Hopeful Hearts Ministry

I’m upset with myself for forgetting to blog about this one special moment that happened yesterday morning.  This is something I want to keep for me and the fact I forgot to write it down told me that I’m all in the wrong about tomorrow.  I’ve already had a few of you let me know you are praying for me and I’m grateful!!  Like all things I need to go into this as God calls us to do with every situation and with every person, with love.

Every summer we manage to make it to the beach for a week.  Typically we are in Galveston, but regardless we are ‘at the beach’.  The first thing the boys do when we get to the beach is pick up boogie boards and hit the waves.  Neal loves to do this with them and teach them just the ‘right’ moment to get ready and go so the wave picks them up and takes them into shore.  We were on the beach first thing yesterday morning and the boys were in the water with their boards within minutes of hitting the sand.  Neal instinctively went to follow them and have some fun but the minute his foot touched the water he grimaced and came back to me.  “That feels like knives,” he said.

I don’t mean for this blog to turn into a ‘living with MS’ journal, but it is my life and so you’ll have to just bear with me.  One of Neal’s permanent losses from the disease is that he has gone ‘numb’ from his chest down on his right side.  He can still walk and use his arm and leg but he said it feels like when you are getting work done at the dentist and they numb a side of your face and it’s just coming out of being completely numb.  You have that tingly feeling and you still can’t feel it when you touch your skin.  The only time he can feel anything is if cold water touches him then it’s like thousands of knives stabbing him.  When I sprayed him with the suntan lotion he winced and gritted his teeth because it was ‘too cold’!!

Okay, so he came back to the shore and sat down next to me.  I could see he was disappointed he couldn’t be out in the water.  This is the first summer he hasn’t gone in the water…which tells me that it must feel worse than it did last year, because I don’t recall him making it an issue last summer, or maybe it’s because the water here is that much colder than in Galveston!   So he’s watching them try and try again to ‘catch the wave’ in and they are missing their moment.  He gets up and tries to yell over to them when to go but they can’t hear what he’s saying.  He comes and sits next to me again and after a few moments he says we need music so he walks back to the house to get a radio.  That’s when I decided to get in the water and help the boys out.

I held my breath and let it out in little spurts as the waves covered me like a blanket of ice.  It was freezing!  No wonder it was painful for Neal!  I could barely stand it!  Thankfully, after a few minutes you do get used to it and it was bearable.  So I tried to help the boys out…they don’t listen as well to me as they do Neal.  And, well, I’m not as coordinated as Neal. 🙂  At some point they gave up on me and went about it themselves, claiming independence.  So I went back to the shore just as Neal was done setting up the radio.  “I’m not sure they get it, but they’ll figure it out themselves,” I said.

He watched them for another bit and then before I knew it he was headed to the water.  Just like that I could see him square his shoulders as if waiting for a blow to the stomach and he ran into the water!  Imagine this, it was like watching Neal go into battle and being stabbed hundreds of times just so he could spend a ‘normal’ day at the beach with his boys.  I sat down in awe, unable to contain my emotion.  He is so much more selfless than me, I thought.  He came back about fifteen minutes later, having instructed the boys and watched them catch a few good ones, feeling confident they now knew their way.  I asked him if he was ‘okay’ and he just sat down and didn’t respond.  You could see the effort it took written all over his face but he didn’t complain.

It’s moments like this that I remember when we are having a falling out.  😉  It puts it all in perspective.

As for today, it was raining the morning but we weren’t going to let that deter us from going to Blue Water State Park.  We tubed down the spring and snorkeled but didn’t get to see much but some garp.  It was fun, regardless of the constant drizzle.  We were getting wet anyway!  But as we made it back home the rain stopped and it was perfect beach weather – overcast so the sun wasn’t beating down on top of us.