7th Floor, Room 334

I ended my last blog with this & will start this one the same: "I know that we walk by faith and not by sight, so when things do go wrong, because they will, we know that someone greater than the devil is walking with us, being our hands & feet." I have not updated anyone on here of the status of Clay's feet since then, but I can now.

His feet continued to heal and were no longer a concern to him. When I thought I had my share of testing via mentally & emotionally, I was unpleasantly wrong. The healing news was quickly followed by a phone call I received notifying me that Clay had been hospitalized, & nothing to do with his feet. (Again, Devil; your timing is impeccable). To keep this vague, he was hiking in the fields with his 150-lb pack on (not sure the temperature it was outside, but I remember that week was in the mid 90's) & he heat cased. His body temperature reached 107.4 degrees, causing him to black out. He was taken to the hospital where they also told him he was experiencing rhabdomyolysis. This is when the muscles are damaged & release myoglobin into the bloodstream, potentially causing severe damage to the kidneys. This diagnosis results in excessive muscle activity, clearly being the cause.

I was not in the same state when I received the call on May 9th, so I was unable to meet him right away. The next morning, I was able to drive to where he was & stayed with him until he was discharged. While in the hospital, he was hooked up to IV bags that pumped fluid into his body, aiming to bring his blood levels back down to a safe range. The hydration helped to flush the myoglobin out of the kidneys to restore their function. This took 4 days.

Side note: Our 11th month anniversary was spent together! Cheapest "hotel" we'll ever stay in. The low hospital nightly rate did make up for the separate beds & chilly hospital vibe it brought us though. LOL. This really was a special little treat though (clearly despite of the circumstance) that we got to have, knowing we will be apart for our one-year anniversary coming up on June 10th.

So, backtracking to his foot situation, when Clay & I chose to walk straight through the devil's thick cloud of smoke with our armor of God on (from my last blog) to the other side where we didn't know, here was that other unknown side. Sure, we thought it was going to be something better than what we were going through, but God never promised that. He promised that faith will produce endurance. Good thing that spiritual armor was already on, because we didn't even have the time or energy (literally for Clay) to take it off. LOL. So did we have faith in this situation? Yes. However, it may have been truly as small as a mustard seed. But that's ok because in Luke 17:6, God says that's all we need. And in this moment, that's all we had.

We had to rely on others (family & friends) mountain-sized faith to help us see this one through. Yes, sometimes someone looking from the outside-in can draw on more faith & intercede harder than Clay or I could in the moment; there's nothing wrong or shameful about that to me. When I can't (fully), someone else can. Those 4 days may have felt the length of a football field in days, but yet again, here we are on the other side, healthy & victorious, and all praise and thanks goes to the Holy One.

I read this somewhere: "God is saying to you today, the challenges you face are about to come to an end. You will get a rush of blessings that will clear the way for you." I do not agree with this. Why? Because challenges will never come to an end in this world. I can testify to that 10 times over right now. Sure, the current challenge can come to an end, but it very well may be followed with a more difficult one. God does not give us a window of life that is solely full of challenges, followed by a window of life that is solely full of blessings. They are intermixed from my personal experience and knowing that hardships will never cease is the reality of this life (If one does not agree with this, or sees this in a different way, that is the beauty of subjectivity).

Who knows, God may be preparing Clay & I for something even bigger than the challenges we have faced thus far. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, we as followers of Christ know that even when certain days in our life really brings us down, they don't seem as bad because every living day is a blessing, regardless of what it brings. If we don't have God to see life through with us, we have nothing. Yes, it still is extremely hard, maybe sometimes seeming physically, mentally, & emotionally unbearable, but the presence of the Holy One will ease that, always. This we know.

Again, I know that we walk by faith and not by sight, so when things do go wrong, because they will, we know that someone greater than the devil is walking with us, being our hands, feet, and even kidneys.