Outerbanks Excitment!

So, I found out this week that I will be able to make the treck with my family to the outerbanks this year. I cannot even begin to describe how flipping excited that makes me. Honestly I think its one of my favorite places, and that says a lot. I don't know, however, if it is the place, or if it is what God taught me there. Either way it holds fond memories. So I thought i would share some of my favorite pictures from the trip. Know that these are copyrighted by Jesselynn Photography.


Ok so imagine this...
You are innocently walking along the beach so you can view a beautiful sunrise. When you realize that along with the sun, these little creatures rise too. Now for anyone who knows me you know that I am petrified of crabs. Seriously they terrify me. I think the backstory of this may have to do with the fact that crabs were one method of torture from my brother when we were at the beach as children. So here Allison and I are walking innocently on the beach at 6:00 am. We are oohing and awwing over the magnificent light show, when we start to hear scuttling, digusting nasty little scuttling. So we look around and to our horror (please at this point reference the picture above) we see these little cretins, thousands of them and I so wish I was kidding! Our reaction: scream bloody murder and dance in one place. We finally gathered our wits and threw sand until we had this little boundary that the crabs wouldn't cross out of fear of being pummeled with tiny projectiles. Needless to say we made it out of there alive, but it was a close call. :) Now just imagine how you would react if a thousand little creatures with pinchers rushed you in a battle formation!

An introduction to Gary

So I guess, first I should explain who Gary is and where Gary came from. Well I have had internal digestive issues since pretty much my senior year in high school. The problem has progressively worsened over time. Well my freshman summer of college I traveled to Poland, while there I became really sick, it is at this time that Gary developed. While standing in Warsaw rubbing my belly, my friend Matt that I had met while there asked me if Gary was acting up. To which I responded po co? He said Gary, you know your gastric goblin. So it is at this point that Gary was born. Gary over the years has afforded me many awkward opportunities to laugh over, and in many ways has allowed me to fall back on God completely.

For many reasons I hesitate to write this blog today, the main reason being that I really don’t want to admit that I have a serious illness, and I need to start doing stuff about it. Gary was this cute little quirk about me that I knew nothing about. I was comfortable in the not knowing stage. In fact I had convinced myself that I was a hypochondriac, because let’s be honest anyone who has known me for more than a month knows I tend to be panicky. I am by very nature a very dramatic person, so creating drama I can handle, having uncontrollable drama happening to me…I’m not so good with. But alas I am jumping ahead of myself.

So here is my story of Gary’s diagnosis.

On May 20, 2009, I went in for a CT scan with a new Dr. named Dr. T. I sucked down a nice pint of barium (imagine chalk mixed into a paste that they lovingly have tried to flavor with berries to somehow make it better…), and walked in for my CT scan. Which by nature I love all things medical… really… so I was utterly fascinated. So after my 30 minute run of machinery, they had me change, and then they would release me. So I sat and waited and waited and waited… and then 45 minutes passed and I personally got to meet the radiologist on call, when he came out to tell me I was going straight to Dr T to then go to a surgeon to have my appendix removed. So I was sent on my way, amazingly enough I wasn’t at this point panicking. I made it to Dr. T who was slightly confused by my CT scan due to the abnormal size…of…well of everything down in the appendix region. So out of caution he sent me straight to my surgical consult. Well after a long phone conference with Dr T, the radiologist, and all three of my surgeons (by this point I had become a medical mystery so my surgeon multiplied). They finally said we don’t think its appendicitis, in fact if we took out your appendix we would have to take out your appendix, 6-7 inches of your small intestines and the right side of your colon, because everything in so inflamed it would collapse. I am very grateful to report I still have my guts in me, and very blessed that God blessed me with Doctors who know what they are doing. The surgeon then mentioned that he had seen cases like this that were Crohn’s patients. So Dr T agreed and I was scheduled for an emergency colonoscopy the next day. Well that was an experience in itself. I was scheduled for my procedure at 1:00 I don’t really remember anything after 12, and I woke up at 6:30pm (apparently according to my mother after throwing up in the kitchen trash can). I remember walking out in a stupor and asking, “so what happened?” It was at this point that I was told I have Crohn’s disease. Gary was now official, and officially a pain in my butt (no pun intended).

So what is Crohn’s? I honestly can’t tell you. I know it’s a chronic inflammation of the digestive system that may or may not be correlated to your immune system. I can tell you I have it in my colon and ileum (this is the last 8 inches of your small intestines that attaches to your colon). I can tell you that my small intestines are strictured, and closing. I guess I can name all these facts to you but overall I am confused on what this means. And it’s scary not knowing. It’s also scary knowing I have the same disease that killed my friend Pam Darnell. It’s ironic really I spent the majority of the last 3 years trying to kill myself only to have God convince me that living for him is so worth it and valuable to feel like, death actually is a possibility (really it’s a minute one at that but it’s the knowing someone that died that gives this a really weird feeling).

But as not ok as I am with this I do find security in the fact that God is bigger than all of this. I know that there will be good days, and bad days, and days where I am paralyzed in terror, and days where I cry all day, but I also know that none of this compares with God’s character. And through this I am being taught the very discipline of resting within Christ. We are not always called to go and do, and seek, but sometimes just to sit still and listen, and simply absorb his character, through our surrounding situations. We don’t need to do in order for God’s glory to be shown, sometimes we just need to be. Like in Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.”

Today my heart aches and is confused, and I am anxious about what tomorrow brings, so today I am determined to stand still and be enveloped simply by whom God is. Just like an oyster binds the pearl that is within it, I am placing all I am in the center of Christ’s character. This won’t make these fears disappear but they will seem significantly smaller compared to how vast my God is. And for today I am more than ok with that.

The Beauty of Melancholy

What is it about melancholy that draws us like the proverbial moth to the flame; for us to delight in a dance around it, hoping at worst that it will singe our wings? Tantalizing it with our plainness compared to its glory? Is it that only through its wild passion that we can hope to feel for our own? Oh to be captivated, to grasp the importance of the ugly to find and hold on to the beautiful. For in this world beauty is only promised to be faded. To die within time, so we morn its passing yet enchant within its final breath. For what value is something unless it is something that we risk to lose. Why must we prance upon the edge of life, to place our hand on the glass to which we cannot reach beyond? For we remember its within our own melancholy and mortality that we break through the limitations to pass on our melancholy to the next generation, like the torch to wield. It is my belief that it is within the depth of pain that we can glorify in the healing nature of Christ. That we appreciate the moment to experience another facet of the character of God. It is within the moments where my heart shatters that i climb into my Father's lap and cry into his chest, allowing my emotions to spill forth and seep into his grace and be absorbed by his love. To me this makes any depth of pain not only worth it, but a glory of its own.