Your Story Matters

This year's transition from winter to spring has been a bit of a doozie for us. Despite the days of gorgeous weather and sunshine, it kind of feels like we're in an eternal winter. It's been really hard; much harder than we expected. Which I think is the real kicker here. Joe's latest surgery was supposed to be easy. Easy surgery; easy recovery. Well, it has been anything but. What was supposed to be an in-and-out, two-hour surgery turned into 4+ hours followed by almost 3 painful hours in the recovery room. Physically painful for Joe as he came out of anesthesia, and emotionally painful for his parents and I as we waited for hours with no news. And what was supposed to be a three week recovery time before Joe was back up on his prosthetic leg turned into five weeks on crutches. We still have about a week and a half to go before he begins walking again, and while we know it's for the best and that his body needs this time to heal and recover, emotionally, it is so much harder than that. I was ready for quick and easy, and to keep moving forward with our lives, but that just wasn't in our plan.

Yesterday, I was on Instagram and saw a post from this wonderfully inspirational boss lady I follow, Ashlee Proffitt, and her image (in the most gorgeous set of fonts) said this:

Your story matters friend. You matter. And what you are facing right now is not an accident. Your Father in heaven is not surprised and in fact He is in control. And He loves you. And He knows. He knows. He is working in you something beautiful, something amazing, and though it may look like ashes right now, trust me...He is the Creator, whose specialty is making beauty from darkness.

After a really hard day yesterday, and I mean probably the hardest day we've had during the entire amputation process, that was exactly what I needed. And I just started crying.

A majority of the time, I don't include God within my blog posts or social media. It's a personal decision I made a long time ago to not mix my business and spirituality for a lot of reasons. The biggest one being that I struggle with my faith and I have a hard time sharing that struggle with others because it's a very personal journey. But right now, it felt like the time to break this little 'rule.'

With each obstacle and heart break, I've been looking for ways to pray and reach out to God more and more. As I have less and less answers for all of these seemingly impossible obstacles that have been happening in our lives, for all the pain and struggle we've been facing, the more I look to God for help. The more I pray and hope for a light in this pit of darkness we seem to find ourselves in right now. And seeing those three little words became more of a light to me than I can even begin to describe.

Your story matters.

All of these obstacles we are fighting. The reason our story went viral. The darkness of these ashes that envelopes us right now. This just happens to be where we are in this journey. It's a small, rough patch of our story that we have to get through to truly appreciate when things are good. To appreciate that God knows what he's doing and he only brings us to these obstacles because he knows we can get through them.

And you can too. Whatever obstacles you are facing, keep fighting and keep moving forward. And know that I am praying for you. Because your story matters.

From here, I will only ask of one thing from my readers: please pray for us. It is really hard, and we are doing the best we can, but I also know that prayer is so powerful. I know we can and we will get through this. I will keep praying and keep fighting until we can stand strong and know that we have reached that light and that God has brought us to exactly where we are meant to be. But until then, pray that we continue to make our story matter.