Author: Jesus is for the Wounded

Yes.  I’m working on getting well.  Experts say that it takes 1 1/2 to 3 years to recover from Chronic Lyme Disease.  I am 7 months into the treatment process.  I have been sick for just under a year now (beginning with viral hepatitis) and am glad to be on the proper course of treatment.  It just takes time.

In the meantime, I’m keeping busy making jewelery in the middle of the night while sweating, battling a neck-headache, low-grade flu symptoms and either pre-tics or full blown seizure-like tics.  Tics are neuromuscular events where your head, torso, and proximal extremities shake involuntarily for a few seconds to a minute or more.  Thankfully the amplitude of them has diminished to a point where it doesn’t move me around in the bed anymore and the duration of each episode is a few seconds each.  These tics result in jarring to the head and neck and a tremendous headache most of the time.  Sometimes I can sleep afterwards and sometimes I cannot.  Just depends when the entire event of episodes begins or ends, day or night.  After treatment today, these symptoms persisted for about an hour.  Gratefully, the Lord heard my cries for mercy and they stopped.  I passed out and slept for another hour then got up to take a portion of the 61 doses of meds and supplements needed daily.  (Lots of meds and supplements are common in the treatment of Lyme Disease.)  Then I was able to leave the house today to go to two appointments, etc.

It’s amazing what you can do feeling sick.  Most of the time others can’t tell how I’m feeling.  I guess they are used to me wearing no make-up, inattentive to grooming details, flat hair, strained smiles if at all, low muscle tone, and generally dressed in plain clothing.  Remember how I looked a year ago?  I don’t either except for a few pictures in our home office.  Remember how I felt a year ago?  I don’t either . . . .   My husband is very gracious in this regard.  I am blessed.

In reality, no, I’m not working a traditional job yet.  I don’t have the sustained cognitive, physical, or emotional skills needed to care for others in my former job in healthcare.  These are skills healthy people take for granted.  I’m not there yet.   And I’m as frustrated as you are that I am not well yet.  Today I am angry about this.  The lab test results that came yesterday cost us $1135 out of pocket to confirm the diagnosis of Lyme Disease, according to the ILADS standards (see References section).  No wonder they call this the “rich person’s disease.”  It takes a small fortune to get well; I’m thinking $225 per week on average, out of pocket.  And for some reason this information in a black-n-white IGeneX report set off a grief reaction like I had when my LLMD made the diagnosis in January from my clinical presentation of symptoms.  Thought I would be o.k. with things by today.  Guess not.

I do wish to be working again.  I do wish to be back into the stuff of life, having fun, and not just pretending or staying home the entire Labor Day weekend due to illness.  Sorry guys.  I’m struggling right now.  The Lord is with me and I know He hears the cries of my heart.   I trust Him, really I do.  This is my blog and I’m using it to vent today.  Lyme Disease is a bite in the shorts.

Here’s the corner of a wall of collage art that extended 12 feet through the center of my condo in Illinois.  The framed art is a self-portrait and all that remains.

The prose on the wall read:

Take this moment in time

To create something beautiful:

A world where we move closer together

With eyes for our Savior, Immanuel,

Where our stories speak with gentleness for

The paths taken and those we did not,

 And the work of our hands makes a difference

In today and beyond . . .

 For grace will be our companion

His love, peace, and joy.

Life becomes a journey worth the taking,

Yes!

Would we really want it any other way?

When enduring hardships in the past, the Lord helped me use creative media to express my feelings, distract me from the pain of it all, begin a lightness of heart and discovery, and learn to trust Him with the process.  I believe we all have an ability to use our hands and minds for self expression.  In my role as an occupational therapist, I would often use media and various activities to help others tap into his or her ability to create.  It can come through cooking, building, music, art, writing, or solving a problem in a unique way.  The process of creating can bring us to a special kind of peace and joy, especially when we recognize the Author of all that is creative is God.  In Genesis 1 we learn how He created us in the beginning of time, unique and wonderful and when He was done, He said, “it is good.”  In Psalm 139 we find how He cares for every detail of our being and our lives to come when we are conceived in the womb.  Wow.  So no matter how I look, what happens in my life, no matter what I do, think, say, or create, He has had a hand in it.

Oh my precious Lord, be the Author of all that I am this day, for your glory.  May I humbly honor all that you have created in me and entrusted to my care.  Thank you for the wall back there in 2006.   Help me to live with a sense of discovery, hopeful expectation, and gratitude for all that is to come.  In the name of Jesus Christ I pray.  Amen

Imagine this:

You are stuck in a pit with greased walls and flooring.  You try to reach up as if to get up, but the shifting of your weight causes you to slide back into noxious circumstances and consequences.  Your head hurts from the bang as you hit the bottom over and over again of what feels like a murky abyss.  Once again, when calm eventually returns, you resolve to move, to sit up, to drink a sip of life-giving water.   But, WHACK!!!  The cage surrounding your private hell holds you captive while a loved one watches nearby, powerless, speechless.  You can’t speak and he simply prays.  The minutes linger as you drift into what others may view as sleep.  Truth is, it takes too much energy to keep your eyes open.  Two or more hours pass.  You “wake up” afraid again to move.  What fate will you encounter?  Will you break free or will the illusion of freedom elude you?  Your love returns, watches in anguish, and offers help.  Thanks.  But you must wait until the grease is gone.  You must wait until the bars of the cage are opened.  You must both linger in the unknown of what will happen next:  will you be delivered to freedom or not?

Prayer is critical at a time like this.  This is a time where striving accomplishes nothing.  This is a time where platitudes fail.  This is a time where worry brings you:  zip.  This is a time where trust is all you have:  trust in the one you can see and trust in The One you cannot see.  You in charge of nothing.  You didn’t put yourself into that pit and you are not the one who can lift you out of it either.  This is what it means to “wait on the Lord.”  And it must be His will, because if it was the will of Satan, the ruler of this world, you would never arise from any abyss of this life.  The ruler of the dark wants you to stay in your despair, your pain, your angst, your anger; you get the picture.  He wants you as far from the grace and love of Jesus Christ as you can possibly be.  Then, He wins.  Yet it is the hope of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that you would turn to Him in these times of trial.  For He is not the author of the trial.  He grieves that you go through it and that ugliness even exists in this world.  For it was not His plan when He created the world, that you suffer and die in this life.  Death came from the fall of mankind in the Garden, thousands of years ago . . . . .  Death came from sin and we will never be free from these circumstances and consequences separate from Him.

He is our hope.  He is our hope whether we emerge from the pit or not.  What?  Yes, the freedom we receive is not freedom from trials.  We still live in a fallen world in temporal bodies.  We receive freedom from despair in times like these.  We receive an ever present companion, a hope that we will not only recover from illness someday but will be made perfect as He is perfect.  We will know love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control.  We will have victory and reign with Him someday in heaven, the New Jerusalem to come.  And that will be a time when we do not measure our experience by the hour; we will be living in eternity.  Knowing this, we can endure a night in a pit.  Dear friend, you can’t measure this life by what you can see.  Choose to “see” Him, reach for Him, believe in Him and He will free your soul in ways that transcend your flesh.  He may fix your life.  Someday, He will bless you through the mystery that you now endure.   In Romans 5 of the Bible we read:

2 b  And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

The purpose of suffering often transcends our understanding but it is within the will and plan of God.  Unfortunately, suffering is the consequence of sin in this world and because of sin, God came to earth to save us from sin.   That does not necessarily mean that sin caused our infirmity either!  We may never know why we suffer or when our suffering will end.  I do know that if we believe in Him and His Word, someday, we will be free.  Today my freedom is not in my flesh.  Today my freedom is in my heart and in my spirit.  Once I get past the distraction of illness, I only see Him and His promises.  I know that these trials will not be wasted either.  I have lived through enough pain and suffering to discover that His grace comes only as a result of it; the very answers to prayer I  seek, sometimes come through the trials.

I choose to trust in the hope of Jesus Christ.  I choose to receive His anointing with the oil of His holiness and truth.  In His strength and not my own, the pit and cage will fade away in due time.  By His cross, by His grace, we all can find rest.  A good degreaser is all we really need.  Where will you put your hope this day?

Catching a cold on top of sitting here with pre-seizure-like tic symptoms.  My hubby is running an Epsom salt/baking soda bath for me.  Ahhhhh.  Things are going to get better, eh?

:J
Today I am grateful for:  a call from an old friend and long chat.  My hubby Steve.  A sweet dinner with Steve and Christina.  Two huge home grown cucumbers and an onion too, for a yummy cucumber salad.  New pansies on the patio.  We made it to payday.  Our dog, Elle.  Macrame.  Volunteering at the Purdue Extension Office Display Gardens no matter how I feel.   My truck.

:J

And most of all, my sweet Jesus.  Thank you for helping me through the tough times.  Thank you for so much goodness.  Goodnight all (and it is before midnight!).

:J

UPDATE:  The cold only lasted 4 days!  Thank you Lord for this sweet blessing!  :J  :J