One More, and Some Updates

I had a seizure this morning at about 9 AM. After having a seizure last night, there was good reason to get to bed early, and I had less difficulty than usual getting to sleep. However, I woke up around 4:15 AM, and after about 2 and a half hours of trying to get back to sleep I gave up. I did some Bible reading, ten chapters of Luke, then read some of the Gospel Primer, and then got into conversations with my brothers, who had finally woke up. In the middle of a conversation which was being interrupted by Sam's giggles, an aura started, I got up and swiped a magnet, got back in bed, and woke up around half an hour later.

After about one seizure every two weeks during my first semester, and now three seizures after trying some adjustments of my medicines during the break, Mom, Dad, and I are thinking that I may have to forget about Spring '10 at LeTourneau University.

It will be sad to leave after the first semester, but I have faith that I will be able to return for Fall '10 and on. With around 8 months at home (with some community college classes), I have hope of finding another way to have my brain scanned and surgically therapized (I'm not sure if that's a word, but it is intuitive).

Thank you all for your prayers.

I was worried that my GPA was too low to keep a scholarship, but I found the grades online and was elated to find it higher than I had expected. Praise the Lord for inspiring grading on curves!

Two seizures

Tonight David had a pretty bad seizure. Last Tuesday night he had a really bad one. A few days before that, Dr. Maleeva had given him some samples of an extended release form of one of his meds so that he would just take it once a day rather than twice. Then if he forgot his morning dose it would only be one med, not both. When he had a seizure last Tuesday we immediately went back to the old form of the medicine hoping that he would be stable again. But tonight he had another seizure.

Please pray. We are learning that we can choose not to worry, and to try to trust God and rest in his plans instead. We think God will work out everything for David for the best. Imagining how he has gotten us through before this, and how he will get us through in the future, is better than imagining the bad stuff.

Thank you so much.

Two Finals Down, Three to go

Yesterday I did the final for Concepts of Lifetime Fitness (referred to by students as "Fatness"), and I am confident that I did well.

This morning, I took the final for General Chemistry Lab 1, and I am expecting about 82% on that test.

I also took the English Proficiency Test today, which decides whether I need to take a review class. I am expecting somewhere between 90 and 100% on that, but I do not know what score is needed to pass.

There are several things that must be done by midnight Friday, and some other things that must be done earlier.

Next week is the official finals week, with the finals for Intro to Psychology and English Comp 1 on Monday and the final for Calculus 3 on Tuesday.

Please pray that the end of the semester will go as well as the rest of it did.

God has blessed me abundantly so far, and I hope to finish this semester strong.

Thank you for your prayers, and please continue.

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.

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.

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!!!

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!

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