I hope you are all enjoying your summer? For those of you on Facebook, I've enjoyed looking at your holiday photos. Hope you all had restful and restorative time away.
The next chapter of the story is in the week that followed the main event. I feel I should begin by saying (in case you don't already know this!) that ordinarily Owen is the super optimist and I am the.. I don't want to use the word pessimist... I'd like to say realist, in our marriage!
So, bearing that in mind the week went like this...
...I mentioned in the last post that elders from church came to pray for us on the Monday and left us feeling uplifted. With a sense of God's hand on us, believing for healing in whatever form that may take and for a sense of the joy of the Lord as my strength. God absolutely delivered on this promise for me. Absolutely supernatural, inexplicable joy! The situation we were in and what I had witnessed Owen go through should have had me a frazzled mess. But I felt calm, I felt positive, I felt a joy that I believe can only have come from God because it just did not make sense by human thinking. This let me be what Owen needed in those first days. The optimist.
I mentioned before that watching him go through it all that he did not look like my husband. In the week that followed he still did not appear to be the man I married. Understandably, he needed much reassurance that things were going to be okay. But I can tell you that in the back of my mind I was wondering if those seizures had done long term damage. Damage to his memory and his state of mind. It was only by the grace of God that I was able to stay strong and to answer Owen's questions, and to remain positive. We appeared to have switched places. In these days we held on to the words of the doctor that as tumours go this was the best case scenario.
It is worth noting here that the epilepsy medication, Kepra, that Owen is on made him feel really rough and took a long time to adjust too, this also impacted his recovery and mind set. He had also been told that he would not be able to drive for a year, could not be alone with the children and would need to do nothing but rest for the foreseeable future.
As the week went on Owen slowly began to feel more positive. As he improved I slumped. The adrenaline wore off and exhaustion hit. By Friday I felt I could've slept for the whole weekend. Owen was struggling with the side effects of the medication but was becoming more himself again. I began to feel very low and felt the weight of it all.
In amongst all this we had the blessing of Quinn's 3rd birthday! So lovely to have a day devoted to her with pancake breakfast, lunch out, playtime with friends at the local splash park and then birthday cake and strawberries back at ours. She was soooooo unbelievably excited and had been looking forward to her birthday for so long that it was especially important that we make it a special day for her even if it was planned at the last minute. It was simple but special and she loved it. Just to break up the writing, here is a picture of Quinn blowing out her candles!
The day after Quinn's birthday we received a phone call from the doctor at Royal Berkshire Hospital. He said that having reviewed the scan they were questioning if it was a tumour or whether it was possible that it was just swelling on the brain. This came as I was hitting my low point and Owen was beginning to feel more positive. He felt optimistic about this information, that it may not be a tumour. I felt uneasy about it, that things became suddenly even more unknown. Was it a tumour or was it swelling? If it was swelling, what caused it? But I had to remain positive, and hold my tongue. Trusting that despite all the unknowns for us, it was not unknown to God and that he was in every single detail of what was going on. Patience!
That evening some friends, who we had already organised to come round about a month before, came round for pudding (which they ended up bringing themselves! Thank you Neil and Sandra!). The evening was spent talking it all through, processing, in a Spirit filled atmosphere. Our conversation felt guided and led to Neil and Sandra praying over us at the end of the evening. The feeling that remained was one of privilege. This sounds odd I realise! But we felt genuinely privileged to be a part of whatever it is that God is doing in this. We all had such a sense that this was bigger than us, and that God was already and would continue to use this situation for His glory. That no matter where we were at with it, how we felt about it, whether we were having a good day or a bad day, His purpose would be fulfilled and it would be good. Praise the Lord!!
We continue to have good days and bad days in all this, but I can tell you that God is absolutely carrying us through, protecting us and giving us all that we need daily.
Thank you for reading.
God Bless
Much Love
Rachael xx
Dear Rachael and Owen,
ReplyDeleteWe continue to pray for you. Thank you for sharing with us.