{"id":354,"date":"2009-01-18T16:15:55","date_gmt":"2009-01-19T00:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/?p=354"},"modified":"2009-01-18T16:15:55","modified_gmt":"2009-01-19T00:15:55","slug":"how-many-times-do-we-miss-the-hand-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/archives\/354","title":{"rendered":"How many times do we miss the Hand of God?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>I wrote this the day of Jess&#8217;s surgery and saved it as a draft when she started having problems that night.&#160; While working on the website today I found it.&#160; Some of the information is old and now inaccurate but the meaning and context is clear.&#160; Enjoy<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jess&#8217;s surgery today went pretty well.&#160; Her only complication was that some of the Gallstones escaped into the Bile Duct to elude capture.&#160; We believe that they will pass without incident but I will be keeping a close eye out for problems.&#160; Overall she is doing very well, but the soreness has just begun to set in.&#160; Most importantly she is now resting comfortably for the night.<\/p>\n<p>I would like to take this time to thank you all for your Prayers and thoughts during this time and throughout this year.&#160; My girl has had a rough 11 months, but every time she keeps getting knocked over she gets back up again.&#160; I won&#8217;t lie and say that this year has been a cake walk.&#160; To be honest it has probably been our roughest since we have been married.&#160; Jess&#8217;s injuries, my heavy travel year, loss of a second income with no prior planning, etc etc have made this year challenging at best.&#160; We feel like we have been piled on all year then came the Gall Bladder.&#160; Yet when we take stock we see that we are so very blessed.&#160; <\/p>\n<p>Do you what the best parts of the last year were?&#160; It was when we got to our whit&#8217;s end and&#160; laid things in the Hand of God.&#160; Jess and I are about as OCD as you can be without a diagnosis.&#160; We want to do things our way because we know they are always right.&#160; It is very difficult for a couple like us individually or together to give things up to the Lord; it is a constant struggle.&#160;&#160;&#160; <\/p>\n<p>However something struck me today about her surgery.&#160; It was a far different from our experience 5 1\/2 years ago.&#160; Jess described herself as eerily calm and not worried and she wasn&#8217;t, I was equally calm as well.&#160; (Sure a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cholecystectomy\" target=\"_blank\">Cholecystectomy<\/a> is a pretty common surgery but you are still coming back with less parts then you went in the room with.)&#160; Was it because she was in so much pain she was ready for it to be over, was it because we are both a little older?&#160; I would have to say that it was neither.&#160; <\/p>\n<p>It was the fact that we placed her in the Hand of God without really knowing it.&#160; Sure we prayed together this morning.&#160; Pastor Greg even came down and visited with us early this morning and said a prayer for us.&#160; But to be honest do you know when we both realized why we were at peace?&#160; If was when one of the Nurses came into the room to check on Jess.&#160; The nurse just happened to be one of our choir directors at church and when we were telling how Jess felt and how the surgery went she just simply replied<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;That is the Hand of God over you&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The Hand of God is always over you, you just have to surrender so that you can recognize it.&#160; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote this the day of Jess&#8217;s surgery and saved it as a draft when she started having problems that night.&#160; While working on the website today I found it.&#160; Some of the information is old and now inaccurate but the meaning and context is clear.&#160; Enjoy Jess&#8217;s surgery today went pretty well.&#160; Her only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-normal-entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2tyCm-5I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakestapleton.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}