Back in the saddle again....

The true purpose of a blog is for sharing. Of course that is only my opinion and there are plenty of those to go around. This blog was started for the soul purpose of having a place to save and to some extent preserve all (or at least some ) of the happy moments that life brings along and be able to share them with the world and maybe even influence others who might have a dream of living their life to the fullest. Therein enters my first mistake.....I assumed that the happy moments would come fast and furious. Not always true. Sometimes happy moments can be elusive with many long hours, days, weeks, months or even years in between. Remember....this blog was intended to be for the happy moments. Fact of the matter is.....Since late last year, Kim has been on the injured reserve list or to be more accurate, the sick reserved list and the happy moments seemed to come to a complete halt with her being out of the game for several months, therefore not many blog entries were made during this time. My excuse for this is that there were no happy times to blog about. First of all she started getting sick at night, then a loss of appetite, then rapid weight loss soon followed. After several doctor visits it was decided that it was time for the gal bladder to come out. Not a big deal by most of todays medical standards. One week later the gal bladder was out and she was on the road to recovery, right? Wrong! After being out of work for three weeks, the doctor released her to go back saying that she was on the mend and good to go. Well......not the case. The very first week back to work she started having swelling in her legs and feet. Ok.....first week back at work, being on her feet all day, recent surgery blah blah blah.....no big deal, it's normal for the body to freak out after surgery and having body parts removed. So she pushes through it and keeps thinking that this will go away in time. Not!

I actually lost count of the doctor visits, tests, x-rays, ct scans, ultra sounds, blood work, biopsy, emergency room visits and so forth that she has had. In the end, all tests show nothing wrong. A true medical oddity is she. Every single test that sent fear running through my very soul came back clean and clear. This has gone on all this year and part of last year and nothing and nobody could determine what was going on with her. It was so bad that it was becoming debilitating. She couldn't even walk on some days. Something so obvious yet so elusive was causing her great pain, suffering and worry and every doctor was dumbfounded. And then it happened.......about four weeks ago, I get up and go to church and do my usual Sunday morning routine, she comes in a couple of hours later, legs and feet swollen as usual. The day wears on and night comes, we do the usual nighttime routine when she comes out of the shower and in a somewhat happy tone she announces that the swelling is gone!

As I said before, that was about four weeks ago and still no swelling! Just as normal as can be, like nothing ever happened. I spent many long days and nights praying that this problem would go away, that God would take this and do whatever it takes to make Kim complete again and I know that she was praying for the same thing as I was. Can I be so bold as to say this is an
answer to prayer? You betcha! It is an answer to my prayer and the
prayers of our friends. Kim said it best in the first week after the
swelling went away when she said “God proved the doctors wrong”.

What did I learn from all this? I learned to define “happy” in a way that is more meaningful and real. Happy is not defined in camping trips, biking trips and being on the mountain tops. Happy is better defined in everyday life by being alive and sharing the bad times and being “Happy” that I was there to do it.

We are getting back into the swing of things a little at a time. This weekend we went camping and biked eleven miles through Dupont State Forest and made our way to GFM on Saturday for the Highland Games. Those trail notes will find their way onto the blog soon.