Job Month

Something that has been on my mind a lot in the last few weeks, is what God says to Satan at the beginning of the book of Job... "Have you considered my servant Job?" He actually recommends Job for Satan to try his best to take him down. Now, from one angle, this seems horribly cruel. But this bizarre idea has been at the back of my mind lately, and that is what an honor! The reason I say that, is that I've been compared to Job this month. Now, I've not gone through half of what Job experienced. The only real comparison, is that enough has happened this month to tell the whole world Satan has a problem with my family. And my thought to that is, what an honor! What an extraordinary compliment!

It all started at the beginning of the month on Sunday. That night I came down with the stomach flu. I was in pain, a LOT of pain. So much pain Alex almost took me to the hospital. He called off work the next day (luckily he has paid sick time at his new job... this comes in handy a lot in this story), and I laid in bed whimpering all day. I recovered, life went on.

Thursday, it was the first day I felt well enough to go out in the morning and take care of the chickens instead of waiting for Alex to get home from work. My poor chickens had been sadly neglected, and had dumped their waterer. They were parched, and as soon as I opened the door they rushed at me to greet me and peck the snow off my boots. The feathered mob escaped the coop, and I was stepping over them trying to get around the side of the coop to their little door to the run to let them all in there. In the process, I tripped over a chicken and fell out of the coop. It is about a 2 foot drop, and I landed on the side of my foot and heard a crunch. Then, pain, oh my!

I crawled/hobbled through the snow back to the house, crawled across the house gasping, and my 5 year old son set me up on the couch with pillows, blankets, ice, a glass of water and a movie, and called Alex to tell him to come home quickly. The rest of the day was driving around getting x-rays and telling my crazy story to medical professionals. And I was fully appreciating the humor of the situation. It was confirmed that my ankle was fractured, and I came home in a boot with crutches.

Before I even had a chance to worry about how I was going to take care of my children, my family and friends from church had set up meals and people to come stay with me while Alex was at work. I felt so blessed! Stupid, clumsy, and painfully sore, but very blessed.

That weekend there was a conference going on at our church with an amazing speaker who has a healing gift. I had been very excited to go, because this man tells amazing stories that are incredibly inspiring. Now I was even more determined to go, given that there was a chance to experience healing. I didn't like being "the girl with the crutches" at a healing conference, because that was not really the reason I wanted to be there, but it was still great. The stories were wonderful, people prayed for me, we went home.

That night, I had pain in my back and abdomen. At first I attributed it to feminine issues, but it just kept getting worse. By morning, I couldn't get out of bed. But staying home from church where people are getting healed because you are sick just didn't make sense to me. So, I took some motrin, tylenol, then tylenol 3 with codeine, and finally dragged myself out to the car. I was pretty out of it, but still enjoyed the worship and stories. A wonderful friend of mine rubbed my back throughout the service while I was doubled over. Some people prayed over me, but I did not hang around long.

When we went home, I went back to bed. At this point the pain was under my ribs and I was worried. Alex called my doctor who prescribed a muscle relaxant. At that point, a friend of ours randomly showed up at our house. Now we live in the sticks, nowhere near anything. No one just shows up at our house. It was perfect. Our friend stayed with the kids and me, so Alex could go out and get my prescription. He did, I took the muscle relaxant and waited. Nothing. I kept praying and every time I did, I felt a small voice urging me to go to the hospital. So, I told Alex it was time to go. He made arrangements for the kids and packed us all up.

In the ER, they hooked my up to an IV and put me on toridol, which still did nothing for the pain. Even though I was registering very high levels of pain, I was inexplicably relaxed, and really not miserable. They did chest x-rays and blood work, and came back with wide eyes, saying over and over that it was a good thing I came in. I had acute pancreatitis, inflammation of the pancreas. Pancreatic enzyme levels are supposed to be 200, whatever that means, and mine were 23,000. I inferred by the doctor's facial expression, that that is really bad. They admitted me, started me on IV fluids and dillaudid (8x stronger than morphine), and ordered a CT scan, ultrasound, MRI, and a lot more blood work. 3 days without eating, and my blood work showed things were returning to normal. I was able to get off the pain meds and go home. A couple weeks later, a lot more tests, and no cause for the pancreatitis has been found. But we've seen inside my body and discovered I am remarkably clean and healthy. I guess doctor's don't have spiritual attack on their list of common causes for organ disorders.

I actually had a lovely stay in the hospital. I rested well, my kids were well cared for, and a lot of people came in to pray for me while I was there. However, the second night, my oldest son, Micah, came down with the stomach flu. He was very sick, and it broke my heart to be away from him. Also, my breastfed baby, who had never had a bottle in his life or been separated from mommy, was really missing me, and I him. The next evening we were able to get all our kids rounded up and go home. Finally, we all got into our own beds, ready to hole up and rest for a few days. An hour after we all fell asleep, Micah started vomiting again. Being pretty useless with broken ankle and weakened body, I stroked Micah's back while he vomitted into the bathtub, and my husband cleaned up the trail of puke from Micah's bed to the bathroom. Alex got everything cleaned up and all of us back in bed (father of the year!). An hour later, I heard Alex yelling from Micah's room for me to come quick, and knew something must be very wrong. When I got there, I saw a rash covering Micah's body that looked like popcorn, and as I looked, I could see it spreading. Alex packed him up in the car and rushed to the ER, afraid our boy was going to go into anaphylactic shock. He got their quickly, and Micah was seen right away and given steroids and an antihistamine. The ER doctor explained the rash as being caused by an overflow of antibodies from the virus. Micah was sent home almost as good as new.

Now, throughout this story, Alex's phone broke, our fridge broke, and our washing machine broke (all of which are pretty new)... just some interesting little extras.

Finally, we were all home for real. The next morning, Alex slept in, then went to work late, and a friend of mine came to stay with us, braving the stomach flu, for the next two days to help. All kinds of wonderful friends and family brought us meals and came to help me with the kids so Alex could go to work.

Two days after getting out of the hospital, our well pump was not working. We had no water. My father in-law, electrician extraordinaire, came to fix the problem. He fixed something, and the water was working. But the next morning, it was off again. I went to the breaker box and flipped the breaker. I heard sizzling behind the box, so turned it off and left it off. I sent my friend who was staying with me to get buckets of water from the neighbor for flushing the toilet and we roughed it for a day. That evening my father in-law came to replace the breaker and found that everything behind the box was scorched and melted. He said that to cause that kind of damage, the temperature had to be well over a thousand degrees, and it was nothing short of a miracle that our house did not catch fire (praise God!). He went out and got everything to fix it, then stayed and worked late into the night to get everything running again.

After that whole fiasco, Alex came down with the stomach flu. At that point we had already spread it to both our moms, and I cancelled my help for the week to stop the spread of germs. It was a difficult week. However, I became incredibly skilled at hopping on one foot and doing this silly looking shuffle on one foot. That workout combined with using crutches and not eating for a week after the pancreatitis burned off the last few pounds I had from my pregnancy with Declan... a difficult way to lose weight, but I will take my silver linings where I can get them.

Here we are at the end of the month, and it has been quite a ride. I am now able to walk on my ankle (still have the boot), and the only physical ailments we can complain of are a couple colds. All in all, I feel extremely blessed. I could come up with plenty to complain about, but that would be ridiculous. God provided for every need completely, so why would I step out of this extraordinary place of grace in order to complain and agree with Satan? I would rather just enjoy.

I also find it as no coincidence that this month many important decisions are being made at Owens about when one of the full time welding instructors is retiring and what the process for hiring will be, with Alex being acknowledged as a primary candidate for the next position. I take all the events of this month as confirmation that things must be happening in our favor.