Friday my Doctor recommended some new supplements to further my care and seemed pleased at some progress revealed in retesting of my gut health. But neither product is available right now; instead I had to crash in bed that night and most of Saturday.
Yesterday I thought I would work on trimming a sterile plum tree in our backyard that is riddled with black knot disease. We are trying to save it for a few more years of it’s flowering glory in the Spring and rich wine-colored leaves in the Summer. It was not to be so today.
Tomorrow I hope that my trial of THC-free hemp oil will resume with receipt of a shipment in the mail. I didn’t realize when I started it recently, how much I would need nor the extra timing needed for shipments across our country. This could help resolve the seizure attacks as soon as this week . . . if I get the dosing right . . . and if the next shipment arrives shortly thereafter. But there was a fire in a warehouse between here and there, threatening my continuity of care. Maybe I will have enough? Maybe not? Lord knows that one day we will have figured this all out!
When today came I thought I might clean our bathrooms and floors then complete an infrared sauna treatment before heading outside. Instead I was sick. Only the sauna treatment happened.
Then later and just when it looked like the core of my treatment plan was coming together, another infection sent me and my beloved to the walk-in clinic of our local hospital. Geez oh man. Steve offered to take me out to dinner last night but I could not make it. I was hoping to take a walk with him and the pup in the sunny, 50-degree weather. Nope, not today.
I cried a lot before proceeding with what we did need to take care of me today. Life sure is funny. Perhaps some medical appointments this coming week will clarify what I should do next to get well in addition to responding to urgent changes that seem to come along every few days. And maybe someday, one day, we will make plans for something fun and they will really happen!
In the meantime, date nights will be at a clinic or pharmacy at Walgreens or driving to the nearest metropolis for a fancy NeuroQuant brain scan. At least in the case of the latter, we got to see a dear friend, Mary, for a quick lunch at Freshii’s in Chicago’s Loop. Now that’s making the most of a day, eh?
Straining to trust in my Lord this night. Choosing to trust in His Word and promise to carry me through it all no matter what may be one day for:
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
9 What do workers gain from their toil?10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Ecclesiastes 3
One of the movies that has really resonated deeply with me is, The Breakfast Club. Please see my previous post for the catchy theme song that underscored the film and one of the most poignant scenes that is also pertinent to Part 2 of this 3-part blog.
In Part 1, I described the isolation that I have felt when enduring a serious illness and how the Lord still gets me through the toughest of days. His Word is my greatest comfort; the leading of the Holy Spirit and His presence are my greatest companions. I ended with a question,
But how well does he really know me?
Sure, my Lord crafted me before I was born and set forth all that I would be, all that I would endure and accomplish. His Words in Psalm 139 declare that He knows my “innermost being.” Does this include the longing of my heart as well? If it does, why has He allowed me to become so dreadfully isolated?
Maybe someday I will get to see why so many family and friends have chosen to “walk on by” me as it says in the theme song of The Breakfast Club. Have I not been a good friend? Maybe I was not. I remember about two years into this ordeal someone contacted me and asked me about getting together for coffee. I replied “yes” and then I never heard from her again. My spirits had soared then crashed and burned. For believers in Jesus Christ, the answer to the “why” question is usually left for eternity. We simply may never know “why” this side of heaven.
Those of you not living in isolation may not have any idea how much Satan uses this experience to tear a person down. He can prey upon all of our negative emotions and be allowed to create havoc in our lives. (Yes, ultimately God is still in charge!) Yet I know that it’s really not about resisting Satan or about losing the people in my life. I resist the devil and his demons with the sword of the spirit: the Word of God as described in Ephesians 6:10-17. People come and go in our lives and that is the normal ebb and flow of life. It really is about my response to the taunting, the loss of these relationships.
My challenge has been particularly great due to the effect that this chronic illness has had on my brain. Responding to Satan’s lies and the loss of relationships has been affected by the change in brain chemistry that came with chronic illness. My ability claim victory in the name of Jesus Christ and fully embody the companionship of my Lord have been affected. Satan’s lies have been magnified. My social skills have eroded. My ability to think clearly has been altered. And I struggled to override these skill deficits but could not, even if I tried. Allow me to explain.
Only recently did we discover that excessive neurotransmitters called catecholamines (epinephrine, norephinephrine, and dopamine) are likely contributing to my mood changes, thinking and communication skills in addition to possibly causing the convulsive episodes. This is happening due to the expression or “turning on” of polymorphisms (SNPs) or breaks in several enzymes that help form my DNA code. The DNA code is the instruction manual or blueprint from which the body functions. Everyone has a unique combination of broken SNPs that get turned on by illness or significant stressors in the environment (such as exposure to mold). For me the factors included everything that I have written about in this blog: biotoxin illness/hepatitis, latent Lyme disease, Candida toxicity, mold illness, infected root-canaled teeth, and mercury toxicity. That’s a lot of stressors! These illness and environmental challenges became a trigger for disaster. I even have the data to prove it, all of it!
For some people this process manifests as a Mitochondrial Disease or a disruption in the methylation cycle inside the nucleus of the cells of our bodies. My thought life was affected. My mood was affected too. I had waking and nightly nightmares not based in any reality past or present. Those were internal things that my beloved husband, Steve, and the healthcare community could not see very often. Several healthcare practitioners labeled me as having a mental illness of sorts, often without even completing a mental status exam or workup! Gratefully, Steve believed me. They all saw the wretched convulsive episodes that have plagued me for hours every day for 3 1/2 years. And Satan was allowed to enter into the whole dynamic with lies and attacks that I will definitely write about at another time. Absolute mental and physical wretchedness.
But now the gig is up! Two days ago I woke up from a lovely nap after starting to treat this condition. I had my first 16 hours seizure-free! It’s as if someone turned on the lights in my brain! Not only do I have a formula for correcting the brain-part of the process but the prayers of deliverance against the spiritual warfare are taking hold. The cascade of negative mental, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual suffering is beginning to turn around. Lord willing, I am going to get well!
My Jesus knows all about every aspect of what I have described here. He also knows the desires of my heart. How do I know this? My prayers long before this illness began was to become whole. I had been broken by the consequences of a hard life: events out of my control. Many times during trauma the Holy Spirit would bring encouraging scripture to me that kept me moving forward. Yeah, finding hope and finding myself has come through horrible, ongoing isolation and trauma. I have worked hard to recover from so much suffering in my heart, my mind, my body. Each step of the way has been both painful and meaningful. Yet I tell you, Gentle Reader that nothing has been wasted! I have learned to trust the process in EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE under the protection of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And now the desires of my heart are being realized. Cool beans.
So how does one rebirth the desires of one’s heart?
The Star of Palmer Lake is the claim to fame of this small town in Colorado by the same name. Built on the side of Sundance Mountain in 1934 and rebuilt in 1976, this 500-foot star shines above the city in December and on special occasions every year. I got to see this local wonder in the year 2003.
Robert had a gentle spirit as a kid. He talked less than his older brother and sister yet they often knew what he was thinking based upon the look on his face. A stern look that made his face turn as red as a stuffed sausage meant that this little kiddo needed to get to the bathroom right quick!
Perhaps Rob was more sensitive than they realized: the kind of kid who took in the good and the bad without saying much while growing up in a single-parent home. Rob looked like his dad which may have given him some slight favor . . . or at least that is what his older brother, Mike and their mom would say. But Rob was too young to really get to know his dad before he divorced his mom then eventually became estranged from the family altogether. How did Robert Matthew Lech get to be so mechanically inclined anyways? Decades later it became very clear that the instruction manual for the Motor City Gear Head that Rob became was in his DNA as well as from those years as a young child when his dad was still around tinkering with this and that in the basement workshop. Just like his Dad, Rob could fix just about anything!
There’s one thing, however, that he could not fix. Rob could not change the fact that his dad left without a trace until many years later. All of the kids would be grown up by the time they learned that “Ted” was living in Florida. The older sister had moved to Chicagoland and the older brother had returned from the Navy. Rob had completed an aviation mechanic certification course with his buddy Karl, then never took the test to actually become certified. Rob drifted a bit then became the Grease Monkey who could answer most any question when you dropped by to see him at the local NAPA auto parts store near Palmer Lake. He would often help his customers fix their cars as well, no charge. Rob had many friends for sure. Many of them joined him at the bar of the bowling alley in the evening, much like the camaraderie of the 1980’s television show, Cheers.
Rob reached out to his Dad some time after receiving his Dad’s address from his mom. It might have been when the family received notice of his Dad’s brother’s passing that they all saw Ted’s address in Uncle Fred’s legal paperwork. Someone had found Ted! Ted’s sister, Lori, went to visit and Ted reportedly shunned her. But for some reason Rob needed to try to reach out to him anyways. Something inside of him still needed to know his father, the one he had come to be like. These things would be revealed many years later, of course. No one got to know Ted just then. Ted responded to the letter that Rob finally sent to his Dad, telling Rob not to contact him again. Ted said that he had a mental illness and he had found a way to live with it which included estrangement from his family and everything in his past. Ted slipped away into anonymity once again. So very sad, really.
Rob was devastated. Rob had another close friend, Dewey, who had passed away which was doubly devastating for this tender-hearted young man. Rob never seemed to overcome the loss of these two important men in his life. His drinking increased and his life crumbled. Before he died he had started to ask questions about God and may have even attended a local church to find some peace. Cans of food from a local food bank were found in his disheveled mobile home along with the slot cars from racing with his dad and brother at local tracks as a boy. Ted Lech, aka “Mr. Motor” was a champion slot car racer and design engineer behind Dyna-Rewind: the fastest motors in the cars on the tracks in the 1960’s. Mike and Rob’s best times were shagging cars during competitions, especially those where their dad smoked all the other race cars every Thursday night!
Dad’s Slot Car
I found the letter from our Dad in Rob’s wallet when my mom, Mike and I got into town after Rob had died. I was devastated. I, too, carried big hurts from our Dad leaving us as children and so did Michael. We needed our Dad and he could not be there. I grieved the pain that my little brother must have carried to his grave. I loved Robbie so much! Then I found a picture in his wallet, the only one he carried with him every day. It was a picture of me. Oh dear. My brother loved me too! Sigh.
I am not quite sure why this memory is so tender for me right now. I am not quite sure why it still hurts so very much. I am not quite sure my little brother Rob knew how much I really loved him. Oh Rob, how I wish you were still here! I wish you could meet my really cool husband Steve and talk with him about cars and motors and carburetors and hemi engines and more! I sure miss you Raaaaaabeeee!
It is quite possible that Steve and I will do some travelling West this Fall. Lord willing, one of our destinations will be New Mexico and potential places north of there for us to live where the climate is dryer. We just may have to visit Palmer Lake, Colorado too.
Rob’s ashes were dispersed at the base of one of the stars on the side of the Palmer Lake Star on Sundance Mountain in the late summer of 2003. Mike and I climbed up the steep slope, hanging onto brambles, posts, and the cables that comprise the outline of the star while our mom waited and watched from the road below. Two of Rob’s friends from the bowling alley lead the way for us while we huffed and puffed fighting altitude sickness to complete our mission to place Rob at rest. His remains are part of the mountain that he called home: the second light fixture from the upper right point of the 5-pointed star. It’s also right next to the resting place of his friend and neighbor, Dewey. Kind of poetic in a way . . .
I do hope that somehow Rob made peace with his past through the tender love of our Heavenly Father before he passed away. I hope that I will see my little brother and his lanky frame, cute smile, and soft brown eyes when I reach the presence of the Lord someday. Hey Robbie, you will always be a shining star in my memories, my heart.
And thanks again for fixing up that 1974 Nova for me too! JJ
It’s easy to bemoan the slide of morality in the United States recently escalated by the legalization of gay marriage. What is natural to the human body has now been publicly adulterated by the unnatural. The institution of marriage, which was created by God, has been changed by a few willful and unlawful men who did not even create the institution of marriage. Alas another door has opened in our lives that will ultimately hurt everyone when his or her rainbow-colored eyes finally open to see it. But most of us will never see the damage coming until it is too late . . .
When the truth, the pain of what we have done to ourselves is revealed, we will mourn. Others will mourn the horror of what our complacency, our tolerance has produced. Further, things will go horribly wrong even for those who believe that free living is right: things that they could only imagine in a sex-slave murder mystery will come into their reality and hurt them too. And those of us who have attempted to shine a light or sound an alarm on the moral decline will realize that what we have tried to do could never be enough to change unbridled evil. Eventually, we all will grieve but for very different reasons.
So who will carry all of our tears? Who will carry your grief and mine? “Who” indeed.
Chad Ryan | The Journal Gazette Five-year old Braxton Davis joined the work crew 6.27.15 at Opechee Way and Nokomis Road, using his toy wheel barrow to remove leaves after a large tree fell in the front yard of his house at the Indian Village intersection.
The cute picture above denotes how we have trivialized the important issues of our day. The picture above denotes how we have traded our core values and beliefs for a picture of life that feels good in the moment. We have minimized the significance, the impact that our actions, our public statements, our private thoughts, the work of our hands can truly have in the larger picture of life. These are not a small issues. Eventually the magnitude and truth of who we are is always revealed. Eventually a tiny wheel barrow carried by a child that is supposed to help us feel good about hundreds of thousands of dollars of storm damage will be crushed by the tsunami of horror headed our way. Our world will never be the same for you and me beginning the events of June 26, 2015.
We cannot fix this. No one individual, you or me, can carry us through to a better future. No one: no President, no preacher, no crafty writer, no partner, no one can fix what is coming for us or carry our wheelbarrow of tears. We are alone to face the consequences of these actions. If we want the pain, the grief to stop then we will have to take our sorrow somewhere many of us have never gone before . . . But where?
We understand the dilemma inside our own home too, in another way. Last night was hell for me and Steve. In the middle of 3 1/2 hours of continuous convulsive episodes, I struggled to squeak out a request for him to carry me to the bathroom. I was also in the middle of a 24-hour urine hormone test procedure so imagine my shame in trying to figure out what to do when my hands or legs were not working right. Neurological collapse had settled in. Gratefully as soon as he got me upright and helped me with a sip of water, I could use my hands well enough to position the urine cup myself when sitting on the toilet. I was able to get the sample and dump it into the collection receptacle resting in the bottom of the tub next to the toilet. Steve then helped me back to bed just in time for the next round of head-banging, wailing, tears, and terrible pain. And so it went for the sixth night in a row.
I am grateful that when Steve is home, he is very capable of carrying me. He has done so a hundred times. He has held me through the ugliest of moments, fed me, clothed me, prayed, and artfully let his deft gallows humor fly at just the right moment in time when we both needed it! Then there were the thousands of times when he was not there and I still needed help. I needed to get to the bathroom but my legs would not move. My throat was parched from cries of sheer angst, hyperventilation, sweats episodes, and chronic dehydration. I wondered if my next breath would arrive or not. My tummy growled for hours and I could do nothing to satisfy the hunger. My brain became too numb to figure out what was in my ability to do or not anyways. Oh the neck pain from the seizing! Fearful thoughts, not my own, pushed into my mind by force of some electrical misfiring that goes with seizure activity. And I cried deeply, feeling alone.
In those moments, Jesus Christ carries me (John 16:32). I am not alone! Jesus Christ carries and equips Steve over and over again for the tasks at hand in our marriage (1 Peter 4:10). Jesus Christ will also carry those who do not know him whenever, wherever they finally reach out for help (Psalm 10:17). Our God, Jesus Christ, is worthy of our reach since He created us out of love: shown to all as He grieved bloody tears for our sorrow, our pain (John 11:35) that we endure in this life. He existed before the time, space, and material that characterizes our lives (John 1:1-4) and is the very reason that we are here. He loves us more than we can ever imagine and is always here for us, no matter what is going on around us (or within us!) (Matthew 28:20).
Further, we can never say that what freedoms we want, doubts we have about our lives, or the philosophy in our own minds will have anything to do with Who God is. God, the triune Holy Spirit, Father, and Son (Jesus Christ), is separate from mankind and is not subject to the constraints of this earthly life. Our ideas simply cannot match up. We will never fully understand Who He is with our finite minds so rejecting Him won’t get you anywhere worthwhile. The answer to our questions, our unmet needs in life is belief.
Because we are finite, we must place our belief in that which is infinite: true yesterday, today and tomorrow. The only entity that is infinite is God. He never changes. He is perfect, all-knowing and we are not. We can reach out to Him in with our tears, know that He cares (Psalm 139:17-18), know that He has our back (Jeremiah 29:11), and live on with hope for tomorrow amidst our trials, our heartache. It follows then that our victory over the heartaches of this life is in Christ alone: the Son of God. Jesus Christ, manifest in His Word (the Bible), reflected in His creation, and felt through the longing inside our hearts, is not bound by our limited view of the world. Jesus transcended this life when He died on the cross and rose from the dead. Jesus Christ will “carry” each of us through the mysteries of life to a better place when we place our trust in Him (John 3:16).
Our Lord Jesus Christ made the difference for me and Steve last night and a hundred other horrible nights. Jesus Christ will make the difference for you too in everything, Gentle Reader, whether you choose to believe in Him now or at another time. But why wait? Why not enjoy His transcendent peace, love, joy, hope, and more right now?
For the believer in Jesus Christ, it doesn’t really matter for our future, what is going on around us in the world right now. We will live infinitely longer in heaven with God than the time it takes to complain about a Supreme Court decision. Join me in doing what we can to love people, all people. Reaffirm in our minds that we ultimately place our trust in only one place: the Person of Jesus Christ. He is the One Who matters most. He is the One who will carry us from here into our blessed eternity with Him. And that is a celebration worth waiting talking about!
But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.”19 These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. (Jude 17-21)
The Lord is the one who carries me for sure. What do you say we go together?
Jesus is for the Wounded 
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