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Text of the page (random words):
were busy stay home ummm you re there too and those people are thinking the exact same thing about you what if that lady just got off her shift at the hospital and had to pick up a few things and that man is doing his once weekly trip out for groceries and that young mom just needs one friggin hour of time to herself so she can still love her children when this is all over and that guy lives by himself and is so depressed from sitting alone in his apartment that he just needed to be around people for 10 minutes and that woman s abusive husband is now working from home and her only escape is the grocery run and that dad doesn t own a second fridge so he has to run to the store several times a week for milk for his toddler traffic and people in stores doesn t mean people are ignoring the guidelines those doctors and nurses and emts and firemen and postal delivery people and grocery store workers and instacart delivery people and restaurant workers delivery people and mission essential active duty military members and all the other people who are not able to work from home still have to get to work bottom line lets all show some grace and assume everyone is doing their best true they might be idiots who aren t doing their best but i ve found that it sure makes life a whole lot easier and a whole lot more joyful if we approach it from the standpoint of everyone is a work in progress doing the best they can under these circumstances be a light posted by amy at 12 38 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday january 31 2019 i might be doing something important in your life it feels like it s time to tell you a story a story still in the making has god ever made a promise to you in november 2015 we were living in arlington virginia alan was stationed at the pentagon we were expecting any day to hear news of a new assignment the following summer there was a short list of places we might move to and we had submitted our preferences several months prior which is such a haze by the way because i don t even think anyone reads those or they save them for when they need a good laugh a couple of the options were in the washington d c area and we were hoping for one of those so that we wouldn t have to move because the new assignment would only be for one year we discussed the possibility of living apart for that one year but ultimately decided that wasn t what we wanted i had decided that if we had to move somewhere new for just a year then we needed a house with an extra bedroom because i would just keep everything boxes and store them in there i wouldn t even hang pictures on the walls why bother one year in and out why even bother doing all the things i was not on board with moving and quite frankly i was making myself sick worrying about it and we didn t even know if we would move yet you know how women are we have 1001 problems and most of them are made up in our heads the worry over where we would move was stressing me out so i turned to specific prayer i asked god to give me peace and to release me from this yoke it didn t take long before i could feel god stirring in my heart and i was listening he was telling me that this too he had his hand in i was able to release that worry and just give it to god trusting him to choose the right place for us the news came almost immediately literally the day after i said ok god i m giving this to you i know you ll put us exactly where we need to be to serve others and glorify you we got the news that we would be moving to montgomery alabama see what god did there there is no coincidence god reassured me that i could trust him and prepared my heart for a move just before he gave us the news of the move i m not going to lie my heart did sink a tiny bit why didn t he give us what we really wanted why couldn t what we wanted and what he wanted be the same we rented a house in alabama based on photos we saw online signed a contract put down a deposit gave our current landlord notice announced it on social media and in the christmas card all the things at the time i was also reading the daily devotions in sarah young s jesus calling on january 20 a portion of the message seemed to jump off the page at me it was almost like the rest of the message disappeared and one particular sentence just got bigger and bolder and i knew it was a message god had for me so i paid attention i can still recite that sentence from memory i may be doing something important in your life something quite different from what you expected whoa i was very excited i immediately thought about my mary kay business and wondered if it could have to do with that i couldn t wait to find out but that was rather selfish of me assuming it was all about me just because i was the one that received the message fast forward to february 2016 alan called me from work to say that he had received word that we might not move after all he was being invited to be part of a fellowship program with a think tank in washington d c he could choose school in alabama or fellowship in d c we had a choice that almost never happens in the military so we kind of didn t know what to do with that we kind of panicked they told him he had about two days to decide so he called every mentor he had and started collecting as much data as he could so we could make an educated decision i started praying all of his mentors were telling him he was crazy to even consider not taking the fellowship my mentor wasn t telling me anything one day passed the morning of the second day i was praying in the shower i m not the only one who does that right and i heard it god spoke that same message from january 20th into my heart i don t know how you hear god but that s the best way i can describe hearing him it s like my heart has ears and he speaks to that i just suddenly know something came from him that morning he said i may be doing something important in your life something quite different from what you expected this this was it quite honestly as time had passed i had forgotten all about that promise because nothing had happened yet but god did not forget also i had assumed that the something different would be all about me selfish but i had failed to factor in that alan at the time didn t think he could hear god he just hadn t figured out how to distinguish god s voice yet so of course god would speak to me i quickly finished the shower and called alan who was driving to the pentagon he answered i said we re supposed to stay and do the fellowship god just told me he gave me the message from january again and that different thing is this it s so unexpected it s so different from what we thought we would be doing we re supposed to stay here and what he said next still brings tears to my eyes he said honey now i also know we are supposed to stay i was just this second praying asking god for an answer of what we should do telling him i just wanted to be able to hear him then the phone rang i literally thought jesus might be calling me and it was you with this message bless his heart he was going to tell them we will take the fellowship thankfully we were able to undo the things we had done before and we canceled the lease in montgomery renewed our lease in arlington and just continued life as usual why would god do that why would he prepare my heart for the news of a move only to have this other opportunity come along that means we won t move after all did that mean i didn t hear what i thought i heard or that it wasn t god after all or that this was not the fulfillment of that promise i was full of self doubt but could hear him say be still in preparation for the move when we were still moving i had scheduled some follow up medical appointments for myself if you re new here i m a breast cancer survivor i was diagnosed in 2007 when my oldest son was seven months old i m going to take a minute here to tell you how god had a hand in that too i had felt a lump that i assumed was a clogged milk duct because i was still breastfeeding i figured it would go away with some warm compress but i was watching grey s anatomy one night and one story was about a new mom who ignored a lump she thought was a clogged milk duct but it was cancer she waited too long to see a doctor and she didn t survive i called my doctor first thing in the morning they did an ultrasound and didn t think it was anything serious but wanted to get a better look they asked if i would be comfortable weaning my baby so they could get a more clear image i agreed and did a follow up two weeks later the spot was totally gone it was a clogged milk duct but about two weeks later in the shower i felt another one and i knew immediately that this one was different i was diagnosed with breast cancer the rest of the story doesn t really matter here i had surgery got treatment and moved on what s important is the way god spoke to me then he presented me with a situation he knew would prompt me to act even if that was thru a silly tv show back to 2016 i was still seeing an oncologist annually to keep an eye on things and was supposed to see a breast surgeon annually but had a bad experience with the first one i saw at walter reed so i just dropped the ball on that long story short i saw a surgeon immediately upon moving to d c from okinawa and expressed my desire to have a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy she told me i was being radical and she wouldn t do it when we found out we were moving though i knew i better see all my doctors one more time before the chaos set in plus remember i wasn t going to bother with all the things if we were only going to live somewhere for a year and anyway how good could the doctors possibly be in montgomery i d rather see them at walter reed i seriously thought that my first appointment was on may 12th with my medical oncologist who reviewed my bloodwork all good said i was a couple of months past due for my mammogram and asked why she didn t see any visits to my breast surgeon in the past year i told her what had happened with my first visit to the breast surgeon and that i hadn t been back because i didn t feel like she listened to me she was upset about my experience and quickly assured me she could get me matched with someone she was sure would be supportive of my desires even if she had to refer me to someone outside the military she referred me to the chief of surgical oncology at walter reed if anyone could approve anything it was him we also scheduled my overdue mammogram which was the following week on may 17th after my mammo they did as they always do they asked me to sit tight so they could review the images before i get changed in case they need to take any additional ones but what happened next was different the nurse came back and brought the radiologist in with her they displayed my images side by side with my last images taken about 15 months prior there wasn t one new spot there were at least a dozen it looked like someone splattered paint on the image the spots were small so that was good but they were all over the image of my right breast this was definitely not good the next step would be a biopsy so we scheduled that for june 9th afterwards they once again asked me to wait before dressing then escorted me to a private room to speak with the radiologist about the results the good news was it wasn t cancer the bad news was it wasn t cancer yet and it needed to be removed since my medical oncologist had already been working my referral to a more suitable breast surgeon i already had an appointment with him scheduled for jul 6th things began to happen very quickly now my surgeon was completely supportive of a bilateral mastectomy and felt it needed to happen pretty quickly within three months if that many spots had developed in just a little over a year he was concerned it was going to progress and spread further if we waited too long he referred me to a plastic surgeon to discuss the reconstructive portion he referred me to the genetic counselor to re evaluate any genetic predisposition i might have that they could determine since the last time i had this testing done i attended both of those appointments five days later the two surgeons coordinated their schedules and my surgery was planned for september 30 2016 let me pause here to ponder something do you suppose i would have been in such a hurry to schedule my appointment with my oncologist if we hadn t gotten word we were moving nope i mean i would have done it eventually in the fall most likely because as a preschool teacher spring was the busiest time of the year then summer would have hit and there was no way i was scheduling any appointment i would have to drag the kids with me to or pay a sitter for i would have waited until they were back in school thankfully god presented me with a situation he knew would prompt me to act which he knew i needed to do to potentially save my life it s fine to fast forward through some of the medical stuff now in short over the course of the next nine months i had three surgeries to remove and reconstruct my breasts after my mastectomy when i met with my surgical oncologist for the follow up he told me we had made the right decision by the time they removed the tissue my left breast also showed lesions which had not been present in the mammogram just four months prior confirmation was nice today i shudder to think what might have happened had we not been given the news of the move the process that started in may would have slipped forward at least four months and who knows what would have grown by the time we got around to the surgery during this same timeframe we also went thru a selection cycle we were hopeful that alan would be selected to a senior leadership position somewhere but the cycle came and went and he wasn t matched we just couldn t understand why he had checkmarks in all the right boxes and being selected for this fellowship was another strong check this was something we had prayed for hoped for worked for why would god not provide all we could be sure of was that there was a reason that did make it a little easier to not see his name on that list but there was still a little sting knowing we would be facing a move after the fellowship ended in the summer of 2017 we started to look at some options with alan not being matched for leadership we figured this would be our final assignment where would we want to go to finish with a bang we filled each of the five preference spots with overseas assignments and also applied for a special program that could place us in a number of overseas locations out of left field we were sent to langley afb virginia that wasn t even on the radar we weren t expecting it at all we had been preparing the kids by telling them grandma might have to keep the dog and the bird when we moved so far away they didn t even have to pack a snack to make this move it was a total letdown it felt...