Hives, Acts, Spiritual Disciplines

I'm doing pretty good right now! It's been 4 weeks since surgery. I'm just taking it slow. A week and a half ago, I developed hives all over my stomach and incisions. Ever since they started, I've taken Benedryl as often as I can, and I've put cream on them. Nothing is helping! I wake up in the middle of the night to find them bleeding because I scratch them in my sleep. I have tried epson salt baths. I even took steroids for a couple of days to see if that would clear it up, but it didn't. I've gotten bad hives after another one of my surgeries before, but they only lasted a few days and they were right after surgery. We have no idea why the hives would pop up 3 weeks after surgery and last this long with no signs of improving. It's crazy! If anyone has any ideas for us, we would love to hear them! They are so miserable and make my stomach hurt. Hopefully they will get better soon.
We've had problems with my home health group for a while now. They charge us for things that we didn't even order. It's a huge mess. Now, they decided that our contract is over so they showed up last week and took my IV pole away. I was kinda freaking out because I've had that IV pole for almost 2 years. And I still need it! With my port, you have to access it and flush it out at least every 6 weeks so that it doesn't get a blood clot. The only way we can do this is if the home health brings the supplies. My mom is the one who actually accesses it. So now we are trying to find a new home health group who will accept me. We need to find one fast!
I've gotten to get out of the house a couple of times in the past week! On New Years Eve, we went to our friends house with a couple families. They live a mile from us so we didn't have to go far. We had a great time!
I also got to go to church on Sunday morning. I'm so glad I was there! It was such a great time of worship. This year as a church, we are striving to practice more spiritual disciplines. One of my youth ministers preached on Sunday and it was fantastic! It was about training. He started out with this verse.
"Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever." 1 Corinthians 9:25
When you sign up to run a marathon, what do you automatically know you have to do? You have to train. There is no one who would EVER run a marathon without training. That would just be stupid.
When you have a test, you can not perform at your highest unless you study.
So why do we think that as Christians, that we are going to be able to do anything for God without training? Why do we think that we can just go out and do everything without going under strict training?
On Sunday we looked at the miracles in the book of Acts done by the disciples. They performed so many miracles! They did so much for God! We always look at the big things that happen in the Bible. As Phil showed us on Sunday, we fail to look at what happened right before each of the miracles.
Before the disciples performed each miracle, they spent time praying and seeking. Before God used them to do something great, they prayed.
What does that mean to us? We look around wondering why we aren't being used, but we haven't done anything to prepare us to be used. We think that we can go run a marathon for God, but we don't want to train.
On Sunday, we were all given a book for this year. Each month at church, we are going to focus on a different spiritual discipline. Each month we will add to our book. We need to start training so that we can really be ready to be used by God. We need to start training.
We were encouraged to sit in silence before God and just listen. You can learn so much from simply just being quiet before God.
When God told Elijah to go wait for Him on the mountain, He came in a whisper. God didn't come in the earthquake, wind, or fire. He came in a whisper. (1 King 19:10-18)
I pray that we will seek God and get a little bit closer to Him each day.
I'm still sleeping downstairs because climbing stairs is still painful. It's been almost 5 weeks since I've slept in my room. I'm also still wearing sweats all the time since other pants still rub my incisions. I did wear a dress and leggings to church though! That was exciting!
Tomorrow I have a follow up appointment with my surgeon. Hopefully he'll have a plan to help my hives!
I hope you all are having a great week!!

Spiritual Disciplines

Monday night I went to a Bible study with the youth group. This Bible study is different than most. It's called Thirst and it is about spiritual disciplines. We learn different things to do, to help us actually grow closer to Christ. The room was lit by candles and the chairs where 2 feet apart so that we wouldn't sit close to anyone who would distract us. The first thing we did was solitude. There was some suggestion on what to do. The first one was just thinking of a word. One word that we would say over and over and over. It's completely normal to think of other things but when you do, you just think back to the word. Another suggestion was deep breathing. It is good to pick a phrase and on every word, either breathe in or out slowly. For example you would say while inhaling "be still and know" then exhaling "that I am God".

Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth." Psalm 46:10

The other suggestion was relaxing your whole body. First you notice your big toe. You understand that your toe is not doing anything, it is just there. Then you do that all the way until you get to your head. By that time you are completely relaxed. The whole goal of these exercises is to forget about reality. The goal is to become so focused on the word or phrase or just being there, that the room fades away. Obviously this is very hard to do. We were given 8 minutes to do this. I thought that it went by so fast! We were challenged to do this everyday because it is so important. Just like an athlete, we have to train. We can't go to our marathon (life) and expect something to happen just being we say we are a "runner"(a Christian). Without strict training (studying God's word, listening to God, knowing that He is always God) we will fail the race that we call life. But if we train like we should, we will see that God has a place for us in the marathon.

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever." 1 Corinthians 9:24-25

After we practiced solitude, we tried another discipline called simple prayer. We were reminded that God comes to us where we are in our lives. Simple prayer is just being honest with God about what is happening now. It's about praying the ordinary If I'm angry about something, I tell him by writing it in a simple prayer. If something is stressing me out, I write it down. If there is something so great, I write it. It's just writing simple things down, because God will meet us wherever we are and He cares about everything.

These are such good ways to hear God speaking to us, but these are so hard to actually do everyday. That is why they are called a discipline!

Lots of people came this week to Thirst and I can't wait for the weeks to come.

24 Hours of Prayer and hard week

This has been a very hard week. I have been in so much pain. I got to go to church last night which was good.

My brother's birthday party is tomorrow at church in the gym. He's having a dodgeball party and I think there is an inflatable obstacle course too.

It is going to be a crazy day tomorrow! His party is from 4-6 tomorrow afternoon. I have a youth group lock-in at the same place as his party that I have to be at starting at 7:30!

Jesus talks so much about prayer. I believe that prayer is one of the most important things we do. It is so powerful and we know God is listening. It's so encouraging when you pray with your friends or other people. Every night I do a prayer call with 6 other people in my youth group and it is so cool to hear who God is in their life by the prayers they pray. God is different for every person because God uses us in different ways. On Wednesday, we all meet in person and talk about our week and what God is doing and what we're struggling with. It is such a great thing to be doing.

Prayer is also a very hard spiritual discipline. We don't just pray because God says so. It shouldn't be forced. Obviously we are never going to get that perfect. But prayer is so important in our Relationship with God.

"For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them" Matthew 18:20

Tomorrow our church is doing 24 hours of prayer. This has become a tradition. From 7 pm Friday to 7pm Saturday, there will be someone in constant prayer. There is a prayer room at church that has boards of things to pray for. There are boards about missionaries, schools, ministries, our country, a globe to pray for the world, people who are sick, and a board with everyone's name that goes to church there. Once the prayer time is over, everyone in the church will have been prayed for at least once. The room is dimly lit and has some quiet music on. Everyone has signed up for at least a 30 minute praying time. Of course you can come up and pray whenever you want.

The youth group has our lock-in during this time. We are covering the 10 pm to 7 am time slots. It is such a neat thing to be able to go into the prayer room whenever and see so many people in prayer. Almost everyone loses track of time and stays in the prayer room for an hour or longer. Also, a lot of the youth group decides to go several times through the night to pray. It's awesome to hear and see so many people who leave the games and go to the prayer room because they just want to pray.

During the lock-in we have so much fun! We play games and everything and we worship throughout the night.

I'm on the prayer leadership team in the youth group and we are supposed to cover from 7pm to 10pm tomorrow before the lock-in actually starts. So I will be at church from like lunch time to set up the party until saturday morning! I'm really excited! I'm praying that I can stay the whole time and hoping I can handle the pain.

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective" James 5:16

"The LORD is near to all who call on him,

to all who call on him in truth."Psalm 145:18

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" Romans 8:26

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God" Philippians 4:6