LOCUSTS!

The eighth plague sent to the Egyptians by God was locusts. Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments never delighted in the 10 plagues-the Nile turning to blood, hailing fire, death of the first born, but instead prayed that hearts would be changed and that Pharaoh, above all, would bow to God's will.

Well, I've been off this post for almost two months, and although it wasn't due to locusts, I felt Charlton Heston's Moses stalking me. Staff in hand.

First, there was the brush fire I and ten of my relatives got caught up in at my mom's ranch in Mexico. Started by a careless cowboy burning trash. We shoveled dirt, drained our ponds dry, and stomped on flames for three hours trying to keep our ranch houses, trucks, horses, and warehouse from burning.

Next, we got a death threat. To our dog. Now Sheila is a barker, but she's not that bad. I mean, if she's barking, she's closer to us than the woman down the street who sent us the "anonymous" death threat, right? I called the sheriff's department. An officer came, read the note, and said they can only respond to death threats to people. His rifle was leaning on the passenger seat too close to me as I spoke to him in through the window. I had this irrational urge to grab it and shoot the woman's tires out.


Next, my husband turned yellow. Yep, the whites of his eyes turned yellow as a lemon. At first we thought it was due to him taking an antibiotic. But when the MRI of his liver showed an abnormal stricture of his bile duct, everyone (everyone medical and stupid people who know how to use the internet, such as myself) started whispering about Vanishing Bile Duct Syndrome, biopsies, and pancreatic cancer.

In the middle of this, I started having abnormal "female problems." My doctor is recommending a hysterectomy as a precaution. Yikes!

Did I mention the H1N1 virus has closed the school I work at? Three probable cases.

Now lesser women would have crawled into a hole, or under a bed, and hid until the plague of frogs have come and gone. I, on the other hand, turned to prayer. At a time when the life of my husband became so precious to me, I have become a different kind of wife, I turned to the Divine Mercy prayer. My favorite part of Sister Faustina's prayers is "Jesus, I trust in You."
I have thought about trust in God often over the past two months. Sister Faustina says Jesus if the fountain of mercy and He is waiting for us to approach him for it. But the more mercy you need, the more trust you must have. When my life was crashing down around me, I felt moments of pure panic intermingled with an incredible confidence that everything was going to turn out just fine. Hundreds of people have been praying for my husband, and when friends and family would call or email us and tell us that, it gave us tremendous peace. But to get back to the trust thing. It's very easy in my life to trust in myself when things are going great. I think I get lulled into thinking that it's due to my great efforts. Then when things go bad, and things are beyond my control, I suddenly need more trust. I think the remedy is to tell God you trust him everyday, several times a day. It's like practicing for the big game. You have to prepare your mind for it.

Today, more than ever, I praise God for his mercy. It turns out the radiologist misread my husband's MRI. There is no stricture. All tests came back negative for any really bad stuff. I am getting a second opinion for my own health problems, and we keep our dog, Sheila, inside as much as possible. The ranch I put in the hands of St. Isidore for safe-keeping. And I, unlike Pharaoh, am happy to be in the hands of Our Lord.