The Truth Is

Last night, I woke up at 2am and had one line from God in my mind.  I typed it out and suddenly, my fingers just wouldn't stop.  For 45 minutes, His Spirit poured out words through my fingers. I remembered that it has happened, but not what was written, so when I read it, it was brand new to me.  I love it when that happens...The following is what I wrote, edited just a little: 

It's feels like epilepsy doesn't exist. 

And not just that, but that it never did. 

(That was the line God gave me.)

It's like after the hardest day of the hardest winter, we fell asleep completely spent, dreading the rest of the season and we woke up to the most glorious summer day. And another and another and another...

Wait, what was winter like again?

I find myself neglecting to expect a seizure. I can't even make myself worry about seizure life or the threat of anaphylaxis. 

I rarely even post on his Facebook page anymore because it doesn't feel real anymore; like it never happened. It is the most surreal thing and I can't even imagine that he'll ever have another seizure. Thinking back to his first one that we knew was a seizure--videoing him shaking, fear in his eyes as tears rolled down his cheeks but he couldn't speak--I can't believe that was us. 

I want to stress something important.  All of this is a feeling. A feeling that God has given me and I don't know why. I'm still just as vigilant and he takes his meds, he doesn't shower or bathe without me sitting outside the door and talking to him...we do all the epilepsy things. It just feels like we're doing it for show, almost. I know we aren't. But it feels like it. 

It doesn't feel like a time to proclaim a miraculous physical healing either. I think I'm just supposed to feel like that life of constant vigilance and fear and tears was someone else's life. Part of it is probably my own mental healing. We've never made it this long in between doctor appointments. It's like all of the good things are hitting at the same time and I can see God's hand in the plan. You don't always get that ya know? And right when you give up on "seeing" being an option BAM! 

God. 

Hands. 

Plans. 

Because I'm me, sometimes this awesome summer feeling comes with a slight feeling of heaviness. Not a "waiting for the other shoe to drop" feeling...it's hard to explain. I think it's just a lifetime of depression/anxiety and new PTSD training my mind to look at things a certain way and suddenly, I have to say, "NO. that is not reality and I know that now," but my feelings aren't so quick to catch on. 

Depression almost feels good 

because it's what I know 

and it's how I can retreat 

when I'm overwhelmed. 

My mind was desperate to cope with normal life and then all of the hard, hard stuff came and depression was trying to protect me. Us. And it just got very dysfunctional. Like a child who has been beaten by trusted caretakers, she becomes a little girl who exists in a shell, because who can get to her under her armor? She thinks no one can, but it actually makes her more vulnerable to being hurt in lasting ways. Our minds are very strong protectors but not always in the right ways. The mind just takes the most protective approach right away with some people. Examples:

Strong wind? Must be the end of the world let's take shelter underground. 

A little rain? Flooding of our home is imminent, evacuate to the mountains and never come back. 

Here's the thing that my mind doesn't know when it isn't connected to my spirit:  I can withstand things. The hardest things. And not just from where I think I am safest. I can withstand the hardest, most violent, earth shaking storms right in the middle of them. 

Storms pass, they flee; I do not. 

I stand firm, carried in the safe, steady hands of a sustaining Creator who has given me an inner strength and outer armor.

I can WITHSTAND anything 

as long as 
I STAND WITH Him. 

I don't need to protect myself because it's like child's play compared to how He protects. Sometimes his protection looks like destruction though and my mind can't wrap itself around that kind of perfect love. 

I think he's letting me glimpse that. Letting me feel how He feels. The storm may still be raging for all I know but I'm just going to sit here on the beach letting the sun hit my face, epi-pens still at my side and pills in my son's system--the son who is making sand castles as outside of our bubble the storm may be raging. We just can't imagine there is a world where storms even happen. We rest. We play.

If Asher wakes up in 5min and has a seizure I won't be shocked, it won't burst our bubble; it won't devastate either. It won't end this feeling it'll just be what it is. A seizure. A seizure than ends. Not a pin that bursts this bubble we're in for as long as God let's the bubble exist. 

We won't worry about tomorrow. 

We live in today and today is beautiful. Today, storms are raging and we are praying but they don't even feel real. 

For so long I said "He is good" while nothing felt good. I told myself that my feelings would eventually line up with the Truth, but the thing is, the truth feels so fast! My emotions feel so slow and so prone to dropping in exhaustion and crying because the race is so long and running is so hard. But that isn't how it is, really. 

Truth isn't fast; Truth is steady. 

Truth doesn't need to run ahead to prove how fast it is, 

Truth just runs its race. Truth won't stop for me either, 

Truth keeps going. 

Anything going past you looks fast when you're lying on the ground and can't run anymore. If my emotions could miraculously always stay steady, I would run step in step with truth. 

But that's not the normal God has given us. He's given us emotions that can be fickle and very high and very low sometimes in the same day and the rise and fall can drop us to the ground. BUT GOD has given us something that can provides us with the deep breath and water we need to run again. 

His Truth.  It never changes. 

Our emotions change. Our circumstances change. Our terrain changes. The weather changes. But as long as we see Truth still running steady, it spurs us to gather ourselves and get up and keep going. 

Truth doesn't look behind in disgust when we fall; 

Truth celebrates when we rise! 

The falling is normal. You can't escape it; but the rising is supernatural and you can't get that without the fall. 

There is no rising without falling.