MRI RESULTS!

One hour...

What a difference one hour can make!

Walking into the neurologist's office I felt my life could change dramatically depending upon what this doctor interpreted from my MRI during my one-hour appointment.

MS?

Alzheimer's?

Cancer?

Onset of blindness?

The possibilities were not good. I had read the report. My primary doctor said the report looked like MS and I needed to see a neurologist. He just wasn't sure, but it could be....

Left with that possibility and the loss of vision as well as excrutiating head pain, my heart was crushed.

My mind ran to worse-case scenarios. You see, my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson's close to my age. Her active lifestyle (and I mean active, she ran circles around her children) changed in that one diagnosis.

I was with her at the hospital in St. Louis when the neurologist told her the heart-breaking news as to why her little finger fluttered uncontrollably like a butterfly. I was with her when she went to get her first prescription of dopamine which would not help control the soon-to-be violent tremors.

I was hurt and angry at God as she eventually gave up playing the piano for the church, taking daily walks in the park to enjoy nature, feeding herself, going to the bathroom alone, and talking. It took me a long time to realize God did not give her the disease and loved her through it all.

-Yet, I knew that if this could happen to my mother, then why not to me? I am no better.

As I sat in the waiting room surrounded by twenty or more patients with MS at varying stages, I felt I was watching my own future. While I prayed that it not be so, I also knew God had healed people in the past and He also had chosen NOT to heal people this side of heaven, like my mother.

All that was left for me to do was to trust He walked with me as He did my mother. He held my hand. He heard my cries at night, my fears in the day, and knew of my pain and worries for my daughter and her future.

The Word became my solace, my source of strength. I recited Psalms over and over. I wrote in my Bible where ever a verse spoke to me about my fears and the MRI results.

God was with me. He IS with me.

God let me get my news today instead of more waiting and more testing. He let me find out that I do NOT have MS!

I have chronic-daily-late-stage-onset of migraine headaches. Loss of vision is a side effect of these terrible daily pains. The doctor believes it is treatable. I am on new medicine today.

I have to tell you, Dear Reader, God really taught me the past week about trusting Him, about priorities, about His Word. I never understood the part in Phillipians 6 about "...with thanksgiving make your request known to God...." I understood going to God with requests, but with thanksgiving?

I get it now. I am thankful God let this fear come to my door. I am thankful because it brought me closer to Him.

My mother said that same thing about Parkinsons. She said without the disease, she would never have gotten as close to God as she did.

I get it.

I don't like it, but I get it.

I serve a mighty God. A loving God. A patient God.I have to stop having anxiety about life and trust Him!

I am a different person having had this scare and faced that waiting room and having had the MRI and suffering this pain than I was last year.

Thank you, Jesus, for loving me so much and being so patient with me through this life.

His mercy endureth forever.

Gretchen