Is This How You Felt a Year Ago?

It's been a year...almost to the date, since I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.


What a year it's been! 


Were it not for this blog, I don't know that I'd truly be able to remember the myriad of emotions that I felt prior to, and just after being diagnosed.


I did such a poor job of looking outside myself during it all. 


I still grieve deeply over the fact that after days in the hospital, and after having just missed their big choir performance at church that very day, my sweet children finally got to come and see me at the hospital one Sunday afternoon.


You see, each day the Doctor had been telling my husband that I'd be going home that day or the next...yet one day stretched to another, and my sweet children experienced heartache upon heartache as each day they realized I wasn't yet coming home.


I didn't know about any of this, because I'd been told from the start that it would be a 5 day stay.


So Sunday came, and my darling kiddos were finally able to come and see me. I'm sure they weren't prepared at all for what they'd find....Mommy full of wires and I.V. tubes, and pretty unlike herself.


They'd been there only minutes when other friends came in, and I devoted my time and focus to the friends, and not to my children. 


They ended up piled on the couch watching a movie on the portable dvd player while I spent my time with our friends. 


Oh, to rewind time and do it differently!


We've shed many a tear over that. I hurt them deeply. 


It was unintentional, as I was on hospitality auto-pilot, and pretty drugged up, but they were little...just children. All they knew was that they were finally able to see Mommy, and Mommy seemed to care more about spending time with everyone else.


Breaks my heart, and likely always will.


I didn't think about the impact that all of this was having on my family!


I suppose that I was just trying so hard to make it through the life changing news of a diagnosis, that I also didn't give a lot of thought to how my friends were processing the news. 


What I saw from all of them was love in action...I'm still amazed by how the precious people in our lives reached out to us and ministered to our every need!


But I never stopped to think much about how they might be feeling about what I was going through.


Until tonight.


Tonight I received "the call" from one of my closest and dearest friends. 


The call that told me that all was not well in her world.


I heard it in her voice from the moment that I picked up the phone. 


I know her.


I love her more than you could begin to imagine.


And I could tell...she had something to share with me, something that was going to deeply affect my heart, and my life.


So here I sit, my hands tied.


I can't fix it.


I can't research it enough to make it go away.


I can't offer my body as a sacrifice for hers.


I can't even love her enough to heal it all for her, although that's what my heart cries out in desire to do.


What I can do, and what I will do, is take great comfort in knowing that she knows and loves the Lord Jesus Christ, and that through Him she has been reconciled to God.


Whatever may come, she is His, and should He call her home, she is ready.


Now, I will go and cry myself to sleep, as I beg my Lord on behalf of my friend, to heal her and to restore her to health.


And through those tears, I will praise His Name for giving her to me. 


Oh, to have the love of a friend like her in my life...she's amazing!


I see Jesus in her. :)


My prayer for you tonight, sweet reader, is that you may be blessed with even ONE friend like her.


________________________________________________________________


Is this how you felt a year ago?


It's a crummy place to be...this place of helplessness.


If so, I'm sorry that any of you had to go through it, and I'm sorry that I couldn't see outside of myself enough to consider how you might have been feeling.


Would you please pray for my friend....please?


I love you tonight,
Jes