Change of Plans

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11

Plans. It’s funny how we make so many of them, but God has other ideas…The past few weeks have literally been a roller coaster of emotions for me. I have not spent a lot of time online, but just been struggling with what has been going on in our lives here at home.

It started with news that my husband’s deployment was being moved up by three months. I literally went into panic mode as we were not expecting deployment for awhile yet and I had pushed it out of my mind to focus on the here and the now. I thought of all the stuff that needed to be done, all the things we needed to do prepare, all the plans we needed to make…

And then the very next day it was gone. GONE. Just like that. They made a decision that he wasn’t going to go anymore, they were sending someone else. They decided that he needed to get his health problems taken care of first. Which I actually appreciate, but talk about a roller coaster of emotions!

The first day I stuffed it all inside. Be strong. I told myself. You can do this. Then the next day it was incredible relief and also anger. I was so relieved that he was going to be home. Home. My husband was going to be home for a little bit longer. I will take anytime home with him. And I cried. So relieved that I wasn’t going to have to go through the next 6-7 months alone. And then I was angry. Angry for them jerking us around so much and angry that they couldn’t wait a few more days to find out the results of his asthma test.

He doesn’t have asthma by the way (praise the Lord). He did however, have several panic attacks. That is what has been affecting him and we are glad it is nothing serious enough to affect his career. The doctor said it’s stress, so now we are focusing on helping each other with that.

I had to believe there was a reason they decided not to send him. Maybe there was something we just do not know about. Maybe God is protecting him. I don’t know what it was, but He has other plans…

After we found out for sure that he was not going on deployment we set out to continue our plans to work on a medical move for our son. My husband started asking around and started really looking into it and only a few days later we found out that we did not meet the requirements for it.

I was literally heartbroken. This had been my light at the end of the tunnel of therapies and doctor’s visits. I had thought that maybe if we could just move somewhere with better medical help that things would get better. For about a day I bordered on despair. My hope had been taken away and I felt like it was too hard to keep going with the schedule we have been on. Therapy 10 days a week day after day, week after week. The stress of it all has been affecting my health and I was tired of being faced with this every day, not being able to get everything I needed to done, and not having enough time for my son to even have play dates and friends and to just be a kid.

But even through all this there is hope. There is always hope. We have been at our base for four years now and we figure that’s enough to get orders very soon. My husband’s supervisor has been so helpful and is trying to do what he can to help us get orders or at least help us out with things here. My husband will also have “base of preference” coming up in July since he has been in for 5 years and we are hoping with all this put together that we will be able to move within the next year.

It’s funny how we make all these plans… plans that I’ve had in my head, but God has had other plans. He knows what’s best for us even when we don’t see it and I am so thankful that God sees ahead and is protecting and looking out for us even now.

Thanks to all who have emailed and messaged me to let me know they were praying or even to ask how my husband was doing. I appreciate that so much and it means so much to me that people care. Thank you all for the prayers. God Bless!