i am a lucky man...

i am a lucky man. i don't mean this in the sense that i hit the lotto or found a shiny penny heads up on the sidewalk. i am merely stating that today i feel lucky and more important blessed.

i've been sick for a while. a long while actually, 8 months to be exact. doctors have been baffled with my symptoms, and i've had to endure pain on a consistent basis to the point where i didn't feel like myself most of the time. i felt even more awkward than normal, i felt like not communicating with people, and i felt tired all the time.

three weeks ago i hit rock bottom with the pain. i had six blood tests in three weeks, had seen 3 different doctors, and spent an afternoon in the hospital. i was so tired of being sick and feeling tired and not myself that i took the advice of the greatest nurse of all time (with all apologies to two people who will kill me for saying they aren't the best nurses of all time). she told me to lay down and pray until god answered me. i took her advice. i sat on the couch and i cried out to god asking why he hadn't healed me. i had been in pain for so long and had felt that i had been abandoned. that time became very special to me. without revealing the intense feelings that came from that time i will say that i got the feeling god was going to heal me and that everything was going to be alright.

fast forward to this past week. i had a procedure done that figured out what was wrong and i have been acting based on that information. i have felt so much better that i can't even put into words how good it feels to feel more "normal" (if you can really classify anything i do as normal). then today something else happened. i felt so lucky to be alive in this period of time in my life. my dad and sister flew in from dc to tally to take care of me this week and i got to spend some one-on-one time with my dad which is unfortunately limited to only a couple of times per year due to the distance and just how our lives are. furthermore, the outpouring of love from my friends here has been hard to digest for me. in the past few people have really cared about me when serious areas of my life sprang up. i felt like no on really gave two craps about me at times and that hardened me to a point where i had a hard time handling it when people would be nice to me. today that all changed. three weeks ago three people showed up in the hospital to hang out just because i was there and they knew i needed a friend. i didn't realize how lucky i was until today. three people actually showed up to take care of me for no other reason other than they wanted to. for me that was hard to handle. this week i've received more texts, and facebook messages, and phone calls than i thought possible. so many people have been praying for me and hoping that i would get better that it humbles me to the point of wanting to cry again.

i don't know what the future holds a little more than a month from now. i am going to graduate college and there are some possibilities on the horizon for great things to happen. for so long i've been scared but as of today i'm not anymore. i have family, friends, and now my health again. god has blessed me immeasurably more than i deserve and ever thought.

rescue is no longer coming, it's here. the remedy i've been searching for has arrived. it was here, i just hadn't opened my eyes to it. the remedy was the big C church. not just my family at e3, but the church as a whole. we are called to be a community of believers, loving and exhorting one another expressing the same love jesus has and is doing in our lives.

is rescue coming for you....or is the remedy already here?......