For months now, we’ve been looking forward to July 22,
2012. It was the day we were scheduled
to begin our amazing adventure into exploring whether or not God is calling us
to full time missions work. My kids will
forever remember it as “the WORST. DAY. EVER!!!”. I will always remember it as a day that I
could actually see the spiritual battle taking place over us beginning our
missions journey.
The day before we tried to leave, Eli’s asthma started
giving us problems. Earlier in the week I
had noticed the onset of symptoms and called his doctor, who started him on the
typical meds that will take care of his issues.
Normally he’s better within a couple of days and it would’ve been a
non-issue when Sunday rolled around.
However, Eli can never do anything “normally”…lol! We did breathing treatments every 4 hours all
week, which usually helps to deter him getting worse with his breathing issues,
but not this time. Saturday’s breathing
treatments increased to every 3 hours, and even doubling the treatments a few
times in the evening. He coughed
every.single.minute Saturday night into Sunday morning. Needless to say, Jason and I had barely any
sleep at all. I guessed that I maybe
slept 3 hours, but that’s probably a pretty generous guess. Early Sunday morning my mom instinct took
over and I decided to take him to the emergency room. The doctor who came in to assess him almost
immediately said he was not going to allow Eli to travel in his condition when
I told him our plans for the day. I
couldn’t believe what I was hearing! We’d
been planning this for 9 months, and one doctor was going to step in and stop
everything we’d been working toward. I
knew in my heart that there was a spiritual battle taking place, so I prayed
right then and there for the doctor to have a change of heart, for Eli to show
marked improvement, and for us to get out of there. At that point, some dear friends showed up to
pray over and anoint Eli with a healing balm.
After another breathing treatment, getting an IV put in, bloodwork, and
a chest xray, a different doctor came in to check on him. This doctor said that he wasn’t going to keep
us from going on our trip, just to make sure that we have all of Eli’s
medications with us in our carry-ons, and he was released from the
hospital! Talk about a miracle! And an emotional rollercoaster!
We left the hospital and went straight to church for first
service. Throughout the two services, we
were prayed over for our mission, our purpose, and our trip. We said many see you laters, and were finally
on the road to Chicago. We were all set
to ride up to the airport in a 15 passenger van with a uhaul trailer for our
luggage, but the air in the van wasn’t working great, and Eli gets worse when
he gets too hot, so at the last minute, I proposed that Jason, myself, and Eli
follow the 15 passenger van in our minivan. While an inconvenience at the time, it proves
to be a HUGE Godsend later in the day. The
rest of the trip to Chicago was relatively uneventful, with Jason and I both
believing that our tough spiritual forces battle is continuing to take place
over Eli and his asthma, which is still flaring up from time to time.
We arrived at O’Hare, found our check-in counter, unloaded
all 10 suitcases and 6 carry-ons, said our final see ya laters, and went to
stand in line to check in for our flight to Los Angeles and check our
luggage. After watching Jason talk to
the woman at the computer terminal for a few minutes, he calls me over to ask a
few questions, leading up to the fact that she believes we need visas for our
trip, and we’ve only got our passports.
That was around 4:30. For the
next 3 hours Jason was on the phone with Bill and Christina Widup (the
missionaries we are going to Vanuatu to serve with) while trying to get everything
straightened out so that we could get on our flight. The result of those 3 hours was that we
needed to come home and will be flying out again on Thursday, July 26 and are
unsure of how long we’ll be staying in Vanuatu, but most likely less than 30
days. There is still much confusion on
this subject, and we’re still researching our options, so please continue to be
in prayer that if it’s possible for us to stay for the originally planned 90
day trip, God will make it happen. I had
called Jason’s parents as soon as the desk clerk for United said that we weren’t
going to be able to get on the flight and asked them to come back to the
airport because we might not be able to fly out. Luckily they were only 20 minutes into their
drive back to Indiana when I got ahold of them.
After standing around the airport for 3.5 hours while Jason got
everything figured out, we all headed back to Indiana…and everyone was
STARVING! Lol.
We stopped for supper once we got out of Chicago, and then
were on our way home, for a few minutes…and then the 15 passenger van
overheated and we quickly discovered it was not going to get us home. And this is when I almost had a
meltdown. But didn’t. I posted our predicament on Facebook, not for
the drama value, but so that people would know we were still in need of prayer
in order to get home. Almost immediately I received texts from a
couple of people who were willing to make the 2+ hour drive to come and get us
in Merrillville and take us, and our Uhaul trailer of luggage, home. While we were waiting on Rob and Amy to
rescue us, we were trying to laugh about the day, counting our blessings of
what had gone right, and how the day could’ve been even worse! It was a pleasant night, not cold, not hot,
Eli had finally fallen asleep in the back of our van, at least it’s not
raining, everyone was still alive, we weren’t fighting, the kids were all being
very well-behaved, etc…lots to still be thankful for! Jason and I were able to take our van to a
gas station to buy a few gallon jugs of water to fill up the water tank of the
overheated van, and attempt to get it to a dealership instead of paying a tow
bill, which was a successful adventure.
So then everyone was hanging out in the parking lot of a Mike Anderson
dealership near Merrillville. Jason’s
parents decided to stay there in a motel overnight and wait on the van to get
fixed the following day, so Jason took them to get the last room in the motel,
and while they were gone, IT STARTED RAINING!!!! At this point, it was funny! Not an hour earlier we had stated that we
were just thankful for the nice night and that it wasn’t raining, and then
rain. The kids ended up having a dance
party in the rain, so it ended up being a memorable blessing, also!
We got home Monday morning at 5 a.m. Completely exhausted doesn’t even begin to
describe how we were feeling, but we do know this. If we were supposed to be on that flight out
of O’Hare on Sunday, July 22 at 6:48 p.m., we would’ve been. My previous blog post was on not worrying
about this trip because this is God’s plan, not ours, and that’s what got me
through the day. This is God’s
plan. He didn’t want us on that
flight. The week leading up to our
departure was crazy busy. We had no time
to rest. We had one day of just the five
of us spending time together, and that still wasn’t very restful. We know that God has big plans for our family
once we get to Vanuatu, and He knows that we weren’t as rested up as He wanted
us, so we didn’t fly out on Sunday. That
wasn’t news to Him. He wasn’t surprised
by that. Now we’ve been home since
Monday morning, resting. We’ve already
said our see ya laters, and don’t want to put our kids through that again, so
we’re really just spending time as the five of us together, resting. Hopefully Eli will be all healed up tomorrow
when we head out. We did make a visit to
the doctor yesterday who mentioned that he thinks Eli’s flare ups may be stress
induced, so if you’d like to pray for him in that regard, we’d appreciate
it. But we know that we are still in God’s
plan. Once again, God’s got this!
Praying God puts Eli at ease. I ~love~ your attitudes.~ May God richly bless your family.
ReplyDeleteLucy