A Guest Post: Happy Anniversary to My Wife (and our anniversary date)

June 25, 2013 was our 8^th wedding anniversary. 

For a few hours six months ago, I wasn’t sure we’d make it here. Looking back on the weeks surrounding her seizures, sometimes I wonder if my initial thoughts and feelings in those first few hours after her first seizure were complete overreactions.

In the week leading up to her first seizure, Jenny had mentioned on a number of occasions that she had a pounding headache. Jenny is not one to complain about mild discomfort (she played her entire senior year of college volleyball with a fibula stress fracture with nary a peep), so at the time, I figured that if she was mentioning a headache to me, she was truly in pain.

In the few moments just after her first seizure, her recent headaches popped into my head. I assumed the two were connected and were symptoms of a more serious problem. I shared this with my dad, who is an ER physician, and asked him if he knew what could have caused a seizure. Thankfully, his years of experience kicked in and he answered with a calm “I don’t know.” 

In that moment, the way he answered my question was more important that what he actually said.  He’s always said that there are only two times you ought to be worried when you’re around doctors: when they don’t look like they know what they’re doing, or when they look panicked.  In that moment, he was neither. And I’m thankful for that because I would later learn that he was very concerned about what could be wrong with Jenny once he learned about her headaches. 

Despite the calm nature of all of the medical professionals that I came in contact with over the next few hours (the paramedics who responded, the ER staff that began treating Jenny, etc.), my mind kept going back to the same terrifying thought – I was going to have to say goodbye to her much sooner than I was prepared to.

Those thoughts only intensified after she had her second seizure, just before 7am.  She had only just begun to come out of the fog of her first seizure (someone described a seizure as a computer re-booting) and had begun to answer yes or no questions when her pupils dilated and round two began. 

I remember standing beside her bed, feeling completely helpless as she endured another seizure. There was nothing I could do and in those moments, reconciling my fear of the unknown with my belief in a God who holds every moment of Jenny’s life in his hands was nearly impossible.

But God is good and in the few seconds after her second seizure, the Holy Spirit reminded me that God seeks His own glory in everything and His glory is good. His glory also doesn’t require my understanding and I found myself praying over Jenny that He would be glorified in whatever the outcome was. 

A few moments later, dad shared with me that the results of her initial CT scan had returned shortly before her second seizure. The CT scan was clear, meaning that she very likely didn’t have something seriously wrong like a brain tumor, aneurysm or blood clot.

Throughout the rest of the day, test after test came back showing nothing wrong. Her prognosis was so good that just 10 hours after arriving in the hospital, we left.

I am so grateful that nothing was seriously wrong with Jenny. I’m also glad that one of the things I carry around with me more strongly now than before is the comfort that God seeks His glory in everything. This doesn’t mean that difficulties won’t come along and that fear, pain and doubt won’t be a part of my life.  However, I hope that when those times inevitably arrive, God will again be faithful and remind me that He seeks His glory and His glory is good.

Happy Anniversary Jenny.  I love you.

Guest post over! Here are a few picture from our anniversary date!

We were lucky enough to find a sitter to watch the boys for us so we could go out to celebrate our anniversary. For dinner, we chose a little restaurant called Il Folleto. It was a quant little Italian restaurant over near the patershol area. We ordered a version of bruschetta with italian ham on top for an appetizer. For our meal, Cole enjoyed some steak with a creamy balsamic sauce, and I had pasta with pecorino cheese and a spicy sauce (I'm not totally sure what the sauce was as it was just called "spicy sauce" on the menu). Everything was delicious...from the bread, to the food, to the drinks, it was great! It was also a nice, quiet atmosphere. I'm sure we'll be back! As a side note, every single table was reserved that evening (a Wednesday evening) for the whole night. Luckily we had also made reservations!

                                               

After dinner, we stopped to grab some gelato and sat by the canal that runs by our loft. It was so nice outside and such a treat to just sit and talk...to enjoy each other and not have to worry about anything else. To talk about where we've been, how far we've come, and where we want to go. 

It was a wonderful way to celebrate! As I mentioned in my previous anniversary post, we look forward to many more years to come!