PR4913

Another round of prayer requests. I'll try and update these every week or so. Adding updates from the previous list as I know more and/or see answers to questions, or new questions arise. Thanks for being my prayer partners in all of this, and by all means please share these around. If I post it here it is public information, no need to ask or be shy about anything on this list.

(Quick ground rule, and I don't know that any of you have done it personally, but it has happened. Do not ask people close to me for "additional information". This (blog) is your first hand information, and I will be honest with you. Do not ask parents, sibling, in-laws, or MY DOCTOR (seriously) for more information. It's here if you need it, and I am MORE than happy to discuss things with you personally I have multiple email addresses, skype, text, etc etc. (http://www.802heaven.com/p/meetme.html) all so you can talk to me. Really, you don't need to know me, if you want to talk about something you, or I, have gone through strike up a conversation. (ben dot morrell at gmail dot com is probably the best and fastest way to do this.) If you talk with those people ask how THEY are doing with all this, but all the information you will need about me will be here. Thank you for honoring that. As I said, not a big problem... but it has happened and I wanted to see if I couldn't deal with it before it potentially spread into a bigger problem.)

Prayer Requests:

• Medications: The list I am on gets bigger, but the hope in adding some was to take away from others. (Pain killer) Side effects have lessened to some degree, thank you for praying for those. I am dealing with some older side effects in other cases, so out with the new and back with the old. Hopefully something I can deal with better because I know about it?
• Hospice: While there are still lots and lots of things I am learning and getting settled into with this Hospice thing (is that something I will ever get used to?) I am learning where the lines are and who to call when and for what. Please continue to pray that I will be able to utilize this team of people as effectively as possible and that they would work well within their resources to find solutions to potential problems. (Medical, emotional, social.) I'm very thankful though that they have been provided. I wish in a lot of ways that MDA had been run like this. They aren't hospice, but they could be run like Hospice to save a LOT of time and money. Both for the patient and for the hospital. (MDA would be a much, much more amazing place if it was run like Hospice.)
  Part of Hospice as well is being honest with the patient. This morning the nurse was being frank with me, and it was hard. The scientific folks, those with records to my charts and what not, don't seem to have a lot of hope left for me (See hope below) for much of anything. It's hard because they want to be "honest" and not sugar coat anything ("You're doing fine! Go outside and run around like you're six!") when something like that might kill me. It's hard. I'm not sure where the line needs to be.
• Sleep/ dreams: Every time I mention this I am amazed. I am very much starting to realize the unconscious mind/ sleeping mind is more susceptible to things spiritual than the awake mind might be lead to believe. When I forget to ask you all for help with protection against bad, scary, horrific, lingering, or harmful dreams, I do not get bad dreams. Period. I can see that as nothing BUT an answer to prayer. Please continue to pray that I will be protected at night as I sleep. My dreams and the things that run through my head are so much safer when I am being prayed for, which leads to much better sleep, which leads to being more awake during the day, which leads to having better days. Thank you for everyone who prays for this. It is bigger than you might acknowledge.
• Hope: I continue to hope greatly... extravagantly in fact. I know where God is going to take me in all this so I have hope that it'll be different from anywhere or anyway perhaps "science" might be able to explain. (And as so much of our society is built on what "science" says, I am hoping that WE all might learn something bigger about God through this whole process. My hope remains in Christ, which leads me to a different place than if I was just staring down death on my own.
• My shortness of breath: I continue to loose ground on the blood oxygen level. This morning, while I felt like I was doing well (forcing myself to move like a turtle) my oxygen level staid in the mid to upper 80's. This was when my nurse informed me that it would probably continue to decrease from here on out. My heart is also working extra hard to compensate for that as well.
• Friends: I still want to see as many of you as I can... and I don't know what that means for the time I have (God really only knows) but if you'd like to see or chat with me it's something that I would encourage you to do sooner rather than waiting for a few months. The best place to schedule is through my site (the "Meet with Me" tab) here.
• Huge praise: Our apartment has waived the lease agreement that we would have to terminate in order to get out of paying every month until the lease was up in November. They didn't have to do this. It would have been a "free" and clear large sum of money for them. But they did. And the manager called and told me herself that if there was anything we needed to help make this transition smoother that we would call and let her know. In many ways I am very sad to leave them. They were a great team and frankly it was a group of strangers making us feel like family in a place where their goal was to make money. In another regard the way we behaved and acted towards them probably had something to do with this as well. So again it never hurts to remember that you never know who might be watching you. God used that to bless us, again.

Thanks again to everyone who has gone out of their way to help us. From food, to meeting, to donating to help with costs of moving. Over fifty of you have donated directly to the moving fund, and over thirty have donated to my medical fund. All these costs of being sick and while there is a bit of overlap that is close to eighty of you reaching into your own pockets to help Lisa and I get from where we are now to where God wants us to be. That very much makes you a part of our story. I am working hard on blogging (as you can see) but I am also working on putting together these blogs in a book, which I hope to be able to get out to all of you (digitally) in one form or another sooner rather than later. I have a long way to go, but it is something I really want to finish, and as you are all part of that story I feel like it is OUR story. So it'll be dedicated to all of you, for your prayers and your support. It has gotten me this far, and I thank God so much for all of you being a part of it.

Thank you.

~B.
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