David is a full time permanent employee again! You may recall that his company in New Jersey had him on a trial period as a remote employee. The trial period is over. He will continue working for them from home in Texas! We are so thankful for God’s Providence.

Above is a photograph a friend of ours took to express our emotions right now. We got to move back to Texas. We didn’t have to go on COBRA. David got the job. His Psoriatic Arthritis is in remission. We are so blessed! But we know that even if things get bad again, even if David goes back to having flares that leave him bedridden, God is in control.

So, please check out our friends photography at Still Light Media!

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God blessed us by sending us back to Texas. God performed a minor miracle by making David a remote employee for his company in New Jersey on a trial basis.

I am so thankful for those things, but those were things we prayed for. We asked for those things to happen. Something else incredible has happened. Something I hadn’t even thought to ask God for.

The company David works for is keeping us on their health insurance plan during the 90 day trial period. We will not have to pay for COBRA.

It’s awesome. I am literally overwhelmed by God’s providence in this situation. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve seen me talk about the nightmare issues we had with COBRA. God has spared me from so much emotional stress and anxiety, not to mention the huge expense of paying for COBRA.

I am blessed.

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I have a lot to be thankful for this week.

David’s six month contract with his company here in New Jersey ended Friday, and they told him he will start as a permanent employee on Monday. Although I’d love to be going back to Texas, I am very grateful God has provided David with this employment.

We also received word from Abbott Patient Financial Assistance that David has been approved for another year of free Humira due to our extraordinary medical expenses. I assumed we would be approved again this year, but it was still a huge relief to get the phone call. You may recall that when Humira was first prescribed, we found out that many health insurance companies (including ours) don’t cover or only slightly discount TNF inhibitors. We cannot afford to purchase it for $1,500 a month.

Unfortunately, the New Jersey rheumatologist wrote the script for a 90 day supply instead of a 12 month supply, and he got the injection frequency wrong. As if we weren’t looking for a new rheumatologist anyway.

Today, David was able to go to a men’s prayer breakfast at church, and then he went for an acupuncture treatment. It must have been a really good treatment, because a few minutes ago, he picked me and spun me around while I screamed, “Stop! You’ll hurt your back! I want to go to church tomorrow!” He seems to be having a really good day.

Praise God for his providence.

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After Maegan’s incredible guest post, I thought I’d explain why I’ve been talking about eating vegetables.

I do not like New Jersey. It is not a nice place. But New Jersey has been good for us as a couple. Being thousands of miles from every single person we know has forced us to rely on each other. Literally, months went by before I met anyone other than the apartment complex manager and our leasing agent.

Getting the kennel for Henry has helped a lot, but I still feel like I don’t have any friends. Does the pastor’s family at our church here count, or are they obligated to be nice to everyone? If it wasn’t for Skype, I think I would have lost my mind. And I’m so thankful that all our family is on AT&T so we get free mobile to mobile minutes.

New Jersey has also been good for me as a writer. The forced isolation and complete lack of activity has given me a chance to start writing a book. I’m 20,000 words in. We’ll see if I can get it published when it’s finished, but I never would have gotten this far living in Dallas.

So, as much as I hate, loathe, despise and abominate New Jersey, I know God has us here for a reason. New Jersey is like vegetables. It doesn’t taste very good, but it makes us healthier.

It’s ironic that I’m comparing anything negative to vegetables. I’m the girl that loves broccoli. Maybe I should say New Jersey is like kale.

Head on over to In Through the Out Door to read my guest post!

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Fourteen Reasons Why My Husband is the Best

1. He doesn’t mind watching chick flicks with me, and he even likes watching “The Notebook”.

2. He asks if there’s anything he needs to pick up on his way home from work.

3. He is ALWAYS willing to order takeout if I’ve had a bad day. Actually, he’d eat out every meal if I let him, but it is so nice knowing he’s just as happy with pizza as he is with a gourmet meal.

4. He knows how to do so much around the house. With his arthritis, there are a lot of big projects he can no longer do, but when I can’t get my garage door to go down, one phone call to David and he’s got it figured out. It’s always amazing to me how he knows how to shut off the water and replace brake lights.

5. He takes care of me when I’m sick. I used to get food poisoning all the time. (Seriously, don’t eat anything in an office kitchen. People are so nasty.) David would take off work so he could bring me Sprite and crackers.

6. He likes me better without makeup.

7. He prefers me to wear my hair in a ponytail.

8. He saw “Twilight” and “New Moon” with me. And he went out in the middle of the night to buy “Twilight” on Blu-Ray because I thought the stores would sell out quickly. They didn’t.

9. He’s so stinkin’ tall.

10. He has brown hair and a red beard.

11. Right after high school, he wanted to grow a beard. I whined and griped about how much I hated it. After a few weeks, he trimmed it to a goatee, and I love it. Now he wants to get rid of it, but I beg him not to.

12. He makes me laugh.

13. His sense of humor. He brought the best gag gift to our extended family’s gag gift exchange this year. He screwed a CPU fan into a pair of underwear. Briefs with a built in fart fan.

14. Free programming for my blog!

That’s the giant inflatable gorilla David put in front of my house on Valentine’s Day in 2003.

I love being married. Marriage is a blessing from God. However, not everyone is married, and there are some advantages to being single.

Fourteen Reasons Why It’s Great to be a Single Woman

1. You don’t have to watch Future Weapons unless you want to.

2. You don’t have to go to Circuit City or Fry’s for hours just to look around.

3. No one will steal your Diet Coke!

4. You won’t argue over Chinese or Italian for dinner.

5. You have more time to devote to missions, charity and church.

6. You don’t have to buy anyone anything for Valentine’s Day.

7. You don’t have to figure out what to buy the guy who has everything for Christmas or his birthday. (Are you sensing I have a problem with gifts for my husband?)

8. You can get a cat or a dog and give it the girlyest name ever.

9. You only have one schedule to check when you get invited to girls night or a book club.

10. No cooking or cleaning up after guys’ night.

11. Have you smelled a hairy man after he smokes a cigar?

12. The toilet seat is always down.

13. You don’t have to teach someone why wet towels do not go on the bed.

14. Your taxes are easier. You don’t have to ask “Where’s your W-2?” or “Did you enter our medical expenses in Turbo Tax?”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Love,

A Young Wife

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Here’s the rest of David’s story…

…or so it would seem to be never ending. If you haven’t read my previous post read it here before continuing. The reason I was so happy when i was diagnosed is because I thought “Ok, this guy is a renown rheumatologist and medicine will fix this.”

Medicine helps a lot of things, but I didn’t understand arthritis like I understand it today. Arthritis is a tricky thing with many causes, some untreatable and some easily treated. There is a great deal known, but still some unknown. I figured that this was something they knew backwards and forwards.

So I went on the medications, and I was very hopeful and happy believing this would work. We would go for the regular checkups and do exactly what the doctor said. I am not exaggerating when I say this: I had to wait 4 hours every time I went to see him. I got used to being two hours late or so just so I could wait less. I had to see him every eight weeks to make sure my liver wasn’t failing. But weeks turned into months, and a year later I was still hurting, feeling worse than ever and had a lot of medical expenses and time down the drain. My back was getting so bad I had to go into the doctor’s office and get injections in my back so I could tolerate the pain. Sometimes it’s very hard for me to walk, and once it got so bad i was on the couch for three days till I could go to the doctor cause it was the weekend.

We asked the doctor what we should do, and that’s when he said, “Oh everything I’ve been giving you doesn’t help the back only the fluid joints.” Though for six months at the end there and when I first talked with him I told him my back hurts the most and is the biggest problem. He prescribed Humira, and the pharmacy told us that it would cost $15oo a month. After exhausting every resource available at the time we were able to get that down to $1000 a month. Thing is Humira can take about six months to start working. We’d need to find six grand somewhere just to see if it would work, and it’s not possible for us.

We asked the doctor what we should do since we can’t afford the Humira or any drug similar. It seemed like my arthritis would be unending. He said there is nothing that can be done. It’s Humira or nothing. It was then that we decided to find another doctor. When we tried to switch, the new doctor charged more than the insurance would pay. It would cost us about $300 a visit.

Then we decided to try one of our doctor’s colleagues. He listened to us, answered our questions, prescribed drugs to help with my back and neck. He switched me to some drugs that do the same thing as the old ones, but won’t require  blood tests all the time and are safer. The meds have reduced my pain levels by about 25%.

It’s been a long hard road, but God is good, and He is faithful. He  is The Good Shepard, and He has gotten me through the valley of the shadow of death. He has delivered me from evil. I will trust in Him all the days of my life.

Now that I have gotten some relief I have hope that Humira’s financial assistance program will look more closely into the situation and provide me with the means to get it.

My wife has helped me through this time immeasurably. My families aid, support and encouragement have strengthened me. My friends’ help has meant a lot and has been greatly appreciated, My church’s prayers have been blessing. But I could not have made it this far without God; every moment He is with me. Though my body has been weakened, my faith is strengthened and in Him I find rest.

One last post to follow…

Tuesday we see the rheumatologist. I’m asking for a handicap parking permit, and we’ll fax the Humira financial assistance paperwork. I’ll post ASAP to let you know what happens. – A Young Wife

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As every married couple knows, people ask you, “When are you going to have a baby?” all the time. Every week at church. At every wedding, baptism or baby dedication you attend. When you buy a house. When you hold a baby or play with a child. Someone’s bound to ask.

You want to know the truth?

The truth is, David and I love children. Absolutely adore our nieces and nephews. We look forward to our week to work in the church nursery, and we have a blast teaching a Sunday School class for three year olds.

Honestly? We’d have a baby right now if we could. But we can’t.

With our chronic illnesses and all our medications, we are currently physically capable. It’s very difficult being told you cannot have children until you’re healthier. And the doctors have no idea when that will be. It could be a month. It could be a year. It could be ten. 

Adoption is not an option. With our poor health, we wouldn’t even qualify to adopt. Plus, I can’t take care of David and a baby. We truly cannot have children until we’re healthy.

We’re not really worried about children. Yet. We’ve still got plenty of time, and hopefully, we’ll be healthy enough to have children before long. Most days, I’m so focused on David getting better that I don’t even think about having children. It’s just every now and then, I’ll read something, or see a stupid commercial on TV, and I’ll feel my eyes well up.

David’s pretty funny about it. We were in a toy store shopping for our nieces and nephews several months ago. We saw lots of cool toys that weren’t around when we were little, as well as toys that we remembered having fun with. As we were leaving David said, “We need to hurry up and have kids so we can buy all this cool stuff!”

Of course, he also said our dog Henry was going to help us raise our children. He said he’d get a basket we could strap on Henry’s back so he could carry a baby like a papoose. And we’d train Henry to fetch diapers and bottles. Poor Henry. He has no idea the work David has planned for him.

My parents couldn’t have children for the first ten years of their marriage. In fact, even after they had me, the doctors said it was a miracle, and they would never have another. But guess what? I have three younger brothers. I’ve heard my parents’ story so many times (see the post Fifty Facts About Ashley).

Lately what I’ve been remembering about their story is something my mother told me. She said, “If God had given us children when we wanted him to, we would have gotten a divorce. God knew what he was doing.” She said they needed those ten years of marriage to solidify their union. Not that I wasn’t the perfect daughter or anything.

Who knows why God doesn’t want us to have children right now? Maybe it’s so David and I will be a better, stronger couple. Maybe he wants us focused on other things right now. Maybe we need to grow as individuals so we can be better parents in the future. I don’t know. He is God. He is Sovereign.

So, my answer is…

We’ll have a baby when God gives us one.

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