Looking to grow...

Hi Friends,

It's been a while since I've blogged about my process. We had such a long reprieve from doctors and treatment it almost felt like life was returning to some resemblance of "normal". It's been great to feel so good and pretty much back to living. With being cleared of the fungus threat we needed to return to the chemo treatment. I think Gabriela expressed the difficulty emotionally that decision was for us, but it seemed the best decision in light of the history of this cancer. So we have been back on the plan for two weeks and seeing the typical complications.

I really don't know what to write. I what to stay in touch with friends and really desire the prayer support that we felt so carried by during the critical periods of the fungus and operations. Because my health has been good, we have lost touch with many friends through the blog because we haven't consistently updated it. I trust the Lord with stir in people the need to pray as we enter this new chapter.

I would like to share a little of my mental and spiritual process. It seems difficult for me to stay "connected" spiritually and emotionally to my faith when feeling physically bad. I seem to get consumed with just enduring the situation. I feel lost to know how to pray and as I pray I feel very alone. I have been trying to understand this. It's not that I don't have faith or that I question God's love, presence, or faithfulness, but the really of these things feels detacted from my reality. So I am trying to mentally recite the truth I know and separate that from my reality. My reality doesn't determine reality. I think I have been living my faith based on how my reality aligns to what is true of God and allowing that to determine the quality or connectedness to God. I am sensing that I need to live outside my reality and accept the reality of God apart from my experience. Does this make any sense? I vaguely see that this adjustment is essential to "faith" in it's truest meaning. Believing God in spite of what I feel or am experiencing - whether it aligns with my experience. Some might call this "blind faith", but I am seeing it as a truer understanding of what it means to believe God based on His Word. Again, I vaguely am seeing my health issues as a means to develop an understanding of God and what it means to walk with God when life seems so contrary.

Something else that I am realizing at a deeper level is that God's presence is given through people. I want God to meet me, commune with me, speak to me, and when I don't sense that, I retreat to self flagellation and doubt. The reality is God speaks, encourages, and expresses Himself through people. Last week in the mist of feeling sick and alone, wrestling with accepting that this will be our life over the next year or so, two elders of our church called and wanted to meet me to pray. As I share my feeling and God's seeming distance, I realized that God was meeting my need - not in the way I preferred it- between Him and I so I could coup alone with life, but by heightening my lonilness and bringing these men to express his love in community. I'm the Community Life Pastor and want to be community for other, but don't see how vitally I need it. It's been and will be an on-going lesson for me.

I have pondered and rambled enough. I hope that I have given a window into where I'm at and how God is using all things in my life for good. We are planning a week's vacation to Forest Home Family Camp next week. There are three other families from Trinity Church that we will join from our small group community there. Our kids love the Johnson family and remain best friends with the distance. My prayer is that the Kids build lasting memories. Presently I am co-facilitating a group of twenty men through the "raising a modern day knight" curriculum that focuses on calling boys into manhood. I hope to gather the dad's in our fellowship to spend some time going through this material.

As always, thank you and keep praying. If you respond with a comment, tell me how our family can pray for you. It would sure help us feel like family with you.

His blessings,

Kelly

Hello friends,

Kelly is doing well. He seems to be handling the treatment okay. He is obviously tired and feels yucky (my word, not his description) a lot of the time. He has told me that it is his goal to not get grumpy as he struggles feeling sick.

He has had his first complication already. (this has been a discouragement for us both) After his spinal injection of chemo this last Friday, he developed a headache that floored him. He spent about four and a half days in bed because being upright worsened the headache. The headache was due to some spinal fluid leaking out into the injection site and when the spinal fluid is off, even a tiny bit, headaches occur.

We made two trips to the E.R. this week. The first trip Kelly was treated with an IV bag of caffeine. We asked the attending doctor how that works and he said, "no one really knows" Well, it did work and then Kelly was wired on caffeine so he started to walk home from the hospital rather then wait for me to come get him. Mind you, it is June, in Fresno, hot, smoked filled air and he has just left the E.R.. Can you say, crazy, caffeine driven man? When I picked him up he was more than half way home.

Well, the caffeine worked for several hours but the headache came back that evening. We went back to the E.R. and were sent home after no anesthesiologists were available. So... we went back this morning to the out-patient area and Kelly was treated with a blood patch and released after several hours. He came home, rested, ate, got dressed and off he went to get his radiation treatment, do a hospital visit and to work!

I don't know weather to strangle him or just appreciate and admire him all the more. He is an amazing man and I am such a blessed woman.

Thank you for your prayers sounds redundant but believe me that knowing you all are praying is one of the most comforting things to us right now. We feel Jesus loving us as He moves in the hearts of His people to pray for us. So, we are truly thankful.
Sincerely, Gabriela