God does work for our benefit. He really, really does.

God really does work for your benefit. He really does. Here's why:

Tomorrow, it will be 5 weeks since my daughter broke out in hives. It has been a very hard 5 weeks. She was miserable. Her whole body was covered in hives and no matter what we did or what medication we gave her, they still continued and she continued to scratch. I cleaned my house very deeply, eliminating most dust, pet dander, and more. I changed our laundry soap and washed and rewashed everything I could think of. I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Nothing helped. She continued to break out and it made me feel like a failure. She had nights when she would wake up, itchy and crying. She wanted relief so badly and I couldn't give it to her fast enough. I wanted to cry too. I did when she wasn't watching.

Monday we saw an allergist. He asked me tons of questions, all of which I said no to. He told me I wasn't giving him anything to go on for allergies, but it was a good thing. Then I handed him pictures of my daughter at her worst with the hives and he knew right away what was going on. He told me that hives that cover the whole body and last so long like this are not an allergic reaction. Hives that form from an allergic reaction come and go when the allergen is introduced, but don't stick around like hers did. They also have certain spots that they appear, but not all over the body. He told me that her immune system is overreacting to the cold she got shortly after she got the hives; that her body knew it was sick and tried very strongly to fight it, but instead attacked itself and didn't win against the cold. It is an auto-immune response.

When the allergist was talking with me about the medications my daughter would need to be on to trick her immune system into thinking she was all better so it would stop producing the hives, he was talking with me about the dosage of a medication she had already been on. I took one look and told him that it was wrong. Here's where I know that God works for our benefit. The dose that was originally prescribed for her was one fifth of the dose that was actually needed. We could have stopped the hives a month ago when they first started. BUT, without the mistake, we would have never known that she was having an auto-immune response and not an allergy. I did speak with my doctor (who didn't prescribe the medication) about the mistaken dose and she said it was most likely a typo. She agreed with me that if the mistake hadn't been made, we probably wouldn't be aware of the auto-immunity today. It was a good mistake. It worked for our benefit. God knew that we needed to know. I don't know why yet, but I will someday.