Hindsight is 20/20

But Spiritual hindsight is 20/10! Our path to this point in our lives could not be more crystal clear. Wow! God's timing is more than perfect. And He does have it all planned out. And He is good ALL the time.

Our Journey begins about a year and half ago.

Steve (having made the first cut for the VE board - the Space career field Squadron Commander's selection) got the call from his boss that he had been selected for a command job at a space squadron (somewhere other than where we are now). The list was not officially out, but we trusted in the fact that this 2 star equiv was going on good authority to share this info. He was given this info from someone higher ranking than himself. Who knew that someone even "higher ranking" than that had other plans. On Friday before the release of the list on Tuesday, Steve's name was still on the list. On Monday afternoon, he was not. Several jobs and selections had been moved around, but Steve was the only one not on the list that was on there on Friday. Why? Squadron Command was all Steve wanted. Anything beyond that would have been gravy. And there was some other factors too that made this even harder to swallow, but let's just agree that we felt like we had been given the shaft. Try and we might, we tried to live out Jeremiah 29:11, but our praises to God for His perfect plan were probably hollow. Eventually we were able to let it go and move on. All this time, though, we knew his name had been placed in the Recruiting/Training Command hat. And in January of 2008 we got the OFFICIAL notification that he had been selected for the 331st TRS. No taking this back. We saw the announcement! We were headed to Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX. Never in a million years would we have thought we would be in San Antonio. Just never on the radar for us. Because Steve's dream of squadron command was coming true, we "gave God the praise" for fulfilling our plans. It seems so easy to praise God when good things are happening. Now fast forward to January 2009. It's 3 days into the new year. Grandma Gibson is on life support in a hospital in TN. We are mentally planning for that "unplanned" trip to TN in the very near future. So, Steve decides that he better get on the roof and take down the Christmas lights or they may be up until Valentine's Day. While coming down from the second floor roof to the first floor roof, the ladder slips. He falls. Upon initial physical inspection, he is sore, but can continue taking down the last few lights. He later "motrins up" and chalks it up to stupidity or something like it. A few days later, Grandma dies and we head to TN for the funeral. After we return from TN, Steve decides to go to the Dr. because his ribs just aren't getting any better. They x-ray him and find 2 broke ribs. And...something they can't identify. Let's do a CT scan. Now they see 3 broke ribs and "something they can't identify." Okay, let's repeat the scan in a few weeks to see if that "something" goes away. Three weeks later - it's still there. Time for a bronchoscopy and a needle biopsy. And that puts us in Dr. V's office at 11:15 yesterday morning. It is not the answer we had hoped for. But it is the journey God has placed us on. And it is completely the reason we are where we are. Had he not fallen off the roof, they would have NEVER found it - until it was too late. The Doc said that himself. And we are in an area where we are getting very expedited medical care - not because of a need for urgency, but because they know that is what we want. Had we been anywhere else, we might still be waiting to see a civilian pulmonologist and now we are scheduled to see a chest surgeon on Monday! God is good all the time. We are truly believe this. They are not hollow and empty praises.
A lot of my quiet time happens on the road on Thursday and Friday mornings when I am heading to the base for the Airman's Run and BMT Graduation. Well, yesterday when I was headed to graduation, I was having my usual dialogue with God. Okay - if you know me, I am doing most of the talking, but I am fleshing out things that confuse me and things that keep me from fully relying on God. I know He works through that for me. He has to. And when I talk to Him, I might have one of my "Out of the mouth of blondes" moments. Have you ever had someone plan a surprise for you? You know, one of those times, when you knew they were doing something for you, something wonderful, but you did not know the details? My most wonderful hubby has done that for me a number of times. And I always think that maybe I know just little better what would make his plan go smoothly for me. If only he would give me a few of the details so that I could "help" him do the best for me. That is what I do with God. I know He only has wonderful plans for me and my family, but if only He would open up a little about the details so that I could "help" Him get it right and make it go more smoothly. Is that funny or what?
There is so much more about His messages of hope for me, but I will save that for another post. And those have been pretty cool too. But it's late - or early depending on how you look at it.
For those of you who I am friends with on Facebook, I will not be post "details" too much on there. It's not that we are hiding anything. We just don't think that Facebook is the venue for disclosing all of that. Feel free to ask! Send me an e-mail! We will keep you up to date on everything. But if we could, we would like to keep phone calls to a minimum when the kids are home. They know what is going on, but we need to keep things normal for their sakes and always being on the phone rehashing out all that we are going through is not good for them.

Cue the "Indiana Jones" theme music - and so the journey continues!

Peace to all who read...