A New Option

Greetings, Loved Ones!

Wow - it’s been so long since I’ve written. I feel like I start all my blog posts with that these days! I’ve written several posts over the latest months but each time, I just couldn’t publish them. They each felt not quite right in their own way — they were either too personal, too upsetting, too distant, or too superficial. So, now I write from a place of openness and tentative excitement. I have updates, I have things I want to share, and I have things I want to ask for prayer about.

No - I’m not pregnant.

Now that that’s out of the way, I suppose I should start with the basics. We’ve moved to a new home. We’re now renting a two story townhouse as opposed to our apartment that we rented for our first year of wedded bliss! It’s a beautiful house, totally tiled, with a wonderful balcony off the main bedroom along with a gorgeous and brand new (and huge!) kitchen. We love it, but it does come with its sorrows. We got caught in a routine scam from our real estate agency — and the real bummer is that the place we live in now is also with that same agency! So we couldn’t put up much of a fight over being (quite obviously) scammed as we were already feeling the ramifications in our new home. So, that was a bummer — but over all, we feel incredibly blessed and thrilled to live in such a gorgeous house. We are directly on the beach with only a large, grassy park between us and the sand!

I’ve gotten a job as a medical receptionist in a posh, new age, holistic, private health care centre just two blocks from our house. My coworkers are my people: we all have weird diets and none of us wear shoes at work. While I’m a lactovegetarian, two of my coworkers are paleo and the rest are gluten free, dairy free, sugar free,  etc... We have a “no shoe policy” in the lobby of the office and we have essential oils diffusing at all times, along with constant solo piano music (accompanied by the occasional sitar) and numerous fountains. It’s fancy and small and we all like each other which brings me much joy. I’m working part time as my doctor here has only cleared me for a certain amount of working hours per week with my back.

This brings me to my next topic: I’ve been told of a new treatment possibility for my spine. Over the last year, the option of surgery has been encroaching ever more ominously as my chronic pain has grown more excruciating. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve been feeling quite helpless, alone, and pessimistic about my options. I’ve felt stuck in a dichotomy of social taboos: I could be upfront with everyone around me with how immense the pain is and end up feeling like a weak, complaining, lazy person, or I could continue to disguise the situation by minimizing it in daily conversation with my friends, family, and coworkers and end up pushing myself past my reasonable capabilities and living day to day in severe pain. I haven’t wanted surgery as it’s so risky and, like my mom says, “once they start cutting in to you, you just never know what’s going to happen.”

So, in the midst of all this drama, I went to my sister in law’s birthday party last weekend and happened to sit next to a professional athlete named Tori West. She’s ranked first in all of Australia for track and field and is looking to represent Australia in the upcoming Commonwealth games and, eventually, in the Olympics. She’s also the kindest, loveliest, and most God-fearing girl you’d ever want to meet. . We were fast friends and got on well. We swapped compacted life stories and she told me about a career-threatening foot problem she had had years ago. “It was due to some minor scoliosis I had,” she told me. I just about jumped on her due to her use of “had.” She said the scoliosis had caused an imbalance in her legs and her foot had become quite painful and was near the point of surgery when she decided, as a last ditch effort, to see a specialist down south. After just three sessions over a few weeks, she said, he healed not only my foot but also all the symptoms of my scoliosis. The issues have never returned. He was able to rebalance her hips and the muscle distribution in her lower back. His name is Steve Lockhart and he works with professional athletes all over the country with injuries and imbalances — and he specializes in scoliosis and spinal conditions. He has apparently created a new way of treating spines and has been slowly building a reputation as a renowned specialist. Tori offered to put me into contact with him if I wanted.

Well, I want to. But first, I vowed to spend lots of time in prayer over it — with Aaron. I’ve been feeling so helpless that I now need to be cautious to not put all my faith in a person, in a doctor, instead of in Jesus. It might not be what the Lord has for me and it might not even work with my back. It would also be quite expensive as I would have to travel a long distance to see him each time. We’re taking time to pray over it and we would love it if you would join us in asking for clarity and provision to follow the Lord in regards to my spinal issues.

Lastly, I wanted to thank you all for praying for me and for my husband over this last year and a half. We’ve felt your prayers and they’ve been so precious and encouraging to us. We’ve had our little ups and downs as all people do; just this morning our car started having trouble and we have to take it in for an inspection on Friday. We’re praying fervently that it might be nothing major. If any of you have time to pray for that as well, it would mean so much! But, in the end, Aaron and I are so happy here together and are endeavoring to walk through life with an attitude of “even if this isn’t what we want, it’s what Jesus has — and so we will try our best to want it and Him through it all!”

If any of you want to connect with me more personally, I would love it. As usual, my email address is HERE and I would love to hear from you. I’m good at responding promptly, and I love a hearty online conversation! Thank you all for sticking with us.

With much love and thankfulness,

Anna and Aaron