Hello Sunday!!!

Today is Sunday. A day I should be at church. But at the moment, we are still somewhat looking. We may have found a church to attend. It's a bit difficult. I'm just really blessed my husband doesn't push me to go to Catholic Mass with him. But he attends service with me. Little background:

I was born and raised in a protestant family. I went to Baptist churches for most of my life. I was Baptized in a Baptist church. But guess what I was married in a Catholic Church. :D Anyways, that's because Roland is Catholic. My two older children were baptized when they were babies in the Catholic Church. To me it doesn't matter what religion you follow, as long as you follow Christ and have that personal relationship with him. Religion to me has always been man made. I don't condemn my husband's beliefs, but I do question some. He doesn't question mine though. I guess he doesn't really care too much about pushing his beliefs on to me and I don't push mine on him. He just goes with me and basically, he just observes:P

Anyways, I've grown up going to church all my life. I was even actively attending church by myself when I finally got my driver's license. But something happened that changed me. That is something I don't want to discuss because it would people other people in bad light. Nothing something I want to do especially if they didn't realize what they did.

Well, because of several incidences, going to church has been a battle. I should go because it's between me and God, but you can't completely ignore the people around you. I start attending church, getting very active and then I stop. I can't seem to push myself to get over this whole incident. It isn't easy. I pray that every time I go to a church that the wall that prevents me for fully committing to a church would finally come down. It's struggle I deal with and I feel guilty because of it.

My friends know I believe in God. I do love God and I do read my Bible, not so regularly but I do and I pray, well, then again, I don't actually pray, I do talk to God. I give thanks to him for all my blessings and hardships. I thank him for everything in my life. And I will continue doing so because of all the miracles and blessings in my life.

My first blessing was with Rhannon. The hospital in Guam did not administer the antibiotics for the Strep B, so he was exposed to my blood and had to be kept in the NICU for 3 days for testing. He didn't get sick. Which was a blessing to me.

My second blessing came when my Dad passed away. I know sounds strange. But Roland joined the military. That was the blessing. Let me explain. We didn't have any health insurance it was too expensive. Roland joining the military allowed us to get Tricare. Anyways, I went in for my physical. My doctor found a lump in my throat. She had me get an ultrasound. The results came back with suspicious mass. Then the doctor had me get a fine needle asphyxiation. The results were positive for cancer. Now, how is this all a blessing. If Roland never joined, we would never had gotten into the military health care system, and I would never have had found out that I had cancer. Secondly, the doctor wanted to operate. He was not proficient with this type of surgery. He's an ENT doctor, he can deal with the throat, but to remove a major organ like the thyroid, he has never done it. Roland came home for Home Recruiting for 2 weeks. Then he had to report. I didn't want him to stay for my surgery, told him to just go. I'll be fine. 2 weeks after he left, I was prepping to get my surgery. I went to do all the pre-surgery labs. The lab tech tells me I have to cancel my surgery. I had positive test results for pregnancy. Had to cancel and go set an appointment to see the OB. Guess what? I had a little jelly bean growing inside of me. I was pregnant.  That was another blessing:D Well, I find out the place where we were going there are excellent doctors who can perform a total thyroidectomy. So we left. I got to Germany and had my surgery done by a reknown doctor in the area. He removed my thyroid completely and I have no scaring from it. This is my main blessing. If none of this happened, I would have never had any surgery. I probably would not be living for much longer. Since thyroid cancer is slow growing but it would have cut myself short.

Since then I am grateful for being alive. I celebrate the anniversary of my surgery every year. Again God blessed me with making sure the cancer didn't come back, since I didn't have radiation right away since I was pregnant, I had it a year later. It was completely cleaned. So every year of my radiation I celebrate life again. Whatever it is, some people don't believe in God, but I do. Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I have faith that all things will work out. Even the hardships happen for a reason. I also believe what doesn't kill makes you stronger. Which is so true. I haven't done much traveling while we were in Europe, but that's okay, I was just grateful for that opportunity. I'm not bitter. I'm living now in the US and I'm grateful for this wonderful opportunity again. Life is too short to be bitter or complaining about you haven't done. Just do what you can and enjoy it in every little way. Definitely stop to smell the roses and look at the world around you.

Welcome to my world!

~Joy