Yes to 2017!

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you all had marvellous Christmas and New Year celebrations.

It's been quite a while since I last wrote, partly because it just didn't feel right and partly because I didn't really know what to tell you. This week it suddenly felt right to update you again, something to do with the new year I think.

So, Owen went back to work 2 weeks before the school Christmas holidays. 2 weeks turned out to be a perfect amount of time for Owen to slowly get back into work before having a break again over the Christmas holidays. I have no doubt that this was God timing. Given that the date for the operation changed a couple of times and we had originally expected it to be in the summer holidays, it was only when we were given the date of the 27th October that it actually felt right. It felt like that was the date it was always supposed to happen but that human plans kept getting in the way.

Owen managed well with those first weeks back. He is in for 4 hours a day to begin with.  He felt tired at the end of the day, but the kind of tired you feel at the end of any busy day. He needed to rest in the afternoons but he wasn't falling asleep, just having down time. This was a relief for me as I had been uncertain about whether he was ready to go back to work. I was quite worried about him overdoing it and if you know Owen well you'll know that in the past there would have been significant risk of that! I have been pleasantly surprised about how well he has paced himself, how well he has been able to sense when he has needed to rest. Long may this continue! 
He has been back for a little over a week and will continue to work at 4 hours a day until the end of the month when it will increase to 6 hours a day.
Physically and mentally Owen has recovered well, the scar is looking amazing and his hair has grown  over it so that you can barely see it's there now. 

 There has been so much positive in all that has happened and I hope that has come across in my writing. We have a lot to be thankful for. However....I will say that I have never been so unbelievably glad to see the end of a year! (As I am sure many people will understand, many of you have through extremely tough years also!). It's a strange, exhausting and heart wrenching experience watching your husband go through this kind of experience. I can't compare it to anything I've ever been through before. It so completely consumes you and as we approached Christmas and new year I felt such a huge relief at reaching the end of the year. Relief and a range of emotions. I wasn't completely prepared for this, it kind of hit me all over again what we had faced over the last year and how incredibly blessed we are to be in the position we are now in with Owen recovering well. I cried. It helped! We can now put it behind us, it is so last year! Praise God! 

I think there will be one more update on this chapter of our lives, after Owen has his next scan and appointment, but after that I will be drawing this to a close. Drawing a line under it all so we can truly put it behind us. 

All that remains to say is....Bring on 2017!! I'm genuinely excited for the year ahead, whatever it may bring. I now know with absolute certainty that whatever comes our way God will see us through it with all that we need and way more. I'm so looking forward to what he has planned, it's gonna be good! 

I pray that the year ahead brings many blessings for you all.

Much Love

Rachael xxx