Pray for Steven Curtis Chapman, et. al.

Tragic news found here concerning the family of Contemporary Christian Music singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman. Keep this family in your prayers.

As of Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Today, I had an EMG study conducted by my Neurologist on my legs to determine the extent of the damage as well as to attempt an estimation on recovery time. I have considered becoming Amish because my hatred of electricity was spawned as a response to the pain that comes with an EMG.

Here’s how it works: For the first hour, they strap three electrodes to your feet and place a conductor at various lengths up your leg. They then proceed to feed electricity from that conductor (be it at your knees, your shins, etc.) to the electrodes at your feet. Most of the electric feeds are only one burst at a time. However, when they want to not only read your nerve travel time but also your spinal cord reaction, they will send electric feeds at eight bursts per feed. Your muscles and nerves then proceed to pack up their things and leave you to sit in what feels like Jell-o. This lasts about an hour for both legs. This is to determine how quickly the nerves are sending information from one point to another.

Part two. They remove and unplug the electrodes and proceed to plug a needle into the EMG machine. The Neurologist then inserts the needle into three places: 1) your foot muscle at your ankle, 2) your calf, and 3) your spine. Keep in the mind, the needle is plugged in… it is coursing with electricity. He then places the conductor right next to this needle and has you flex whatever muscle has become the new habitat for Electric Needle from Hell. This lasts 30 minutes. It is to determine the extent of any muscle weakness. It is the worst part of the test because your muscles Charlie Horse upon immediate contact with Electric Needle from Hell. (Flexing a Charlie Horse muscle is, well… just try it sometime.)

The results of this test showed that I had considerable nerve damage to both of my legs. However, the test showed that the damage is on the recovery side of being hurt. Praise be to God. The weird part is as follows: my Neurologist is beginning to believe that what happened to me was a result of an unknown, aggressive virus that caused my body’s immune system to attack the nerve tissue in my legs. This virus and its antibodies are now out of my system (or so it seems), and, therefore, we have no way of knowing what virus it was. He is not able to prove this diagnosis and basically left me undiagnosed for the time being. I have a chance of contracting this virus again; however, that chance is very slim.

My doctor claimed that I should make a full recovery. He cannot, however, assert that with 100% confidence. I do still have considerable pain in my groin upon contact. He believes that my weakness is due to an unconscious fear of that pain and will be able to make a more clear statement as to my recovery when both the fear and the pain in my groin subside.

I return in two months for a follow-up. Your prayers are, as always, coveted.

A Bunch of Wasted-Space Ramblings

I apologize for not keeping this as updated as some of you may have wished. I go back to my Neurologist tomorrow (er, today) for an EMG and to discuss what life looks like from here on out. I have a few good updates: 1) I’m walking with a cane. That wheelchair is gone, and God is to be praised! 2) My blood tests came back negative, meaning I actually do have Bilateral Saphenous Nerve Impingement, and God is to be praised! 3) Pain is no longer constant. I experience maybe a wave of pain about once a day, and God is to be praised!

Unfortunately, due to the physical deterioration of my left leg, I have been unable to focus on my emotional or spiritual health, of which have sparked monologues that so frequented this blog in its “early” life. I apologize for that, both to myself and to those who read this site. In light of this lack of reflection, I have decided to waste space by rambling. Beware! Rabbit-trails up ahead:

Just prior to writing this post, I read (er, stalked) a post from a xanga site I try to keep up on. It was about a lost love and the fight to “get her back.” I chuckled a little when I read this line:

WAIT! How can love wait? … Yet, I welcome this slavery [to waiting for her].

OK. Allow me to explain. It was by mere chance that I witnessed this blogger’s breakup. I was literally on the other side of the street honestly minding my own business when I realized what the devil was actually going on across the way. I knew this person was a writer, so I found his weblog (hence the “er, stalked”) and, voilà, here we are. What’s more ironic is that our connection has a closer proximity than the typical six degrees of separation. Yada-yada-yada, I digress. Do we really wait? Does true, honest-to-goodness, can’t-sleep-at-night-but-welcome-the-insomnia love drive us to wait? Or is love a drug that creates in us a hope that isn’t healthy to which to hold on?

Back in the day (which was a Wednesday), I wrote that “memories last only as long as you want them to. You can erase the bad ones. The question is, do you really want to? What would your life be like without even the worst of times?” If one hasn’t noticed, I value the storms that life throws at us. What is there to look forward to if every day’s yesterday was perfect in memory?

I value words. I know that actions speak louder than words, but words have their place. They exist. Words and language must be a valuable tool if God Himself saw that the best way to prohibit the building of Babel was to confuse the words of those building that tower. (Please note, God didn’t go to the drawing boards and guess which way would be best. I don’t mean to infer that by using the word, “saw.” God knew. God foreknew. Period.) I guess that’s why I value this quote from The Interpreter:

The gunfire around us makes it hard to hear. But the human voice is different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it’s not shouting. Even when it’s just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard over armies… when it’s telling the truth.

It’s 2:40A and I just needed to talk. I’m sorry for wasting your time. One of these three thoughts (love, memory, or words) will be expounded upon soon. The two others may be lost in this waste of space forever, or I may jump on them as well. Just know I haven’t forgotten this site. I just haven’t had time to sit down and funnel out a coherent thought. Case-in-point: the aforementioned.

As of Monday, April 7, 2008

Type of Doctor: Neurologist
New Symptoms: N/A
Diagnosis:

As of Saturday, April 5, 2008

As you can tell, I did not visit a doctor today. Please realize this: what I’m about to tell you is not an attempt to give you false hope or instill an artificial peace upon you. I am keeping my mind in this reality: I am still sick. I haven’t lost hope, but I’m not going to give way to naivety. Please do the same.

Nevertheless, I am writing to inform you that today has been the best day (physically speaking) since I have shown my first symptoms. I have only taken 2 doses of my pain medication, which is a personal record. My left knee is still in the most pain. My right knee hurts as well and I do have a new symptom: bruising on my left foot. However, my right hand and shoulder are not in pain.

I do not know what is to come even tomorrow morning. The pain may return. My knees may (may) feel better. I do not know. I know this: I am deeply thankful for every prayer said for me. I thank you all for caring enough to even check this blog on a regular basis. You are all God-sends, even if I don’t know you.

I am definitely going to keep my Neurologist appointment. Please, please, realize that I do not consider myself healthy or even feel confident enough to say that I am healing. I am just having an exceptionally good day.

…more to come…

As of Friday, April 4, 2008

Type of Doctor: Neurosurgeon
New Symptoms: Right shoulder/hand pain; swelling in right hand; loss of strength in right arm.
Diagnosis:

As of Wednesday, April 2, 2008

I don’t know how many of you who read this site actually know me personally. Nonetheless, I’ve decided to take the next couple of posts and keep my personal relationships up-to-date on this medical journey. Each post will be “as of last post.” It will be emotionless, nothing but the facts. Therefore, if you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask. Oh, and one more thing: despite the fact that my legs aren’t really into the whole “being legs thing” anymore, I am still capable of having good days. I promise.

Type of Doctor: Orthopedic Specialist
New Symptoms: Left leg/foot swelling; loss of function in left leg.
Diagnosis:

The Spirituality of “Wait and See”

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

A while back, I wrote a short post entitled “Give Up, Give In.” In this post, I wrote of giving God the reigns of life. In a similar post, I wrote concerning the necessity of giving of our sense of lordship over our own lives to God, for it is rightfully His. I feel burdened to continue on that discussion (or, reword what has already been written…twice now, as some might say).

I worry too much. That statement alone proves such a thing because worry itself is too much; there is no measurement of “worry.” The reason I have struggled with worry is because I have battled it poorly (or, incorrectly). You see, I can recite verse after verse that talk about God’s authority, Christ’s sovereignty, and the promise of good for those who love Providence. Each of those verses, however, require something more than memorization. They require a discipline that is foreign to the human will.

Trusting in God is not pragmatic. So many times, though, we champion our “trust in God” after the ordeal is over and the blessings have arrived. Have we really trusted in God? Are the blessings really “good and perfect gifts…from the Father of lights” or are they simply “treasures on earth” that do nothing more than make us feel good for a short while, erode away, and once again create in us the desire to chase those ever-elusive happiness triggers? It depresses me to recall how often my discourse post-storm had been sprinkled with “…only by God…” or “God knew what He was doing,” when my prayers during-storm had been “What are you doing God… and why?!”

As is evident by the latter statement, so often in my life I have been anxious to get the storm over with and learn the lesson that waited for me on the blue horizon. That, that is why worry has been a struggle for me. You see, I have come to the belief that part of trusting God is a simple waiting on Him. Psalm 46.10: “Be still and know that I am God.” Isaiah 40.31: “But those who wait upon the Lord…” Psalm 62.1: “Truly my soul silently waits for God.”

I, if you will, defined this belief while reading Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot. In that book she quotes Addison Leitch:

When the will of God crosses the will of man, somebody has to die.

As much as I know that that is a reference to the crucifixion first and foremost, and following it is a reference to the casting off of the old self Paul writes about, I believe it has another implication as well. Maybe (and I’m still working through this but am confident enough to assert this), maybe the waiting part of trusting God is the death–or crucifixion–of my own biased desires. I do not believe it to be an untruth to view the “waiting” as the death of my will and the triumph (or granted Lordship) of His.

Giving God the reigns means not only do I seek His will, I also must conform how I seek His will. This is why waiting and trusting is so hard! I can blame it on the fact that I am a guy and, as a genetic rule, guys view problems in terms of solutions. Therefore, I view storms in terms of lessons I can learn from them. I can pass the buck to the fact that I am a perfectionist, and if I’m not involved in doing it, it won’t be done properly. But the bottom line is, I am to blame because I fear when my Savior cries out, “Fear not.”

Resting on that command requires a life change. I must realize that the best I can do when I am in control is mess everything up. For as Thomas a Kempis wrote:

What hindereth thee more than thine affections not fully mortified to the will of God?

God: Life’s Greatest Surgeon; Pain: Life’s Greatest Curriculum

My heart has been broken. Sounds like the first line of a(n) country song/teen poem/emo rock group’s title track, and for that, I apologize. But it is true. And the hardest part? She left me for another guy…

The end. I’m not here to write about the woe’s of my life. I’m here to let you know I learned something from it. After she left me, my away messages tended to focus on the “over-you-moving-on” aspect that comes with a breakup. One of those aforementioned away messages said this:

But in the end, the most important thing to accept is that no matter how alone you feel, how painful it may be, with the help of those around you, you’ll get through this too.

Fast-forward a few days and I find myself talking to a good friend about the use of pain in lessons from God. At that exact moment, I have one of those “AH HA!” moments that so often frequent my life. Despite my away messages, despite the songs I played that were filled with either anger or hope of having an entire day absent of the thought of my heartache, I had yet to experience closure. The reason I had yet to even begin to emotionally heal was that I had yet to even begin to grasp why this was going on in my life.

Pain. Doesn’t it seem that life’s best lessons are learned by pain? Stick a wet finger into a socket and see what happens. I’m gonna bet you aren’t going to do that again. Better yet, get two dogs of the exact same breed, potty-train one by simply saying “no” every time (s)he has an accident. Potty-train the other by giving it a swat on its backside each time it has an accident. Which one will learn faster? I believe that it will be the latter canine.

You see? God doesn’t say “no” to us in order to teach us a lesson (at least not very often). He says “no” to close doors on mistakes He just doesn’t want us to make; but when it comes to learning from a mistake or learning how to correct ungodly habits, I firmly believe that God uses pain. I believe that we retain the most amount of knowledge if pain is incorporated into the lesson being taught. It’s like what George Campbell said about the use of pain in teaching a lesson:

Pain of every kind generally makes a deeper impression on the imagination than pleasure does, and it is retained longer in the memory.

J.R. Miller says:

The sweetest things in this world have come to us through tears and pain.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that if little Johnny gets an F on his first math test, you beat the mathematical table into him. Nor am I saying that if your child or significant other hurts your feelings or does something just downright stupid that you should beat them into obedience. I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that I have learned more about Who God is, what He wants from my life, and who I am in His eyes during life’s rough patches than when times are good.

Back to my “ah ha” moment: The above quote that kept frequenting my away messages was the lesson I needed to learn. As I grew closer and closer to H.R., I grew further and further away from the family of friends that loved me unconditionally. Not only that, I began to divorce my own blood-family. I was losing my life’s supporting players, and without them…there is no life. And no matter how many times my brother asked me to hang around after church on Sunday, no matter how often my mother’s voice was seasoned with sadness as she said, “Sure, you can go see her,” I never realized what I was doing. Therefore, I honestly believe that God stepped in. God took away the 6-month-old gift in order for my focus to be on the gifts that are years old and needed my attention in order to perpetuate their longevity. The Fray says it like this:

We’d never know what’s wrong without the pain!

The human nervous system is designed to only allow the brain to recognize one form of pain at a time. Consequently, if you have a paper-cut and a gunshot wound, it will only register the gunshot wound. It’s called “The Gateway Principle.” In the exact same manner, God calls attention to the things in our lives that need immediate care by giving us hard times.

What I’m trying to say is what my dad taught me a long time ago: God acts like a surgeon who has a cancer patient on His table. He is going to have to cut the patient’s body open, and that’s gonna hurt when the patient wakes up. But that pain is necessary in removing the cancerous tumor that will cost the patient his life if it is not taken care of. God causes initial pain (cutting open the body) in order to prevent us from experiencing greater pain down the road (suffering from the cancerous tumor).

In an argument between Dr. Perry Cox and Nurse Laverne Roberts in an episode of Scrubs, my point is summed up by Laverne’s response:

Cox: Are you really trying to tell me that things like New Orleans, AIDS, sugar-free ice cream, crack-babies, Hugh Jackman, and cancer all happen for a reason?
Laverne: ‘God works all things for good.’ Romans, 8:28.

A broken heart sucks. Not learning the lesson is even worse. I am beginning to believe that I wouldn’t have had any “help of those around me” had this happened at a later date. It took pain for me to realize that.

We’d never know what’s wrong without the pain…

The Folly of Backseat Driving

There are some things that I just don’t understand. What’s crazy-ironic is that most of the things I don’t understand…I’m afraid of the explanation behind them. I can’t really give a “for instance,” but think of the last time you asked yourself: “Why is this happening?” and the response to your discovery was: “I shouldn’t have asked.” I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. But my life is full of these types of paradoxes.

This was the essence of my previous post. I don’t want an answer as to why certain things in my life just don’t make sense, so I don’t ask “WHY?” out loud. But at the exact same time, I’m dying to figure things out. I want to ask “WHY?”, and I want an answer to that. I just don’t want to hear the answer. I don’t know if I even understand what I’m saying, but I know that this is basically how I feel inside.

I feel this way because I want to be in control of my life.
But the more control I seem to have, the more out-of-control I feel.

I feel this way because I want everything and everyone in my life to be happy, to be good.
Welcome to Humanity. Our motto: “nothing is every perfect.”

I feel this way because I’m scared of not being needed. I love being needed. I thrive on being the ear and the shoulder to others when they just need to talk to someone or have a person to lean on.
Sometimes, the best way to help someone is to let them be.

What’s crazy-ironic is that everything I want to be is exactly Who God should be in my life. It doesn’t matter how messed up everything is. He wants it. He wants everything. The Sick Puppies, secular they may be, sing two lines in their song “All the Same” that absolutely nail Who God is and what He wants:

And I’ll take you for who you are
If you take Me for everything

Things don’t have to make sense to me. I don’t need the answer all the time. I just need to trust Him. I need to believe that my life won’t be any better than when it’s in God’s hands. David Crowder puts it this way:

Letting go gives a better grip
I’m finding everything I’ll ever need
By giving up gaining everything
Falling for You for eternity
Right here at Your feet
Where I wanna be

So in the end, their is an answer to “WHY?”. It goes something like this: “Because right now, this is what is best for you. Believe Me. I’ve seen what comes next. This is what’s best for you.”

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. –Jesus, in John 14.1