet my King in that operating room and recovery room too okay?  We KNEW when we met the guy for the very first time that Jesus wants to do something awesome with him so yeah, please just pray for him.  Thank you everyone!

Oh and also thank you everyone for praying for our Christmas celebration and for the gifts and verses and kind words of encouragement and for the Christmas dinner and just so many blessings!  We are feeling like princesses and princes over here, sons and daughters of a great King.  Thank you for letting Him use you to lift us up.  It was a very sweet day!

Apple Picking

Yesterday the kids and I went Sprouts to get a few things we had run out of, and I had a startling reminder that we do not live in Paris, Texas anymore.

There's this guy that runs the produce department there that seems to be working the majority of the time that we go.  He is SUPER into nutrition and healing your body through food instead of medicine and when he is there I just know that we will be there extra long.  But he has always been sweet to the kids and chops open fruits that we haven't tried before and gives them samples so that's cool.  Plus I just know that Jesus wants a friendship to be born there that He can work through. So anyway, we usually chat about paleo diets verses vegan or the latest super fruit.  One day, a month or two back, he asked me about where the kids go to school and we shared that we home school.  He asked the kids how they like it and what they need. Through the course of the conversation Abigail told him that one of the books you need is the Bible (we have a 15 minute Bible class at the beginning of each day and our writing class is also out of the Bible).  Oh man, this guy stiffened up immediately.  He quickly said a little something that let us know what he thought about that and turned around and stalked off.  Since I got sick, I haven't really seen him.

Last night, I went in and he was there.  I had a question about the difference between yams and jewel yams so I had Abigail ask him (trying to train them up to be efficient in grocery shopping) and he came over to explain the differences to us ( which by the way, there is no difference besides the color of the skin.  So get whatever is cheapest or on sale). In the middle of chopping open the potatoes to show us that there isn't a difference, he has this look pass over his face and he stops and looks at me and says

"You're that family that home schools, aren't you?"  

I felt like I was on trial and it was so funny I almost laughed out loud. "Yes," I said.  "We are very ready for our Christmas break too!"  

Well that apparently set him off, because he looked right at the kids and said, "Did you know that Christmas was actually a pagan holiday and has nothing to do with Jesus?"  He wasn't looking at me. He wasn't really trying to ask a question or even debate with me.  He wanted to make my kids question Christmas!  I was like whoa, you wouldn't have a conversation like this in the produce section of Kroger or Walmart in Paris for sure!  

But people here aren't like people in Paris. This is definitely NOT the Bible Belt of the nation for sure.  We are part of one of the most liberal cities in America where practically everything is legal and nothing is looked down upon for fear of seeming "closed minded."

Well, my kids looked up at me with giant questioning eyes and looked shocked when I answered, 

"He is right, guys." I explained a quick synopsis of how Constantine wanted to make Christianity the Roman religion so he combined some of the old pagan holidays with some of the things Christians were celebrating, trying to make the transition easier for people.  I explained that although originally Christmas was pagan, we as a culture have redeemed it and shone the light of Christ on it and we ARE celebrating Christ now.  

The guy looked at me and said "Here's your potatoes" and walked away.  

I think he wanted to throw us a little, shake our belief.  I wasn't really offended, just a little shocked at how he passed me up and went straight for my kids. But not offended. I remember getting excited before I was a believer when I thought I had something that could tear down someone's faith (I know, I was awful). I just needed a good reason to suffocate the conviction inside of me that was screaming that Jesus is real and I needed him.  So, I'm not mad at him and I was trying to be super careful to respond in loving firmness, not arrogant pride.  I hope and am PRAYING that instead he maybe saw that although there are things that might seem to not make sense about Christianity, there is always a good answer. That was what the kids and I have talked about multiple times since last night.  The whole experience gave us the chance to really talk things through, to explain why it's okay to have a Christmas tree and to talk about taking the things of the world and redeem them and make them things that can bring glory to God.  We don't have to shrink back in fear when someone raises a question we don't know the answer to.  There is always an answer. (P.s. Alwaysbeready.com has a ton of answers if you feel like you're not equipped or don't remember the answer to something)

I think my kids learned some valuable lessons and I am praying that Jesus will keep giving us chances to kindly love this produce guy and share the Light of Jesus with Him.  I am praying that he will see that Jesus isn't who he thinks He is.  I am praying that he sees that Jesus is love and light and everything beautiful and that he surrenders to His embrace.  I am praying that this Christmas he will not be able to deny that the God of the universe came down, humbled himself, became a baby for US.  For LOVE'S SAKE, we celebrate His beautiful plan. Love came down! There can be joy in the world because the Lord HAS come!  

Pray for him with me, okay!?! And let's all remember that people are seeking this time of year.  Every trip to get apples can be a missions trip!  

Surgery Switch

Well this week has definitely been a roller coaster!

Jesus sweetly gave me this revelation of His character this week:

He is the One withe the keys. He is the One that can shut doors and if He shuts them, there will be NO opening them.  And He also opens doors and no one can get them shut if He has opened them!

I needed that this week.

Tuesday we met with the new cardiologist who specializes in congenital heart problems.  My cardiothoracic surgeon wanted his opinion because he was baffled by my numbers and scans.  So we met with him, and it turns out that he disagrees with Dr. Haffey, my original cardiologist.  Dr. miller (the new guy) says that my pictures and numbers would look startling to a person used to dealing with heart problems caused by poor diet but that he doesn't often look at a heart that was born with a defect like mine.  Dr. Miller says that he sees 200 patients a year with my exact type of stenosis and it is his opinion that although my heart does have a defect, it does not need to be corrected with open heart surgery (can anyone join me in a victory dance and a WOOP WOOP!?). He says that he sees my symptoms and they are measurable and real, but just not coming from my pulmonary artery.  

Back in September, while I was waiting to get in to see my cardiologist, my primary ran a test on me called a Holter monitor.  It's basically a 24 hour portable EKG. It showed that I have some bradycardia (low heart rates) and that I had TWENTY FOUR pauses.  Like your heart is pausing from beating kind of pauses.  We took that test with us to the cardiologist and originally thought he would want to do a pace maker.  Dr. Haffy thought the pauses were insignificant and that the pulmonary artery was the real culprit.  Dr. Miller thinks the pulmonary artery is insignificant and that the sinus node (the place in your heart that sends out the electrical impulse to make your heart beat) is the real culprit.  He says that anytime your heart pauses, not enough oxygen is getting to your brain and that will make you dizzy, faint, extremely fatigued, all that I am going through.  They still disagree with each other, but Dr. Haffy has agreed to a longer test to prove it.  So I am hooked up to a heart monitor for the next 30 days or until my doctor can record enough pauses to prove to my insurance that I need a pacemaker.  Fun times, eh?

Another thing is that Dr. Miller also thought that the tumor in my head may be having some effect on the nerves in my body and may be causing some of the issues.  Our neurosurgeon said that it's not very likely, but that the brain is a funny place and since it needs to be removed anyway, then let's get this puppy outta there.  So I am scheduled for surgery to remove the tumor in my skull on December 26th.  Seems crazy, but they had originally wanted to remove it in October and since it may have an effect, he is squeezing me in.  

Thank you so so much for praying for me!!! I know that the Lord has used those prayers mightily and I am blown away by the love that you have shown me through them.  So many of you said that you wished you could come and be a practical help, but prayer really was the most practical thing I needed!  I'll take a surgery switch over a meal dropped off! You NEED to see how powerful and important your prayers are! Thank you for them!

So quick recap:

Last week I was scheduled to have open heart surgery by the end of this week.

Now I WILL NOT BE HAVING OPEN HEART SURGEY.  YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Even though I don't feel better yet, I am so glad to have a much less insane surgery before me!  And I am so excited to get this lump out of my skull and see how my vision improves and my headaches decrease and hey who really wants a lump in their skull that the doctors say is "probably benign and probably slow growing"? So yay for that! 

I am still wearing this heart monitor and they are deciding about the pace maker.  But even if I have to have that surgery it is really pretty simple.  Even easier than my tumor removal! 

That's where this verse in revelation comes in for me.  We had a peace the whole time that this surgery would be okay. That I wouldn't die or anything crazy.  And He gave us that peace because He knew we wouldn't end up needing that surgery so hey Jo don't freak out.  He will not allow a surgery that I don't need! 

He will not allow a trial or a test in my life that I don't need!

So that means that every little last thing that passes into my life bubble is exactly what I need.

He will shut the doors that are not for my good, AND NO ONE CAN OPEN THEM!  But that also means that if He has allowed a door to be opened in my life, a trial, a difficulty, a person I don't know how to handle, a house full of sick kids, a knock on your door just after you've gone to bed with someone in need on the other side, I don't know, whatever you're dealing with, whatever I am dealing with, it is a door that He has allowed to be opened. 

So I am super challenged today.  I feel like its so easy to see his hand opening and closing the doors of major surgery, but can I choose to see His hand opening and closing the doors in my everyday life?  

Can I actually apply this and then see each person, each situation, as the door that Jesus has opened to me today and walk through it in boldness and with purpose.  Don't you want that? I want that! I want to walk purposefully, boldly into each day knowing that the Kingdom of God is at hand and that I have a Sovereign King looking out for me.

Ps. So the surgery on my skull is way less of a big deal, but PLEASE keep praying for me okay?  They will remove the outer layer of bone and most of the tumor is in the marrow part.  My surgeon says he most likely will not need to touch the inner layer of bone so that means he will not be touching the brain at all.  He says overall the tumor is in a very easily removable spot.  Recovery is 1-3 days in the hospital and four weeks to feel pretty normal.  I may have a crazy headache for up to two months.  WAY better than a year for open heart, but yeah if you want to keep praying for me I will totally receive that because it's still a month of my family not having a totally normal me.  It's funny, this surgery would have seemed so daunting before the relief of knowing that it's not as bad as it could have been. Jesus is sweet to give perspective, eh?

This morning He reminded me of this:

He is the One who sits on the throne.  He is in charge.  And He is encircled by a rainbow.  What a beautiful picture! A rainbow is the reminder that He will keep His promises!  So this morning I got a sweet reminder that He is powerful and in charge and that He is also faithful to keep His promises. 

What a beautiful Savior we serve!

P.p.s.

Merry almost Christmas!

Jesus Commands my Destiny

I have had the song "In Christ Alone" in my head for days now.  It is such a great song and full of beautiful truth, but the line that keeps ringing through my mind is

"Jesus commands my destiny"

It is so true! I am NOT getting all doctrinal this morning.  I believe that the free will of man and the absolute sovereignty of God can and do coexist because Scripture teaches that they do.  But today, this week, this season of my life, I am so thankful that Jesus does indeed command my destiny.

This morning as I was reading my Bible and praying and singing this song in my head over and over, I began to think about how He really always has commanded my destiny.  Like from the beginning.  But I won't go that far back this morning.  

This morning as I meditated on His Lordship over my life, I thought back to before I was saved.  When I was in my late high school years and then college, my heart was seeking.  I was filling it with a lot of junk and got myself into some very dark places, but that's not the point of this musing.  

Back then, when my heart would ache with loneliness and I was searching for a God I didn't even know I was searching for, I would find my journey often ended at the beach.  Alone.  It was the place where I ended up when I knew I was too small.  

I've always thought it was because my Dad from a young age instilled a love for the ocean in me.  I can remember taking trips to Hermosa Beach with him and the warmth of the sand and the taste of salt as some of my earliest memories.  But this morning I had an interesting thought.  Although I am not saying that the love of the beach that my Dad gave me is completely separate from it, I think it is interesting that the beaches I ended up at (Oceanside pier and Tamarack) just happened to be common surf spots of my wonderful hubs.

Okay let me back up a bit here and give you some more info so this makes more sense. 

Christian's mom told him at about 15 that he should add to his prayer list his future wife.  Sounds a little crazy, but he did.  He would pray for his future wife the things he prayed for himself, to have a great day or good devotions or whatnot.  

At about the age of seventeen, he felt God saying to him, "that's great that you pray for your future wife, but what if she isn't even saved yet?"  So he started praying that his wife wherever she was would be aware of Gods presence and if she wasn't yet saved that she would surrender her life to Jesus Christ.  I was twenty years old at the time and VERY lost in drugs and all kinds of yuck that the world offers.  This was the season of life where I would find myself down at the beach, watching the surfers ride the waves and the sun set and just wondering if there was something more than me.  Then  KNOWING that there was something more than me but not knowing what.

As a lost twenty year old I spent that year seeking, finding glimpses, turning away, turning back.  Always finding myself down by the water, begging to understand something.  That was the year that Christian spent praying for his future wife to GET SAVED! And two weeks after I turned twenty-one, I surrendered my life to Jesus.  Almost a year later I met Christian and well, the rest is a cute story but not the point.

This is the point: 

How crazy is it that as he prayed for me, I was drawn to the very beaches where he was surfing to ponder and seek out the God who so wanted my heart!  Like, I am tripping out thinking about the fact that I probably watched him surf while I was searching to know what life was about.

Jesus has been seeking after ME from before I even knew what to call the gaping hole inside of me!  And He is cool enough to use the man I would eventually marry to pray and gather me into the fold!!! 

I would sit on the sea wall and think how pointless my life was, how dumb and empty each step I took was.  But it wasn't.  Sometimes even now it is easy to think how pointless things might be, like how frustrating it is to have wait for ANOTHER test (oh and they switched me to a different doctor again), or how empty each day can feel when you can't even do the laundry and make dinner and play with your kids.  But I believe that my seemingly pointless moments now are not unlike my perceived pointless moments then.  Each time I sat there, empty and at the end of my understanding, I was closer to the TRUTH: that He loved me, that He came down as a Baby and LIVED and DIED for me to not only set me free from sin but to welcome me into His loving embrace that had always been there I just couldn't see it!

This applies NOW, too!

Each time that I come to the end of my understanding in this whole thing with my heart, each time I cannot get up for hours at a time from my chair in the corner of the living room, maybe (not really "maybe") I am closer to more truth, deeper truth, truth about His character and love.

You see, nothing is wasted.  Even if I miss it and don't understand it, HE IS WORKING ALL THINGS TOGETHER FOR MY GOOD.  Someday, I will look back at this season of sickness and see the intricate things that He is weaving together into a beautiful picture.  For now, I will look at the beautiful craziness of the fact that I sat on the beaches watching my future husband who was praying for my salvation ride the waves of an always changing ocean and KNOW that this too will be beautiful.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time." Ecclesiastes 3:11

Bringing in the Sheaves

Well this week has been a good one.  I've been moving pretty slowly but Jesus has been speaking sweetly.

First there was this:

It was kind of along the same line as the Daniel 6 thing.  Like hey Jo, don't be afraid to be drawn away.  Even if it looks scary and difficult, it can turn out to be the place that Jesus speaks sweet comfort and teaches us to sing His praises. And I know He is trying to teach me to sing a "new song."

Then this morning there was this:

Oh this was so beautiful! Yes, sometimes it's the seeds sown in tears that are the most fruitful.  I've heard a ton of awesome studies on that topic for sure.  In fact, the entire account of Joseph is beautiful like that.

But this morning the Lord pointed something else out to me.  You see it's not just about the tears.  It's about continuing to sow seeds whether there are times of ease or difficulty.  

The joy comes when we continue to go forth sowing the seeds even when we are weeping.

For me, I was instantly convicted.  How much time have I taken up thinking about myself and the difficulties of the week instead of sowing seeds for the Kingdom of God?  Have I been throwing myself a pity party when there are neighbors to pray for? People going hungry and freezing in my city?  Friends loosing loved ones tragically?

This week, my CT scan got denied and then postponed and then got done.  

This week my appointment with the surgeon got postponed and then canceled and then moved to this morning.  

This week, my surgeon said he still needs another test.  

And this week my focus has been on not having a nervous breakdown!  

Between the fact that I have had very little strength this week and a lot of disappointments and I'm totally bored of staring at the walls of my house, I've been a bit stir crazy, a bit whiny (pray for my poor hubs), and a bit ready to BE DONE with all of this.

Then comes Psalm 126 and I realized...

There is a Kingdom to invest in and here I am over in my warm cozy house pouting because this is taking too long to figure out and I'm tired of being sick and I just want to make gingerbread cookies with my kids.  

LAME!

I mean, I know that Jesus knows my frame and loves me no matter what, but I have a choice.  Do I want to waste the time I have been given?  

Do I want to continue weeping and stop the forward momentum into his embrace?  Or will I choose to sow seeds for His Kingdom WHiLE I am weeping?

I know, at least for me, that is what Psalm 126 means.  Yes, there may be tears but the point is that I continue to obey Jesus. Continue to sow seeds, to pray for these people, this city, Texas, California, Wisconsin, our nation, the future of my kids and my hubs and then back around the circle again.  If I truly believe that prayer is so powerful then really, how can I be so stir crazy?  When you look at it from that angle, my plate has been cleared so THAT I can pray.  

Basically, I'm going nuts over here because my focus is off.  My focus has been on my tears instead of on the seeds waiting to be sown.  

Can Jesus get His work done without me? Absolutely.  But He wants to use me so that He can fill me with that joy and bring such a bountiful harvest. And when I choose to beg Him to make His kingdoms work my focus, I am not bogged down with work but freed up into bountiful JOY.

So please pray for me that I walk in the joy that He has set before me.  It is beautiful and I don't want to miss it while I attend my lame pity party!

P.s. About the surgeon...

If you want all the nitty gritty details, the CT scan of my pulmonary artery was done in the hopes of seeing where in the artery there is a narrowing.  Unfortunately it did not show that. It showed that the artery is TRIPLE the size that it should be.  Dr. Propp, my surgeon, was absolutely flabbergasted. His exact words were, "This is MASSIVE." He explained that the artery has grown in size  because of the pressures from whatever is obstructing things.  He described it as turbulence.  Most arteries are like water flowing through a pipe.  Mine is more like a roaring rapids kind of thing and the turbulence has caused the artery to become misshapen and grow very large.  This has other implications we want to avoid.

 So it is further proof that something is WAY off but we still don't know exactly where the "kink" in the line is so he can't scheduled a surgery.  He has to know WHERE to cut.  So he is speaking with the interventional radiologist on Monday and hoping to squeeze that in early next week and surgery the following week.  Which puts me in the hospital over Christmas but that's okay.  Really, Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus and his beautiful grace and mercy and love! And we should be celebrating that every single day!

Thank you so much for praying for me and for walking with me on this journey.  It is nice to not feel all alone.