Seeing the Angels

This is what I am learning this year:

Things work out the way they are meant to.

I wrote earlier this year about a moment of clarity and inspiration when I realized, through the power of personal revelation, that in some strange way my struggle with fibromyalgia is a blessing: it keeps me aware of my body, keeps me taking better care of my body than I would otherwise. This month, there have been more such moments.

Since days after my last discharge, I've known that I had an infection growing. The shortness of breath, the pain, the coughing, the fatigue, the fevers: all the signs were there. Still, if it had not been for the sudden and debilitating chest pain that brought me down here to the ER, I probably would have tried to delay an admission until at least mid-January. If in three months my lung function had already gone down eleven percent, who knows how far it would have dipped if I'd left it for almost as long again before going into the hospital.

The first day here, I had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic they put me on—even after the four-hour-long process of desensitization had been finished. For the third time, I've spent this hospitalization covered with huge hives. The usual protocol is to use benadryl as-needed; however, very quickly this time I realized that once I was on the benadryl, my lungs were getting so dry that I couldn't clear them out. After talking to the doctor she switched the benadryl for prednisone. Prednisone is standard treatment for ABPA, the fungal infection I've been fighting all year, but the doctor had thus far refused to prescribe prednisone for me because of its immunosuppressive effects. Well: now I've spent nearly two weeks on it, and not only are the hives fading fast, but I can tell it is helping the ABPA. I will be on prednisone for at least another week, and potentially several weeks longer.

Things work out the way they are meant to.

Over and over again this month, when I have been inwardly raging about the pain or the unexpected admission or the infuriating allergic reaction, I have felt the same quiet answer: Calm down. Your prayers are being answered.

For more than a year now I have been praying for a long life (as in, longer than 38), for the chance to have children, to see them grow up, to have decades to spend beside my wonderful husband.

And all year, the Lord has quietly pointed out to me every now and again that He is, in fact, working to answer those prayers. And that, sometimes, it takes an unpleasant situation to ensure that the end result will be good.

I just have to remember:

Things work out the way they are meant to.