Schedule is still full for stent placement - still scheduled for 15th
Blessed by God's provision!
Tales from traveling while ill --
As some of you may have figured out, I was traveling over the 4th of July in Milwaukee and Iowa. The theme that was recurrent through the trip was that God provides and takes care of me-no matter how crabby or frightened I feel.
Here are a couple stories -- hope they encourage your faith and trust.
God gives you what you need, not necessarily what you want....When I visit our son in Iowa, I love to do projects with/for him. Since he works for a Christian camp, there are always lots of opportunities to do this! About the time I got to Iowa, my pain really began climbing more sharply. Managing my intake of acetaminophin became an issue - that's how much tylenol and advil I was taking....My diarrhea got more intense also. Yuck....
Yet God provided.
I called my urologist to get stronger pain medicine. The office told me that while they were sorry for my pain, they could not fax a script like that across state lines. After much conversation, we concluded the best thing to do would be to go to an urgent care, hope that we could convince them to call my urologist and then hope that he would be available to take the call and confirm my diagnosis and then that they would give me a script for stronger pain medicine....ya right!
As we were talking this over with friends, he said - "why don't you go see Dr T?",who is a good friend of his. Now as it happens, I had seen Dr T when we first moved to Milwaukee. At 8:30 at night, he picks up his phone and calls him on his cell phone! Both of us were cringing, saying not to bother him and that we would try in the morning....long story, short sense - he saw me the next day - on his lunch hour! He gave up his lunch hour to see me because his friend asked him to....As our friend said - we are brother's in Christ - we help each other! Dr T was a great blessing and so was our friend that connected us! Because of those two friends, I was able to get stronger pain medication and enjoy the end of my trip!
Icing on the cake? I was still in his system from 7 ys ago and there was scripture on the walls in his office!!! So comforting! I was blessed!
What I needed was rest - the doctors had said that and I knew that and had figured that rural Iowa would be a perfect place for me to do that. Evidently, what I had in mind was not "restful" enough though. The pain and the diarrhea certainly sapped all my energy from me! Rest is about all I did!!!
As many of you know, I love gardening and I love birds.
It was about as perfect as it can get for me-- to be forced to sit in this gorgeous green, rolling setting with mature trees and every shade of green you can think of was such a blessing--a blessing I would never have opted for because I would have been busy with projects! God knew I needed "nature therapy!"
After we had been in California about a year and we traveled back to the midwest, I realized how much I missed the green. California is beautiful and I love living there, but the green is different. It is more in the dusty blue tones (maybe because we don't have real rain to wash the desert dust off - lol) In the Midwest it is more yellow green- so bright and vibrant. There are many colors of green--darker almost black greens and the bright limy greens of new growth and they mix in sunlight and shadow. Everywhere you look there are multitudes of shades rippling in the breezes, changing as you watch and as the daylight changes. It is so healing to my soul to pick weeds (no, I did not do this much) out of rich black dirt, under a canopy of greens while listening to birds twittering all around me!
The variety of birds that I saw brought me great joy -- red bellied woodpeckers, cardinals, robins (oh how I miss robins!) goldfinches, rose breasted grosbeaks, house finches and also hummingbirds! If I was too close to their feeder, they would do flybys to see if I was safe. Then they would land on the far side of the feeder and peer around it at me to see if I moved. I didn't! A sharpshinned hawk scared them all off for a while. As dusk grew deeper, the bats came out and we listened to the owls -- in between bottler rockets and roman candles!
We got to see the life giving power of the rain that I used to take for granted -- Moving to SoCal, you can realize easily what rain really does for plants because it rains so infrequently. Then it does - oh my gosh - they really respond! Being back where it rains regularly and being sensitive to the effect - I could see how blossoms popped the day after rain (and yes, the weeds shot up also - lol) Seeing the lightening also was so fun --I loved it!
Enough on the beauty -- I could go on a long time!
On the theme of God providing - I am not good at sitting (I know this comes as a great shock to many of you - not!) and yet I am supposed to rest....We were blessed by an invitation from some friends to join them at their lake home in central Wisconsin. They totally pampered us --a room with a view - fabulous food, boat rides and faith filled conversations. We really relaxed and enjoyed the company and nature. It was fabulous! We teased them about wanted to book their B&B again! It was so restful.
I am so thankful that God provides! More tales to come - it was busy trip!
Thanks for checkin in -- You are a blessing to us!
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