Count Your Blessings

Sometimes in life we are presented with something difficult. We pray and we pray for that difficult thing to be taken away or changed. Maybe it’s a health problem or a work problem. In my case it’s chronic migraine. Chronic migraine is typically classified as 15 days or more a month where you have a migraine headache (which can last from 15 minutes to several days).

My migraine headache is constant, 24/7, 365 days a year. The only thing that changes is the intensity of the pain. Generally it hovers around 6 out of 10. On a really good day it goes down to a 5. A bad day will be a 7 or 8 and keep me in bed with lots of extra medication. Migraine headaches are in a class of their own. They aren’t like other headaches. They are debilitating, and these have kept me from working for the past three years. In fact, they have kept me from doing much of anything – my hobbies, household chores, family activities, church activities – just about everything.

I’ve had a lot of people praying for me that God would heal me from these migraines. The elders at church have gathered around me and prayed for me several times for healing. But God has chosen not to do so. Why? I don’t know. Is it because He can’t? No. I know without a doubt that if it were in His plan for me, He would do so. He has a purpose in allowing me to continue with these headaches. I just may not know the reason until I stand before Him in Heaven and have the opportunity to ask Him.

What I do believe at this point however, is that He has chosen to leave me with these migraines for the long term. I no longer feel the need or desire to pray for healing; prayer for grace and endurance, yes.

What I have discovered through living with this adversity, is that God brings blessings to us if we will take the time to stop and recognize that He has given them to us. We receive these blessings as a result of the adversity or we recognize them because of the adversity. Here’s a list of a partial list of my blessings:

     1.  My wonderful husband who works and then comes home and takes care of the household chores from cooking to laundry to outside chores to seeing to my needs. He never complains.

     2.   My son who drives me to my appointments now that I can no longer drive my car.

     3.   My daughter who pitches in and helps with cleaning the house and baking things that I can eat on my special diet.

     4.   The friends from church that have kept in contact with me despite my long absence from Sunday services.

     5.   My dogs who seem to sense when I am having a particularly bad day and cuddle a little closer to comfort me.

     6.   My iPad that I am able to read on better days, that helps me focus and keep my mind off my migraines.

     7.   My disability pension that has kept me from having to worry about finances and not working.

     8.   My Bible study group (even though I have missed every study in the past 2 years! except the social functions) that has continually kept me in their prayers.

     9   My daughter’s friend for coming and staying with me so my husband could go

away on trips the past two years without leaving me at home alone.

     10. My friend for having my two dogs and me stay with her when my husband went away on a trip recently.

     11. All the different medications that have been created that help to stop the intense pain of the migraine attacks when they come plus the medications that I take to help prevent the severe attacks.

     12. Days when I can go for a walk with my husband without intense head pain.

So, I ask you to share with me today one or two of the blessings God has given you whether you are experiencing a good time or a difficult time.