Ramblings and Such

themuffingeek:

So, I was planning on writing a post about my hectic and unbelievable week, but this last event that has happened was SO huge, that I decided to not wait until tonight to do this. I’m not even going to edit this, so I apologize in advance for any errors in it.

This story starts at 11:30am Monday morning when I was awoken by my mom telling me to call my boss and cancel anything I had planned for the week. When I asked why, she informed me that they had decided to head to Upstate New York a few minutes beforehand. I took care of my stuff and helped pack, and we got on the road about 1:30pm. We drove straight through for about 20 hours and arrived at 10:00am Tuesday morning. 

Oh, I should probably state WHY we decided to do this crazy feat. My uncle was recently diagnosed with Stage Four Myelofibrosis, which is a rare form of bone marrow cancer that only affects a handful of people in the world. My aunt requested to be left alone for Christmas with her seven children, four who are adults, and three “littles” who are 11, 9, and 8, since the doctors had said that it would be their last Christmas together. My dad had been telling us for weeks that we should go anyway, but finally my mom acquiesced on Monday, surprising absolutely no one that knew about my uncle. My boss even told us while we were on the road that she was surprised that it had taken us that long to go. 

Anyway, so we arrived at 10:00am Tuesday and popped in. My aunt was busy talking to a neighbor whose brother was about to die and couldn’t see us. So, we hung around the area and around 1:30pm, we were finally able to go see her and the kids for about an hour and a half. Apparently, the day before, my uncle’s doctor put in a request for him to see some specialists at a hospital in Boston. My mom knows a few people who have gone to the oncology department at that particular hospital, and there is almost always a six month wait that usually ends up becoming 18 months, and by that time it is usually too late to help. Miraculously, the next day, which was Tuesday, my aunt got a phone call stating that they would see her “tomorrow” (Wednesday).  So, needless to say, she was running around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to get everything in order. We hung out with the kids and everything, then ended up getting invited over to my cousin’s house for dinner.

We went and I got to spend an hour of our time there talking with my 11 year old cousin Sarah about how she has been feeling and such, since I’ve been in her shoes before. We had a wonderful time there and went back to the hotel room about 10:00pm-ish. 

The next morning, we woke up and left for New York City around 11:30am. We arrived in the afternoon and spent some hours going around to the sites. I got to talk to some protesters at Occupy Wall Street, go see Santa at Macy’s, eat at Olive Garden in Time Square (where we got an AWESOME view, I’ll post a picture later), and finally found a place that sold Wine Gums after months of searching. We drove to Maryland and rented a room at the hotel around 11:30/12:00ish that night. 

The next day, which means we are now at Thursday, we drove all the way back down to Valrico, Florida, and arrived home at 1:30am today (Friday). We got a few hours of sleep and were back up and out the door by 10:30am so that we could do our Christmas shopping and be out of the cleaning lady’s hair. 

Now, this brings us to why this post is entitled “Angel in Walmart.” So, my dad and I, after searching at a few other stores, finally found our big present for my mom; an almost $100 Keurig. We picked that up, as well as a few stocking-stuffers, and proceeded to the checkout lane. We got all the way up there, just to find out that our card was being denied. My mom had been there maybe five minutes before us, so we figured that the credit card company was just holding our funds, so we called my mom and asked her to call them so that it could all get fixed. Meanwhile, the cashier let us put the cart behind him and out of the way. 

We were standing there for about a minute when this lady in the next lane said, “Did your card get denied?” My dad replied that it had, and she said that she would pay for our stuff. My dad told her that it was fine and we would have it all fixed in a few minutes anyway, and did she realize that it was over $100 worth of stuff? But, she didn’t budge and proceeded to grab our cart from us and started placing it on the conveyor belt. She told us that the Lord had blessed her this year and to not worry about it. My dad said that he would be sure to pay it forward and she told us that she didn’t care if he did or didn’t. She paid for our stuff, as well as her $40ish worth of stuff, and took the receipt before we could. She left with a Merry Christmas.

We don’t even know her name, but we prayed for her and thanked God for this. We have no idea why this happened to us, but it is amazing how God works. Someday, maybe, we’ll find someone else with $149 worth of stuff and be able to help them out. 

In case that wasn’t enough of an amazing event, here is something crazier. You remember how I said that my uncle got an appointment at that hospital in Boston? Well, turns out that his doctors were none other than the head of the oncology department and a professor at Harvard Medical who has spent eleven years specializing in Myleofibrosis. They devised a treatment plan that might save my uncle’s life, that involves blood transfusions, bone marrow transplants, and aggressive medicine. 

I guess the most important thing I got out of this week is one very important truth. God continues to work, even today. We just need to listen and obey, and he will take care of us. It could be in the form of a random stranger at Walmart, or a seemingly impossible appointment at a hospital with the best of the best doctors. 

So, as you go throughout the rest of your weekend and celebrate Christmas, remember that the best presents aren’t those ones wrapped in shiny paper and bows. It is the hope and joy that we have in a living God who has paid the ultimate price for us, and still loves us enough to help out even today. Take a few moments to look around at the family, friends, pets, possessions, and other things and realize how amazingly blessed you are to even have that. Sure the economy is bad, and you might not get as many or as expensive presents as usual, but you still have a lot to be thankful for. 

auraboros:

Hybrid Dalek Sec has discovered the spirit of Christmas, along with the feelings of humanity. ;)

For the Doctor Who 12 Days of GIFmas.

This conclusively combines two of my favorite things; an awesome Dalek and Christmas. Overall, an epic win. :)

So, I’ve had this tumblr for awhile and noticed that I didn’t have anyone actually paying attention to it. Thus, I decided that I would repurpose this into a regular old blog, with no purpose except pure boredom. If I am mistaken and you are following this, I apologize for the random post from a new name, after so many months of complete silence. Needless to say, I need a lot of motivation to actually stick with something all the way through. 

This blog is pretty much now purely devoted to complete randomness. I promise to never have a coherent theme throughout the entire time of having this, and I also promise to post spastically and without warning. I’m pretty much just doing whatever, whenever I feel like it. 

Even though I know that I will be the only one seeing this, I feel like I need to get this out of the way so that I can start posting on whatever suits my fancy.