Good Gifts

.....Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows....

James 1

This year for Christmas, I got one of the the best gifts anyone could get.  Life.  Without a diagnosis I was headed toward a slow death.  That sounds a bit dramatic, but it's all too true.  So this year I was handed the keys to life, answers to so many questions and even a glimmer of hope for some recovery.  Ok, so it was a few months before Christmas, but I'm still counting it.  So while I treasure the things that my family gave me, you can see how even my beautiful new food processor pales in comparison to the thought of more years with my daughters.  

I haven't finished a post on here for quite a while now and about a thousand ideas have come and gone through my brain.  Maybe someday I will remember a few to put into words.  Life has just been too busy and one thing has overlapped with another to keep me either running, or trying to recover from all the running.  Since I last posted: my husband has come, gone back for three weeks and come again for Christmas.  I had a month to crochet like crazy so I could earn some Christmas money at a craft  fair.  While I was selling there, my oldest daughter was starting to get very sick and just as she was getting better, the baby got it next.  Then there was Christmas and the shopping, wrapping, cooking and cleaning that went into that.

That sums up more than a month in a few sentences.  The details are messy, stressful and tiring and I am happy to not think about them, with the exception of the good parts.  The main bit of good news being that even though Oksana's illness looked a lot like the one that gave her pneumonia and sent us to the ER in January, we (with the help of our wonderful naturopath) were able to keep it from turning into anything more serious.  One more important highlight is God's provision for us.  Money has been tight for a while now.  I know that's pretty much the story everywhere.  My plan was to use the cash I earned to buy our Christmas presents.  After two back to back trips to the doctor, I was left with twenty bucks in the bank.  The business was in between payments so without that little bit of money, we wouldn't have had much Christmas.  It was an extra thing that our Father did for us and I give Him all the glory and thanks.

During this last month, I have been inching my way through a book that the Lord put in my path at the library.  I feel like a starving person who has to carefully nibble a small amount at a time in order to not overwhelm their system.  When you have a chronic disease, there are not that many people out there who really comprehend what you live with day in and day out.  Who really get the physical and emotional ups and downs that come with a condition that never leaves you.  And thank goodness for that.  I would not wish this on anyone!  However, when you are surrounded by healthy people who don't get much more than a winter flu, it is easy to feel, misunderstood, lonely and isolated.  Sometimes it's just so amazing to hear from someone who "gets it."  If anyone really "gets it" it is Joni Eareckson Tada.  Her humility and maturity after 40 years of paralysis is beyond challenging to me.  This book is ministering to me more than anything has in years.  One of the reasons I am reading it a little at a time, is because I cry so much that I trigger headaches and have to stop.  I bought myself a copy for Christmas, so now I can read it over and over.  

When I looked up the verse that I wanted to use at the beginning of this post, I was reminded that it is the closing to a passage that begins: Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
God's good and perfect gifts often come wrapped in suffering, but they are, nonetheless, good gifts.  When we accept them as such, we lack nothing.
Merry Christmas!