Unbelief

"But despite all the miraculous signs he had done, most of the people did not believe in him." - John 12:37 NLT

This verse may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you who read this. I have struggled recently with unbelief. I believe in my God! I believe that Christ died for my sins, rose from the dead, and now (since 1992) has resided in me. I have a clear remembrance of the day I accepted Christ.

My unbelief comes in the form of not trusting God with every aspect of my life. Over the years, I have trusted God with a lot of things. But my baby, apparently, did not fall in that list until today. I have struggled since the third grade with asthma and allergies. They are chronic problems, not just the every day allergies. I used to get sick only during the spring and fall. Some teachers put me outside in elementary school. The problem was that outside the classroom was also outside the building. We had no indoor hallways. This going outside made it worse...and caused me to miss school.

When I got to middle school, my medical problems took a drastic change. It was like a night and day affect. I seemed to get sick all the time, not just during certain seasons. I had just recovered from a second battle of strep throat. My doctors didn't know what to do with me. They couldn't understand how medicines that used to work, suddenly stopped. This escaladed until eigth grade. In eigth grade I never went to school. I was put on homebound. A teacher picked up my assignments from school, came to my house for an hour a day, and I had tons of work to complete before she showed up the next day. During this time, even the hospital ER began to just drug me up and send me home. During this time I went in circles from pulmonologist, to allergist, to family doctor, to ENT and in a continuous circle. Every doctor tried what they thought would work, and when it didn't, sent me on to someone else.

I had one brilliant doctor who finally took out my tonsils my freshmen year of college. This drastically decreased the amount of time I spent sick. Two years later, I had a doctor tell me I might have cancer. They decided to take out a lymph node instead of biopsying it. When they went in, they took out two. PRAISE THE LORD! The biopsy came back negative for cancer; however, it was labeled as a chronic infection - same as my tonsils and adeniods two years prior to this.

It wasn't until after I graduated college that we discovered the method to the madness. The entire time I had PANDAS. Apparently, when I had one of the episodes of strep I developed an autoimmune disease. This disease caused an involuntary muscle spasm - or a tic - to be developed, which set off my acid reflux and asthma. The only time I could get peace was when I was asleep...because the involuntary spasm wasn't like the reflex of breathing....it did not occur when my brain was in sleep mode. Thankfully, I outgrew it or something. But the damage has been done to my lungs before that with my chronic asthma and allergies I continue to struggle with to this day.

So what does all this have to do with my baby and my unbelief? A LOT! I was on so many medicines, and many of them trial medications, that one doctor took me off of them saying that they could cause med to be infertile. So for the longest time there has been doubts in my mind whether I could even conceive. When I found out I was pregnant, that burden was lifted off my shoulders and I praised God with everything I am. But.... I found out non of my medications were safe for the pregnancy. That includes the nasal spray, preventative and emergency inhalers for asthma, my singulair, allegra, lortadine, and acid reflux medicines that were prescriptions had to go.... so now I am on very low dose over the counter wanna-bes. They don't do the job...but God is slowly helping my body heal and adjust. I have been so worried that either the stress that my asthma puts on my body, or the medications I took for a month before I found out I was pregnant, or the fact that I have a lengthy family medical history would make my baby an unhealthy baby.

I talked to the NP and midwife at my OBGYN on Thursday. They both told me that God doesn't make mistakes. That every baby was put on this earth for a purpose and a method to serve God. (we were talking about the downsyndrom and some other testing they want to do) That helped ease the way to what God told me tonight through various methods. First, was the music for DNOW. "God is healer" and "Healing is in [His] hands" were a major theme in the music. Then God used a wonderful lady to help answer so many prayers that I had today about various other things. God just reminded me tonight that he was in control of my baby and my future whether I wanted to let him have the reigns or not. I used to say My god is bigger and He CAN do it...now I have a new motto. My God is bigger and He WILL do it!