From Homecoming King, To Homeschooling Dad - Part 5: The Five Year Plan

The previous four blog posts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4) described my journey to salvation from my sins and the process of the Holy Spirit working in my life to make me acceptable before God. From 2002 to present, God was (and still is) preparing my heart and life to provide for a family with children. He blessed me with a beautiful wife (on the inside and outside) that has always stood with me in the good and bad moments of life. When we got married in 2003, we decided to wait at least five years to have children. Why five years?

From Homecoming King, To Homeschooling Dad - Part 4: Growing in Grace and Knowledge

In Part 3 of this series, I briefly talked about the New Life I received in Jesus Christ. Most importantly, through God's Word He showed me that in order to be a Christian, I must not sin (see John 5:14 and John 8:11). This can be accomplished by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which comes after justification or repentance of sins. During this series I plan to talk about how after receiving the New Life that only Jesus Christ can provide, I began to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18) which takes place through a process called sanctification.

From Homecoming King, To Homeschooling Dad - Part 3: New Life

Have you ever wished at least once in your life that you could start over? Have you ever looked back on things from the past and desired to do things differently? Have you even wished you were born as somebody else? I can say with certainty that I was tempted with these thoughts in my early teen years. Thankfully though, I did not allow these thoughts to captivate me or control me. I was able to push forward and live out my life (as I shared some of those experiences in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series). And thankfully, although it was long overdue, I started a new life with the slate wiped clean.

From Homecoming King, To Homeschooling Dad - Part 2: Dethroned

In Part 1 of "From Homecoming King, To Homeschooling Dad", I wrote about some of my experiences during my senior year of high school with a specific emphasis on being crowned Homecoming King. I encourage you to read it here. For this post however, I will be talking some about my college years and how they ended in a way I was not expecting.

The "Homecoming King" (a.k.a. me) was preparing for college. Even though I applied to multiple colleges, I only had one on my mind to attend and that was Longwood College (now Longwood University) located in Farmville, Virginia. Colleen who was my girlfriend at that time (but is now my wife), had already been accepted into Longwood and was already attending a year ahead of me, so I had no intention of going anywhere else for college. Thankfully though, Longwood accepted me and I knew exactly what I wanted to be: a Biology/Earth Science teacher.

From Homecoming King, To Homeschooling Dad - Part 1: Crowned

Some may not remember, some may not know, and honestly some may want to forget, but back in the Fall of 1998 (my Senior year in high school) I was crowned Homecoming King! Yeah, you heard that right. It really was an amazing moment in my life. From my freshman to senior year, I had actually been nominated and voted by my peers to be on the homecoming court each year in high school along with other classmates. However, senior year, there could only be one King and one Queen, so one can imagine how excited I was.

Godliness With Contentment Is Great Gain

Around Thanksgiving 2010, our daughter Eden was diagnosed with a seizure disorder when she was 9 months old. When she was first diagnosed with her seizure disorder, Eden would have 60 to 70 seizures per day and the neurologists assigned to Eden's case worked diligently to stop them. We spent the next two and half months trying to stop the seizures with no success. Finally, the doctors suggested a medicine that has shown to help the type of seizures Eden has, however there was a risk of Eden losing her eye sight if she took the medicine. This was the first real big decision we had to make with Eden at this point. We were faced with stopping seizures at the stake of losing her eye sight.

On the other hand, if we continued without the new medicine her eye sight would not be affected however she would continue to have seizures which can cause so many forms of developmental delay. Thirdly, the medicine may not actually work and she could still lose eye sight. Through much prayer, we decided to go with the new medication. The new medication ended up taking affect immediately. The next day she had no noticeable (what they call "clinical") seizures. That was a Saturday. The next day (Sunday), Eden had one clinical seizure. Her neurologist increased the dosage slightly and believe it or not, since that time, her dosage has remained the same (despite her growth) and she has continued to maintain with no clinical seizures (a miracle and anointing by God since this is not normal for a low dosage to remain effective).

Since she was diagnosed with this condition, we have spent many days and hours traveling to Fairfax, VA and Washington D.C. for her medical care. Since Eden is still at risk of losing eye sight, she has to be evaluated every three months by an Ophthalmologist. Eden also has to undergo many other procedures to include Electroencephalography (EEG). The obvious reason for the EEG is to determine how well the medication is controlling her seizures. You see, even though Eden has not displayed any seizures clinically (visible to our eye), Eden's brain has still been manifesting sub-clinical seizures which means Eden has been having a limited number of seizures internally without any noticeable change externally. Even with this, we accepted with contentment that this would be Eden's "normal" and would trust in God that He would protect her.

Eden has been the best patient a doctor or nurse could ask for through the years. Even though there have been moments where she has said to me (Michael), "Daddy, I don't want to go to the doctor", she has still dealt with the "poking and prodding" with patience, kindness, love, and contentment. We have diligently tried to teach all of our children contentment and Godliness, not matter what the circumstances. In Philippians 4:11 Paul said "Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am,  therewith to be content." Paul also told Timothy in I Timothy 6:6, "But godliness with contentment is great gain." Being content in situations such as what Eden has gone through and is continuing to go through is not easy. However if God's Word says for us to be content, we must strive to do this in order to please Him and ultimately to obtain God's peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7) which in itself is great gain!

After 4+ years of relying on God's goodness and mercy and seeking Him to be content in all things, God has provided a huge blessing for us and Eden. On February 12, 2015, I (Michael) took Eden to Washington D.C. for an overnight Video EEG. Thankfully, my mom could go with me to help while Colleen stayed home to care for Noah, JoyAnna, and Harvest. The last two Video EEGs showed several sub-clinical seizures in Eden's brain. This year however something changed! Eden's neurologist informed us the next morning that there were no seizures (clinical or sub-clinical) detected. Although there was still abnormal activity in the parts of her brain where the seizures previously have manifested themselves, the abnormal activity did not endure long enough to be classified as a seizure. Hearing this news was overwhelming! As I type this now, my eyes fill with tears of joy and thankfulness to God for His providence! As I think back on the years with Eden's medical condition, Paul's words ring true, "...godliness with contentment is great gain!" We could choose to be bitter and angry that God has allowed this to happen to Eden. However, God has richly blessed us and Eden and no matter what happens down the road, we will always seek godliness and contentment. 

Below are some pictures of Eden while in the hospital in Washington D.C. The hospital offers all kinds of entertainment for the children when they are there, however I informed Eden ahead of time that since there is a lot of sickness around, we would not be going to the toy room or having the toys come to our room. Therefore, Colleen packed a bag of toys for Eden to play with. Even though hospital staff would have given her anything she wanted, she was content with the situation. We did splurge a little bit though when one of the nurses offered to provide her with "doctor" stuff (e.g., gloves, tape, bandages, lotion, Q-tips, etc.) so she could play "doctor" with her Gee Gee (Michael's mom).

Praise God!

Going Through the Fire - Claiming the Victory

Being a parent is truly a blessing. The fact that God created a life just for us to love and nurture and to train to honor and obey Him is one of the greatest callings on this earth. Parenting has many joys associated with it. All the "firsts", playing, laughter, snuggling, activities, relationships, the interesting conversations, all the questions and curiosity, exploring, and so many more. God truly knew exactly what he was doing when he designed the family. Children are a heritage of the Lord and we as parents have the great responsibility to shape and mold them to be arrows for the LORD!

We all must admit though, training our children up in the way they should go is hard. Yes we have our good days where life may seem perfect, our children seem perfect, and we really couldn't ask for more. This is certainly a good attitude of thankfulness to have, however what about those days where we just want to crawl under a rock and hide?