Our Travels

This is Susie. Typically, Todd and I co-author the blog. I handle the photos and layout, then we bounce the writing back and forth until we both agree the posts are ready to publish.

Today, in the interest of “sharing the journey with friends and family,” I have a difficult tale to relate, combined with a testimony about a word from God. Bear with me. I’ll try to keep it brief.

Saturday morning, we got up around 0500 with a minor problem on the boat. After we’d taken care of it, Todd suggested watching a little TV in the air-conditioned stateroom before going upstairs to continue the boat projects. Shortly before 0700, he said he was still tired and wanted to sleep a bit. I settled myself out on the bow to quietly greet the day with a cup of coffee and my tablet.

As I was sitting there, I clearly heard (felt?), “This will be hard.” I looked up to see a section of dark grey clouds had formed in the blue sky in front of me. My thought was, naturally, something really difficult is coming. I mean, I don’t typically receive such clear messages, let alone ominous ones. I questioned God, and received the same word, “This will be hard.” There was a terrible weight in my soul, but I felt overwhelmed by His presence. Then I was shown an illustration that just as problems/storms blow into our lives, they do move away. I watched as some of the clouds blew off, revealing a piece of a rainbow, and I clearly heard (felt?), “but it’s going to be okay.”

Let me pause here to say, I’m not crazy. (At least I don’t think so.) This was not an audible voice, just statements in my head so clear it was as if they’d been spoken aloud. It gives me goosebumps to write about it.

As it turns out, while I was on the bow and he was napping that morning, Todd suffered an embolic stroke. The clots went to the left side of his brain and into his right lung. While there was no damage to his motor skills, he is working to overcome expressive aphasia. He “sees” what he wants to say but can’t always get the words out. We were – I cannot overstate this – incredibly blessed.

Todd is already making strides in his recovery and should be discharged from the hospital today. The speech pathologist suggested we continue the blog, as another way of exercising his brain. He says he isn’t up to that just yet but wants everyone to know he will be back!

In the meantime, I’ll wrap this up with the photo I took at 0819 that morning.

“This will be hard. But it’s going to be okay.”