Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Migraine blessing

As background, I am a migraine sufferer.  Before kids, I would get them a couple times per month.  During pregnancy and breastfeeding, I usually got a reprieve and got them far less often.  I was telling my BFF last week how it had been almost 2 years since I'd had a migraine.  Huge blessing.  :)  However, somewhat ironically, last Friday I got a migraine. 
I'm the Teachings for our Times teacher in our RS. I was scheduled to teach on Sunday.  For me, the best way to "treat" my migraines is to take medicine when I get the aura, then get to sleep.   So, that is what I did.  Unfortunately, it didn't kick the migraine this time.  I woke up on Saturday still with an awful headache.  I rested, I napped... I took medicine, but I could not focus at all. 
I knew I needed to finish preparing my lesson, but I was feeling completely useless.  I could see the words on the page, and I thought I was reading them, but I could not seem to retain them or make any sort of coherent thought about them.  I wanted to pass off the lesson to someone else, but my "backup" teacher was out of town and I didn't feel right about passing it off so late to anyone else.  So, Saturday night, I sat down at the computer and forced myself to create an outline.  I really don't even remember any of it making sense STILL at that point, but I got some questions ready to ask and made some handouts with quotes from the talk I was supposed to be teaching. 
I went to bed early hoping to kick the migraine and wake up with some clarity of thought so that I could fix the lesson plan I started.  No such luck.  Still foggy and hurting Sunday morning.  Begin super praying.  lol.  really though, I was not feeling capable of teaching, so I prayed as hard as I could muster that the Spirit would teach the lesson that day. 
As I got up to teach, I hoped that the migraine would melt away for at least the time I had to stand up there.  It didn't.  But something else happened.  Despite my feeling as though I couldn't make a coherent thought, and could hardly read the words on my paper, I WAS able to teach.  It was as though my spiritual self took over for those 45 minutes.  I had people tell me that they never would have known I had a migraine unless I had told them.  My body was weak at that moment, but the Spirit was strong.  I honestly don't remember a lot of the lesson, but I know there was good discussion and a feeling of peace and hope in the room. 
The Lord doesn't always remove our physical challenges, but He DOES strenthen us when we are striving to do His will.