Lion and Lambs

A couple of months ago I started a new medication for my migraines. It was hard to keep hope that this would be the one, as numerous ones I have tried have failed. Other drugs from the class this particular drug is in, have caused serious side effects and have made my migraines worse, so I was very apprehensive, but compliant.

The excitement started immediately as I was able to sleep through the night, eight hours, something I haven’t done for years. That alone has got to be healing, and it gets better. I went four weeks without an episode. I haven’t done that in over a year. Then, I was overchallenged by altitude, thunderstorms, and heat; sent me way over my threshold. But FOUR WEEKS!!

Since then I have been three more weeks without an episode and even survived an hour and a half of loud worship at church Sunday night. Normally I can only handle three songs before I feel the beasty starting to roar. Then Monday, I ran errands and shopped all day, and I felt really good! That’s unheard of anymore.

Thankfulness, you bet! However long it lasts, I will take the side effects, like weight gain, for the more than welcome break in the migraines…and the ability to sleep again. Thank You God!

From the Editor of Fibromyalgia AWARE magazine:

Over time I have learned that by looking for the positive in a situation and by believing that things will work out…the unbearable has become bearable, and the impossible has become possible. I understand that for some of us this is easier to do than it is for others. Although this doesn’t mean that the “positive” person is better than the “negative one”…it is true that your attitude affects your health and happiness…and it is up to you to choose.

I felt that this went along with what I am trying to do here and I thought it would be fun to post the quotes that “just happen” to cross my path and fit the ’seeking the good theme’.

What a difficult habit to unbreak. Only one day into it, and already I almost missed two days in a row! So I will start out with being thankful that I remembered before midnight on the second day, and then share my really thankful for yesterday.

See, I have wanted to post this picture for quite along time now, well at least since sunflowers were in bloom and it was cool enough outside for me to go for a walk. First, I couldn’t get my computer to recognize anything plugged into my USB port, which included the card reader for my camera. Then when that problem was solved, I realized that I didn’t have any photo editing software to resize my pictures so that they would fit on my blog. Got that handled and realized that resizing it wasn’t the issue, my blog wouldn’t upload them at all. So then came my sister, the hero of my blog, and truly why I am here at all. She rewrote how pictures are uploaded and viola…the picture you see below:

This too comes with thankfulness to her. One day as a surprise she presented me with a beautiful glass sunflower and explained to me that they were considered by some to be Christian flowers because they are always facing the sun Son. Thus my title of Worsip Gathering.

Thanks sis, I have not looked at sonflowers the same since. For me it is equivalent to the refocusing I get from seeing a penny on the ground and thinking ‘In God We Trust’. Now I have a flower that reminds me to ‘look to the Son’.

I have truly been wanting to get back to blogging. I miss the sharing, the fun, and the things I learn from my own journaling. So the other day I read a thread from someone else about finding at least one good thing if every situation. The example she used brought much joy, smiles, and comments from her readers, and changed the focus of her bad experience to the good thing that came after it. In warming my heart, I decided to go back to my thankfulness or good/fun/delighting thing of the day, so I get back to posting regularly.

Then a couple of days ago I read the following in a book entitled WALKING THROUGH SHADOWS by Ken Ham and Carl Wieland. It is subtitled, Finding Hope in a World of Pain.

Since my conversion, I have never ceased to be amazed at how few Christians really view reality centered around the “big picture” of biblical history. I find it makes a tremendous difference to our approach to everything that matters. The biblical grand sweep is from creation of a truly good world (Gen 1:31), a Fall which affected the whole universe (Gen 3), now groaning in bondage to decay (Romans 8:19-22), through Calvary’s redemption to the still-future restoration of a sinless, deathless condition in the new heaven and new earth, following the removal of the Genesis curse (Rev 22:3). Focused on this, it becomes much easier to keep our perspective centered on God.

…We should be in awe of God’s amazing, undeserved mercy in having chosen us in Christ before the world began (Eph 1:4). None of us deserve anything less, from God’s perspective, than the worst we can imagine. And in all situations, I would say, there is always something left to be thankful for. The peace of God which passes all understanding (Phil 4:7) is conditional upon such thankfulness.

So there it is, and I am going to do my best to remember to visit here every day with something positive, and hopefully encouraging, to share.