Surgery Date

April has always been good us.  In fact many of our most pivotal positive life changing events have come through April.

In April 2003 as seniors in high school Dustin I began to fall in love.  It was the month of our first date, our first kiss.  It was the month our nervous hands first anxiously joined together, completely unaware that these were the hands we would hold to forever.  These were the hands we would cling to through all the good and hard that life has to offer.

For many reasons, April 8th, specifically, has brought some of our most beautiful moments.

On the evening of April 7th of 2006, Dustin asked me to join him for a nice dinner and a walk around temple square in Salt Lake.  Oh yes, I was absolutely sure a proposal was on its way that night.

Looking deep into my eyes and whispering sweet nothing's..... Dustin faked me out over and over again.  After about an hour a security guard kindly asked us to make our way out of temple square as it was getting ready to close.  Dustin couldn't help but chuckle at the disappointment written all over my face.  Boy, did he think he was hilarious!

And the next day, hands shaking and his heart literally pounding so hard that even I could feel it, Dustin slipped a ring on my finger and asked me to be his wife.

Last year, April 8th brought us our beautiful Haley Jean.  Just like her hilarious dad, she faked us out several times before choosing April 8th as the day we would celebrate this sweet girl forever. Her great-grandma Mary Jean couldn't have been more thrilled that she decided to come on her 86th birthday!

For the last few weeks we have been praying that Heavenly Father would guide Dust's doctors to choose the perfect day for Dustin's next surgery.  We pray for a day where the doctors will be on their game, where they will be prepared and ready.  We pray for the day where Dustin's body will be ready to accept the next changes.

We pray that, above all things, Heavenly Father's will can be done concerning us at this time.  We trust Him and His plan for us, whatever that might be.

The day that was chosen did not surprise me.  

I'm not going to lie - at first it made me really sad that Dust will spend Haley's first birthday on the operating table and we will spend it in a hospital waiting room.  My heart aches to think that around the time Haley should be digging in to her first birthday cake, I will be struggling against helplessness - wishing that somehow I can take his pain away.

After a quick prayer and a desire to have a positive mental attitude, I decided to try to look at this from a different perspective.  We could dwell on the things that send pangs of fear and sadness to our hearts or we could focus on the things that will lift and encourage us.

I realized that though April 8th of 2014 will be hard, it will be a day we look back on as another pivotal positive life changing day in our lives.  This day will bring with it another huge step toward Dustin's healing.

In a planned six hour surgery, two surgeons will go in to do more reconstruction on Dustin's  face. This time they will be focusing all of the surgery on and around Dustin's eyes.

Obviously, there are risks involved with a surgery like this.  Of course it is scary.  Of course we are scared.  But we know that this is a necessary step.  Probably just as necessary spiritually as physically.  We are now preparing ourselves to assert our faith and confidence in The Lord once again and hold fast to the promises He has made us.

Dustin for one is ready.  More than ready.  He just wants to get it over with.  And I... I will suck it up and be ready.  Whether I like it or not.

Although I am not looking forward to the aftermath of another surgery, both of us are ready for life to move forward.

We trust that The Lord will guide our path.  We believe George Q. Cannon with our whole hearts when he said, "The truth remains that we are the children of God, and that He has actually given His angels—invisible beings of power and might—charge concerning us, and they watch over us and have us in their keeping."  We constantly pray for those angels to surround us, to guide us, to guide Dustin's surgeons. 

April 8th of 2014 will be hard day.  It will be a hard day, but it will be a good day.

"Trust in The Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths." (Proverbs 3: 5-6)