Steven and I started our relationship on a horribly cold, rainy, miserable day in May of 2006. We met at an outdoor concert my high school was putting on, and, as fate would have it, fell in love in a matter of days. But sometimes life has different plans for you then you have for yourself.... and we're living, breathing proof that where there's a will, there's a way.
I've been meaning to publish a blog about the first few months of our lives together, but every time I try to put it into words I find that nothing quite explains how messy those days were. I'll never know if we made it through it due to pure adrenaline rush, or if there's something really powerful about the human spirit, or love, that held it all together.
Within the first few days of us dating, I had my tonsils taken out. It sucked. But Steven came over and brought me Wendy's frosties and his presence just made me feel better. Tonsils or not, it felt like everything was finally falling into place for me.
Until the next night, when we got a call. My step-mom, Jeni, answered the phone and immediately I knew something was wrong. She hung up and told me that Steven was in the ER at Methodist, he had a bowel obstruction, and things weren't looking too great. I couldn't drive because I was completely narc'd up, but my dad promised to take me to the hospital the next morning.
Two weeks later Steven was still in the hospital. I found out that when he was 9 he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, a far cry from the "stomach problem" he told me he had on our first official date. Crohn's disease is an auto-immune disorder where your immune system, for some reason, finds your digestive tract foreign and attacks it. This can cause a lot of pain, swelling, inflammation, and a series of other problems. This specific time, they decided to try to treat Steven medically before they looked into any kind of surgical intervention... that failed. That July, more then a month later, he was scheduled for a bowel resection. His surgery was successful, and the hope was that starting his slate off clean, mixed with high powered immuno-suppressant drugs and prayer, the disease could go into remission. We spent almost a whole summer waiting, wishing, praying, hoping, and trusting people we didn't even know to do what was best for Steven.
But his nurses became our friends, and they cared just as much as we did that he would get better. They helped me set up "date nights" and let me bring in food from the outside world to make him feel just a little more like he wasn't stuck in Hell. We made sure he was constantly surrounded by friends and family, and when we got discouraged we started planning out our future. We knew that there was something to this, and we wouldn't give it up without a fight.
Our experience that summer made us grow up fast, and appreciate the small things in life. It was a hard road getting to where we are.
Steven still has Crohn's disease, that'll never go away. The past 4 years have brought new challenges. There's been more surgeries, more tests, and more bad news. But we hope that we can be an example of moving up and moving on, and God won't hand you anything you don't have the means to handle.
I don't know exactly how to finish this blog except to say that everyone has a story. I hope yours in happier then ours, but even if it isn't, make the most of it. You can find beautiful things in some of the messiest places.
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