Thinking Ahead!!

Well I'm back for another week! This week the kids went back to school and I'd be lying if I didn't say I was doing a bit of a happy dance!! As of late it's been none stop fighting between them so I think getting back to some form of a routine will be good for them, not to mention good for my sanity! The extra stress that the fighting causes doesn't help with my condition. It doesn't help any parents stress level when you really think about it! My pain has been up and down over the last week, but can say at the moment that things are at a level where it's manageable.

This last week my wife and I booked our flights to Hawaii for so I'm ready to board that plane right now and get away for a holiday. This is something that we've been planning for a while and is still a little ways away. However it gives me something to look forward to. I can hardly wait because it's been entirely to long since we've taken a vacation with no kids! I love my kids but it's time for some alone time with my wife. This is something we've had in the works for a while now, so as it gets closer we get more excited.

I've been thinking a lot over the last week about my future. Every once and a while I like to think forward, about how things will be when this is all over. That's the thing about CRPS you spend so much time living day to day, that you don't do a whole lot of thinking about what things will be like down the road for you. My oldest girl started grade 1 this week so she is gone five days a week now, and my youngest starts preschool twice a week so it will leave me two mornings a week with no kids. I'm sure this is why I've been thinking about my future because my kids are really starting to grow up, which starts you thinking about the future.

Let's face it I really don't know what my future will be right now only God knows that, as He maps things out for me along the way. I used to really struggle with what my future holds because it really is hard to say how things will be down the road.  I  used to think living with CRPS that my future wasn't going to very bright because of what I have to live with from day to day. It was hard to see past living with the pain from day to day, however now I'm starting to see past it and it gives me confidence to keep going. It doesn't mean that I don't have my moments where the pain clouds my vision. However it is important to realize that your future can be bright if you want it to be.

The one thing I can say when I think about my future is that I get excited when I think about it. Your probably wondering and saying to yourself how can I get excited about something that I don't know about yet? Well it's quite easy to explain. When I think about my future I start looking back at everything that I've been through so far and how it will influence my future. I look at the ways in which it has changed not only me but the rest of my family. So needless to say, there have been some amazing changes that have gone on in my life. Some of them good and some of them not so good. There has been this ability to fight and not give up which is a gift from God. If you don't think that going through something like CRPS changes you then think again. Needless to say there has been some real character building going on.

My point in all this is that as I start to see the changes in me, I start to see what those changes hold for me down the road. It's all part of something much bigger that is out of my control. No matter how things turns out as I walk down that path that God is laying out in front of me, I know that it's all part of what He is planning for me. How can I not be excited about that! Come back in a few days for part two and I'll get into more of the specifics of how thinking about my future fuels me to overcome CRPS and helps to keep my mind off the pain.