Over 5 years ago we came here, and I was determined not to be here more then 5 years.  I may not like the circumstances leading up to us leaving, but I am still excited none the less!  God did amazing things for us while we were out here in the desert, but I am still thrilled to be leaving.

One of the things God did for us was walk us through a a tremendous trial.  When we moved here I had just had my first brain surgery only 4 weeks earlier.  After we moved here I didn’t get much better, in fact I continued to get worse.  Less then 2 years later I had my second and third surgeries, 3 days apart.  Leading up to that my Dr. asked me to keep a log of my seizures.  For one week, in February of 2008, I did that.  Today, in the process of packing, I found that log.  I look back to that time and I can see how little I knew about how sick I really was.  Twice that week I marked that I had 18 seizures, in varying degrees.  Wow, seeing that just blew me away.  When I tell people about that time I have always said I was having 3-6 a day, apparently my memory of that is pretty messed up.

At that point in time, when I kept that journal, we were in the process of making a final decision on me having surgery, a surgery that gave me only a small percentage chance of being seizure free.  I had already had all the testing done.  It came down to this, I could not make the decision to just do nothing, knowing that surgery was the last means I had in my fight to get better.  I cannot imagine having chosen any other way, despite the side effects surgery has left me with.  In realizing how many seizures I was actually having, I am now convinced that the surgery not only eventually led to me being seizure free, but it saved my life.  How long would I have survived having over a dozen seizures a day?  I am glad I will never know the answer to that question.

In some ways I feel like I am coming out of the desert in more then one way.  The first way is obvious.  The second way is my ability to put my life back in order.  I am now seizure free, I can drive, and I am considering getting a part time job.  The desert served two purposes for me.  It forced me to slow down, stop living such a hectic life.  It also forced me to rely more on God, and less on myself and others.  As I leave the desert, I am grateful for what it gave me, but I am not sad in leaving it.