In-God-I-Hope
Member
Hi all,
Going to try and avoid making this a sob story! I've just come out of a tough year, but feel alot stronger and closer to God for it. I was away at university but have moved home until I get my 'adult' life underway. My parents divorced a few years ago now, and my mother is an alcoholic and has recently come out as gay; so I find living at home difficult but am grateful I have somewhere to call home. There is so much I want to do with my life, I am struggling to find what God wants me to do. I am praying and listening for His answer, I just hope I don't miss it. I feel quite lonely now that I've moved back and have left the life I had built for myself across the water, but I believe God has a purpose for me and is with me every step of the way. I have just broken up with someone after 2 years which has been hard but he wasn't a very nice person and treated me quite badly so it was definately the right thing to do. I'm finding single life quite an adjsutment but am trying to be strong in God and let Him work in my life, that is all that matters. I won't lie, being alone terrifies me, although I'm only 22! I hope and pray that God has someone out there for me, someone who also believes in God and will be a true match for me. I haven't been doing a very good job so far of choosing guys. I'm looking forward to getting the opportunity to speak to people from all walks of life on here and learn from others experiences. God Bless xx
Going to try and avoid making this a sob story! I've just come out of a tough year, but feel alot stronger and closer to God for it. I was away at university but have moved home until I get my 'adult' life underway. My parents divorced a few years ago now, and my mother is an alcoholic and has recently come out as gay; so I find living at home difficult but am grateful I have somewhere to call home. There is so much I want to do with my life, I am struggling to find what God wants me to do. I am praying and listening for His answer, I just hope I don't miss it. I feel quite lonely now that I've moved back and have left the life I had built for myself across the water, but I believe God has a purpose for me and is with me every step of the way. I have just broken up with someone after 2 years which has been hard but he wasn't a very nice person and treated me quite badly so it was definately the right thing to do. I'm finding single life quite an adjsutment but am trying to be strong in God and let Him work in my life, that is all that matters. I won't lie, being alone terrifies me, although I'm only 22! I hope and pray that God has someone out there for me, someone who also believes in God and will be a true match for me. I haven't been doing a very good job so far of choosing guys. I'm looking forward to getting the opportunity to speak to people from all walks of life on here and learn from others experiences. God Bless xx
I love this verse, it is such a wonderful thing to know God is a constant in life and is always there to be called upon, whatever life brings, and as this verse says, especially in times of heartache. Thank you for giving my this verse today, and your kind words of encouragement!
Oxygen levels in blood are rated on a scale of 0-100. Normal is a reading above 97. Mine dropped to 70. So, I was put on a breathing device known as a B-PAP machine for nearly the remainder of my hospital stay. It's a device that forces air deep into one's lungs. While there in the ICU it was noticed that my potassium levels had dropped so a potassium drip was fitted to my intravenous. To call what happened next a severe reaction to potassium would be an understatement. As the potassium solution made it through the intravenous and into my arm it felt as though someone put a lit match to my arm. As it made its way up my arm it felt like someone squirted lighter fluid on my arm and ignited it. That's when I started screaming for help. When the potassium made it to my chest cavity I'm sure I was having the same feeling as one who had been directly hit with a flame thrower. It was at that point that I went blind and passed out. Strangely enough I could still hear myself screaming while unconscious. Luckily my wife was there to tell the nurses what brought on my ordeal and they immediately disconnected the potasium drip and irragated the intravenous and me which had the effect of bringing me back to normality. Fortunately my vision returned as well. On a pain scale of 1-10 with 10 being the worst pain I had re-established my 10. It was pretty close to 100 I think...it was Hell, I'm sure. Needless to say, I was in the ICU for the remainder of my stay and my stay lasted much longer than anticipated. As I mentioned, I'm diabetic. During the years from when I had my first stent put in until my bypass surgery my A1C, a measurement of sugar level in one's blood, went from 9.1 to 12.8 even though I was on insulin to control my blood sugar. Diabetics with A1C levels of 7.0 or lower are considered well managed. Basically, my blood was get thick and sticky which was causing my artery clogging problems. My most recent A1C was 7.2 so I'm pretty close now to normal. Moving along, during rehab from my bypass surgery I began to have trouble breathing. I was given a Cat Scan and a lump was found on my right lung which turned out to be "biphasic malignant mesothelioma". I had surgery to remove that little hitchhiker on January 3, 2011 which was successful. However, the nurse who put the catheter into my urinary tract managed to somehow cut me there which became infected. Now I don't know how many of you have ever had a urinary tract infection (UTI) but it's about the most sensitive areas in the human anatomy. Picture yourself urinating acid and you'd pretty much know how my UTI was making me feel. Now consider this. After surgeries I have a tendency to hold water which tends to raise my blood pressure and therefore is bad for my heart and must be expelled. So, I had to take diuretic medication which forced me into the bathroom up to a dozen or more times per day. On a pain scale from 1-10 with 10 being the most pain each bathroom trip was about a 9.999. My UTI last about 2 months to the day. :eeeekkk Then around mid-March of 2011 I started to have some pain in my side and stomach pain after meals. It turned out to be acute appendicitus. The doctor removed the inflamed appendix just fine but he left a small incision in my small intenstine during the process. Ordinarily an incision the size of which was left in me would've closed by itself but because of my heart desease I was taking an industrial strength blood thinner. So, that little cut just continued to spurt blood for the rest of the day and all night and by morning my belly was so distended that my wife said I looked like a woman who was 24 months pregnant. By the time I was back under the knife nearly 2 1/2 liters of blood was flowing around my internal organs where it shouldn't have been flowing. An interesting fact I found out from the surgeon was that raw blood acts like acid on the organ membranes. I was on some heavy duty pain killers after that but that wasn't the end of my ordeal. I ended up with something called a Paralytic Illeus. That's when the lower intestine becomes paralyzed and everything that is supposed to be going down then out is coming up then out. Most unpleasant I can assure you of that. At that point I had to be fitted with an extraction tube of about one inch in diameter that went into my mouth, down my throat, and into my stomach. While being fitted with the tube a hurled up a proper amount of green stuff reminiscent of that movie the exorcist when that girl hurled a gallon of green onto the priest after which her head turned 360 degrees! My green went all over my doctor and I'm pretty sure that my head turned at least 360 degrees too. Your probably wondering at this point how much more can someone take? Well, so was I. It was at this lowest point in my life that I made my most sincere prayer to God through our Savior Jesus Christ. I closed my eyes and simply asked Him to show me some kind of sign so I would know whether I should be praying for a quick death or for the strength to perservere. When I opened my eyes there stood my loving wife. Wow! If that wasn't a sign then nothing is. Well, I was in the hospital bed so long that I basically had to learn how to walk all over again. But, here I am after praying to perservere. I guess my point is this. God isn't always going to answer us with a loud, booming voice from the heaven's or from a burning bush. Nor do I think that everyone has to go through what I went through before they have their prayers answered. That's just what happened in my case. Oh, and the rest of my story. My wife and I were pretty much agnostics when we married 21 years ago December 28th. During our anniversary dinner at a very lovely restaurant in town she asked me to tell her more about Christianity. Is it obvious to you too that Jesus wants me to help her to get saved too? Signs, signs, signs, everywhere are signs. Endeavor to persevere.