When I look to the sky...

I'm home on spring break, which puts me at being about halfway through the semester. It hasn't been a hard semester academically but it has motivated some serious thoughts on a more personal level.

1) My cat was diagnosed with thigh cancer in early January. He's still alive, and thoroughly obnoxious thanks to the steroids he's taking to help with the swelling in his thigh. They make him hungrier than normal, but he isn't being fed anymore than normal. We might send him off to hang out with Barry Bonds...

2) I'm starting to deal with the more practical details of preparing for Spain and while it's not a lot of work, it does keep me reminded that in six months, I'll be living in a foreign country, far from everything I know and am used to.

3) This one is probably the biggest thing I've been dealing with of late, but it requires a bit of explanation. On Good Friday 2003, I was diagnosed with migraines. For a fourteen year old girl, this was hard. I was put on a prescription daily "preventative" called Propranolol, which was to prevent migraines. I took this medication and struggled through migraines for about two years. While on a retreat on April 2, 2005, I was prayed over for healing from migraines and they left. I lived a migraine-free life from April 2, 2005 until December 21, 2005. That day, while spending time with some friends and celebrating the start of Christmas break, I had my first migraine in eight and a half months. Since then, I've lived with migraines that can often last for days and that have become more intense and more painful and more frequent with the passing of time. I've tried to treat them without prescription medication however, of that, that has become impossible. In the month of February, which is by the way the shortest month of the year, I had five migraines.
I know my "triggers": light and sound/noise. And I know that caffeine helps me. But it's hit the point where I need more. So this morning, I saw my doctor who put me back on Propranolol and added Imitrex to my life. Now I have a more powerful resource than a cup of coffee or a couple of Excedrin migraine tablets.
I've been asked why I don't want to be prayed over for healing in this area of my life. And believe me; I've thought about doing that. But I've been praying about it and I feel that isn't what God wants to do with my life right now. At some point, He may want to work in that direction with my life, but right now, He wants to do something else with my life. I know that God uses sufferings to bring us closer to Him and to work in our lives, so I'm going to trust that there is something God wants to do in my life right now and He is working through my migraines to accomplish it.

That's my life right now. It's not exciting or dramatic, but God is working in it. And maybe someday, I'll understand it better.