is my head on straight?

forgive me if any of this is a repeat of anything i've told you before. i have a lot to share, this will probably be a long post, so if you don't have time to read it, there's your heads up, my disclaimer, whatever-- you might need to come back later if you have more important things to be doing!  sorry for the novel i'm about to post.

ooook. first thing: update.

we went to the hospital a week ago.  ridge was bleeding, randomly.  that hasn't happened in a while.  so we were still on abx for his central line infection (did i tell you he had one of those? if not, i'm telling you now).  so we gave him blood on sunday and we waited.  i knew on saturday when we'd gone home that it would be a short stay home, and it was very short indeed.  but ridge responded really well to the sunday transfusion and by tuesday he was pretty much holding his hgb well and acting fine so i said we needed to go home wednesday if possible since he was doing well, and the doc agreed.  so wed morning, we gave blood even though ridge didn't really need a transfusion....just tanked him up.  and we came home.  but i'm getting ahead of myself.

monday night in the hospital...well, maybe it was tuesday morning, whatever..it was 4:30 AM i believe on tuesday.  ridge had something...a med, that's what it was.  he kind of woke up bc he hadn't really woken up all night to eat, so i got him out of the bed (HALLELUJAH he was sleeping in the bed without me!) and sat in the rocker to feed him (yes...still).  i was rocking him and he had finished eating and i wasn't really thinking about a lot, which was strange bc usually at that time of night/morning if i am awake i am often praying a billion times in a row, "Lord, say ENOUGH.  Let it be over. please heal ridge, or just let us be done with this and let us be normal..." blah blah, you get my repetitive nature of praying....but i wasn't doing that. i wasn't really praying or anything...i was just sitting there.  and i leaned down and kissed ridge on the forehead and i heard, "It's over."  I didn't hear it outloud, but I heard it clear as day.  More than once.  I don't want to get ahead of myself, and as a friend mentioned, I am optimistic, but cautiously optimistic...but I do not doubt for a second I heard that.  What does it mean?  Did that phrase mean IT is over?  Or that THAT bleed was over?  Or what? I have no idea.  But I know I heard it.  I'll let you decide who you think said it, but I know who I think said it.  Repeatedly.  Soooo....Wed. we came home.  Ridge finished the IV abx on Friday.  We are still on a higher dose of amicar but we are going to slowly go back down starting late tonight.  And when we first came home I had this horrible feeling that a stomach bug was headed our way, but so far, we are clean on that. I am beginning to fear the flu, so S-Puppy and I will be getting our flu shots this week if possible (um, the health department doesnt have them yet, but informed me they would not be free this year...what?) so we will just go to Walgreens or Target or somewhere that already has them.  In fact, tonight I went to target, and planned on getting my flu shot.  The pharmacy was already closed.  But while I was there, and afterwards while I drove to starbucks and over to my SIL's new house, which I had not seen before tonight but really liked a lot, I just felt...normal.  Like, no cloud over my head.  Like, I haven't felt that way in a year.  I don't know what it means, and I am still being cautiously optimistic....I have shaky sea legs of faith right now...but I feel normal.  I am not bold in anything about this journey so I will not say more....and I know I could be wrong about it all...and I know more trials could await us....so I am cautious.  But deep in my heart, I feel something different stirring.

Speaking of my heart...I am reading a book...that is to be taken very loosely-- "reading"....I don't have a lot of reading time.  But when I DO have time, I am reading "When Your World Falls Apart" by David Jeremiah.  And if I could kiss a chapter, I'd be kissing chapter 4 right now.  And I could type out all of the chapter I've read so far bc all of it is golden to me.  But I will try to share an abridged version.  Many a tear have been shed this chapter, and I'm only halfway through it.

The chapter is on Psalm 13.  I will include the entire psalm here....all emphasis is my own.

Psalm 13,  a Psalm of David

How long, O Lord?  Will You forget me forever?  How long will You hide Your face from me?  How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart DAILY?  How long will my enemy be exalted over me?!?!?!  Consider and hear me, O Lord my God; Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; Lest my enemy say, "I have prevailed against him"; Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved.  But I have trusted in Your MERCY; My heart shall rejoice in Your SALVATION.  I will sing to the Lord, BECAUSE HE HAS DEALT BOUNTIFULLY WITH ME.


Do I feel like, really, in the pit of my soul, that the Lord has dealt bountifully with me?  HECK NO.  I don't think this crapwad disease is bountiful in the least...not in any good way anyways.  But do I BELIEVE the Lord has dealt bountifully with me?  You bet I do. I read that part of the chapter as a promise.  My God will deal bountifully with me.  He will preserve me.

I'm not finished.

So David was really having a sucky time...Saul was hating him, out to get him, David was on the run, even acting insane and stuff.  Check it...from the book:

"In every life, at some time, a person finds himself in that dark tunnel where no light is visible.  You weep and you cry out in frustration and you plead "Lord I can't take anymore!  I have no more patience and no more strength to hold out; I must hear from you TODAY.  If you don't resolve this issue, I don't know what I'm going to do.  Can't You see that I'm desperate?  WHY DON'T YOU HELP ME?"  (ahhem...I could have written that.  I've probably said those exact words.  Possibly verbatim.)

more more more...
but "THere are some favors that the Almighty does not grant either the first, or the second, or the third time you ask Him, because He wished you to pray for a long time and often He wills this delay to keep you in a state of humility-- and to make you realize the VALUE OF HIS GRACE."  -- Jean Eudes.

Thank you very much.  For sure I understand THAT quote.

Here we get to the most recent stuff I've read...and it's some good stinkin stuff.

FB Meyer (biblical commentator): "Saul's persecutions lasted for EIGHT OR NINE YEARS, and NO hope of termination appeared.  David was a man who spends FIVE HUNDRED DAYS passing through a forest.  The tangled over growth hides the sun, and he begins to despair of EVER emerging."

David...david david...he wrote psalm 13 when "he was physically ehausted....emotionally depressed...dispirited, discouraged.....this psalm was wrung out of the extremity of his soul....he could NOT go on...not for another day, not for another hour, NOT EVEN FOR ANOTHER MINUTE."

I've been there.  It is an experience I hate and it is something I might have thought I'd felt before but hadn't.  It is a feeling, a literal feeling, of "I'm going to lose it.  I can not take one more thing.  I will crumble.  I will fall apart.  I will have a nervous/mental/whatever breakdown."  It is a feeling of complete despair and insanity that I just haven't ever felt until all of this with Ridge.  And I don't feel it all the time, but I feel it when things are just way way way TOO MUCH.  It isn't something any person can help.  It is an internal emotional struggle of needing things to just STOP and things to BE OVER....

David felt that way.  repeatedly.  there are many many psalms like that one.  "So many begin with a sigh and end with a song.  But in life, you can't take the song without letting out the sigh" (from the book).

HOW LONG?!?!?  "[david] is overwhelmed with a sense of PERMANENCE of trouble....trouble....with no solution,[seeming] to mock our most diligent efforts to lead a peaceful life, and finally [consuming] our last ounce of patience. And David...finally lifts his eyes to heaven in exasperation and says, 'HOW MUCH LONGER, O GOD? HOW MUCH LONGER?"

The book also talks about the fact that we will come to a point..we WILL come to a point of believing that God's forgotten us.  If you haven't been there, good for you.  I might've felt ignored by God before, or like I was separate from Him before...but many many of those times it was because I wasn't seeking him really.  I've felt alone before even when I was pursuing a faithful walk with the Lord...but never have I felt so forgotten as in this valley of our life.

"It is not under the sharpest, but the longest trials, that we are most in danger of fainting."-- Andrew Fuller

Thanks, Mr. Fuller...fo sho you are right.  aaaamen amen amen.

David Jeremiah writes "We can take a certain amount with our faith intact.  But the longer we go without God's peace and perspective in the midst of bad times, the more our faith begins to weaken."

Do you get it?  It isn't that we aren't praying. It isn't that we aren't seeking the Lord...we can do everything right but you still reach a point in a crapwad time like this that your faith is just weak.  It might be all you have to hold on to, but it's as weak as I am tall.  and if you don't know me, I'm just under 6'0.

Take Job...David J writes, "Times didn't improve for him.  [IN FACT!] The devil extended his lease on Job's life, and the suffering servant of God began to realize that he was in for a long term battle.  That's when he began to come apart at the seams."

We will probably all have a time in our life where our faith begins to "unravel."  Maybe you've been there. Maybe you think you have, but God will show you something later in life where you think (most) everything before it is small potatoes compared....That's what happened to us.  "A trial will build to a crescendo in your life....life will not cooperate....days to weeks, weeks to months, ...months to years, you reach that personal point, somewhere in the scheme of your suffering where you begin to give up on God."

deep breath.

Isaiah 49:15-16
"Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb?  Surely they may forget, YET I WILL NOT FORGET YOU. SEE, I HAVE INSCRIBED YOU on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me."

What what?!?!?  Let's all take a break to do a dance at that.  Thank you JESUS.  Is my name on the palm of his hand?  I don't know, I didn't do the research/background whatever on this.  That isn't what the verse says.  It doesn't say I've inscribed your name on the palms of my hand.  That alone would be cool.  But it says I HAVE INSCRIBED YOU!  YOU YOU YOU!  ME.  me.  all of me.  my doubts and failures and hardships and ridge's stupid disease and our abnormal life and every pain and tear and struggle and whatever that we face and the fact i had smores for dinner because i didn't feel like having something else and the fact i stay up all hours of the night bc i just can't get to sleep bc i'd rather be doing things and staying busy and  the fact i have things about me that are just me and some people don't like them and others love them and all my insecurities and weirdness and whatever-- ALL OF THAT IS PART OF ME!  And I am inscribed on HIS hand.  He wont' forget me.  Not for one second.

"He cannot forget you.  No matter what...you have never left God's mind or heart."

I'm almost finished.

Check it check it...Psalm 22 is also a psalm of David.  But it has no historic origin traceable to his life....it is known as a Messianic psalm....predicting of the crucifixion...and in this psalm, we read the words, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

So of course I've felt that way.  David did too.  David Jeremiah did too.  You probably have too.  Who else felt that way?  Jesus.  "The Lord Jesus Christ not only felt forsake, HE WAS FORSAKEN."  Hold up.  HE WAS FORSAKEN.  "The Father turned His back on Jesus because He was a holy and just God who COULD NOT look upon the sin that Jesus carried to the cross-- YOUR SIN AND MINE."  thankyouthankyouthankyouJesus.

"He turned His back upon His Son so that He would never have to turn His back on you."

Forgive me for all the quoting of my wonderful book, but I think pretty much all of this post is something worth sticking in our pipes and smoking.  I don't smoke.  But that's good stuff I wrote about tonight, I don't care who ya are!

I will sign off bc you are probably asleep from reading so much of my blabber tonight...if you are even still reading.

YOU are written on the palms of HIS hands.

How does that make you feel, peeps?