Friday, November 27, 2009

Record, but it Came

Twenty-seven days with no seizures is a record for my time at LeTourneau.
However, the clock has been reset, as tonight, at 6:35 PM CST, I had a seizure.
It was very uncomfortable, especially since I did not have a magnet available at the time.
I also have some cleanup to do.

To change the key, it has been a nice Thanksgiving break, and I have enjoyed getting much done, especially a good part of a speech for English Composition 1.

Thank you for your prayers.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Fun and Anger

Dad told me yesterday afternoon about climategate, the discovery of over a thousand emails between workers and data files at the Climate Research Unit, which were held from the public eye against the law of the Freedom of Information Act.

I looked into it, and it was amazing. Here are some links that I found:
Fox News gives the introduction here.
Two ideas for how the info was made public, as well as a theory of how it was possible to make it public,
here.
A real climatologist talks about what this means
here.
A summary of some of the files is given
here (don't be scared when you see how far you can scroll down; nearly all of it is comments by readers).
For a page with a link to a site with a searchable database of all the publicized files, click
here.
For a page that sums up most of the important stuff, click
here.
Some more links:
Washington Times article; Senator Inhofe will call for investigation; CEI will sue NASA for breaking Freedom of Information Act laws; Climate Research Unit fumbles for excuse; Lord Monckton shows all that is wrong
If these links and the links within them are not enough, google "climategate", and see more.

There is anger that the world has been robbed of so many trillions of dollars by these liars, but there is also joy in seeing them come to light.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Nice Times

I've gone three weeks now with no seizures, which might be a record when the domain is limited to my time at LeTourneau.
God continues to bless me.
I've been somewhat lazy this weekend, but I got one thing done ahead of time, and this coming week will end on Wednesday, and hopefully I will be able to rip ahead.
Thank you for your prayers. I am having a good time.

PS. But I am looking forward eagerly to Christmas Break! A month at home!!!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Wondrous Blessings

Two and a half weeks ago, I had a wonderful experience. Before writing a post about it, I decided to write about the seizure I had had two days before. I never got around to finishing the post I started writing, until now.

On the evening of Saturday, October 30, I prayed and asked God to reveal to me what had been making me feel unsatisfied with my spiritual life for the past year plus. I had been feeling like something is wrong, missing, incorrect, but I had not been able to identify it or completely cope with it. It had been bothering my mind, and I was not sure why.

The next morning, at Crossroads Community Church, the sermon was a bit different than usual. It was not so much of a topical lecture, as I would classify most sermons at most churches, but it was instead very interactive. Pastor Bud Miller gave an introduction of showing how God shows Himself to so many people in the Bible - Adam and Eve, Moses, Balaam, Isaiah, the disciples, Paul, just to take a few from the list. He drew from that that we should have interaction with God. After he was done talking, everyone was invited to come up and pray, alone or with others. I went up front and told him that I was sure that my prayer the night before had been answered. He then prayed with me, thanking God for what He had done, and asking Him to come and make Himself present in me. For the rest of the service, I had the Holy Spirit in me, and it moved my emotions so that I had tears flowing the whole time. I had none of the usual difficulty concentrating on what was being prayed, said, or sung, but was worshiping God with my whole heart.

Ever since that experience, I have been feeling a lot better about my walk with the Lord.

Another answer to the prayer came in an unexpected form. The Saturday I prayed for revelation, or the day before, I had been thinking about theological things - what was truly meant by "blaspheming the Holy Spirit." I went off on the wrong turn, and imagined an example of blaspheming the Father. Ever since then, I have had little rest from that example entering my mind. The thought crossed my mind after a few days that it might serve some purpose, but I did not want to try and put such a bad thing to good use; I just wanted to get rid of it. As it came near two weeks with that thought crossing my mind at least a dozen times a day, I decided to try more than just changing the subject when it came to my mind. One evening, I saw the bath towel hanging on my door, which I have often forgotten when going to the shower, and I decided to attach "I need to take the towel to the shower" to the feeling that came before the terrible thought. That worked nearly every time the next day, and I was relieved. It didn't continue to work, though, and I decided to think about the need for prayer every time the thought came, and thus make it serve a good purpose.

Thus, something bad was turned into something good that I have needed for a long time.

By the way, I have had no seizures since my last post, and very few auras.
Thank you all for your prayers, and please email me with any prayer requests you have.
If you don't have my address, perhaps send it to my parents and ask them to forward it to me.

God is good!

//
Apparently Blogger remembered and labeled this by the date I started it, rather than the day I published it

One More Seizure

Last night, I was eating dinner at DoubleDave's Pizzaworks, (the best pizza restaurant on the planet), with my floor chaplain Joe Bailey and his parents. We were enjoying a small veggie pizza and a large The Works pizza (you can probably guess who ate which), and I was telling Mr. and Mrs. Bailey about my epilepsy story.

I had gotten to the part of the trauma in the hospital, and then I decided to eat one slice beyond being full. I'm not sure whether having an overloaded stomach had anything to to with it, but when I was about 2/3 of the way through the slice, a harsh aura started.

I told them that a seizure was starting, and as I got out the magnet they started praying. Like the last few, I was semi-conscious the whole time, and when it ended I was not able to speak. Nothing worse happened, and I had full motor control. We went back to their car and drove back to campus. En route I tried a few times to continue the story, but I was not able to connect the thoughts and words.

When I got back spent some time relaxing in the floor lounge, watching The Two Towers on the new projector with others. After a while I left the lounge, and found that Mr. and Mrs. Bailey were still there, and since my speech had fully returned I told them the rest of the story.

Afterwards I called Mom on Skype, and told her what had happened. It was interesting that this was the first seizure since surgery that has not started while looking at a computer/TV screen.

Please keep praying. God is blessing me, as I will expound upon in the next post.