Tag: letting go

Treatment Update 4.25.22

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When gardening and the activities of an Extension Master Gardener ends up creating more stress than joy, we have a problem. Such has been my experience of late. Then increased health issues created a bit of a medical crisis. What to do now? After 9 years of battling a serious, chronic illness there just didn’t seem to be anything left to try. Then the Lord spoke into my heart and I’ve embarked on some important changes in my life. Tonight I am encouraged! Here’s what I decided to do.

  1. Let go of a volunteer role as Editor of a monthly gardening newsletter. Within 2 days of the decision, a flare up of shingles on my face started coming down. Sure, I took some medications but I could only tolerate a couple of doses until it triggered convulsive episodes. I took a break, knowing that a new treatment protocol was on the horizon. The reduction in the stress that I experienced was quite a surprise. As an Extension Master Gardener, I loved volunteering in this way for the past 3 1/2 years and went through a grieving process letting it go. Gratefully I even got to write several articles along the way, two of which you can view here and here.
  2. Daily home ozone therapy. Here’s a simple description of what this entails. After much preparation and study along with professional IV ozone therapies 2 years ago, I drank my first dose of ozonated water this evening. So far, so good (although it tastes really strange!).
  3. Begin the process of finding an online Bible study or women’s fellowship within the Calvary Chapel churches. Sadly my own congregation was unable to help me unless perhaps I started a new ministry. Me and two Christian women bloggers did just that for 2 1/2 years awhile back but this time I’m just not up to getting something going! Gratefully I have found some possibilities.
  4. Focus on our home gardening activities where possible for the foreseeable future. There’s plenty to do here, especially if we add a second tall raised bed yet this growing season. Lord willing, it will happen and some juicy tomatoes will follow!
  5. Sleep more even if it means napping at odd times during the day or cancelling appointments.
  6. Continue in our diet the recent additions of sprouted seeds and microgreens. These have provided a concentrated source of nutrition that has actually improved some of my lab markers. This is so awesome for a gal who hasn’t made much progress in years.
  7. Do more blogging, more journaling, more Bible study, more connecting with Christian gal friends.
  8. Take more walks as I am able, especially with my beloved Steve.

Lord willing there will be fruit from this new direction. It’s been a long, difficult, and complicated journey that isn’t over yet. I might as well keep trying eh? JJ

Isaiah 58:11

11 The Lord will guide you always;
    he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
    and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
    like a spring whose waters never fail.

Microgreens add a solid and beautiful source of nutrition to one’s diet.

After another dead end in the road

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So many times I have chosen the road less travelled.

  • Finally detaching myself from toxic, addicted friends and family members beyond the proverbial geographical cure that didn’t work.
  • Working hard in Al Anon Adult Children of Alcoholics as I discovered the extent to which abuse, dysfunction, relying on survival skills alone, and the absence of a Christ-centered view of the world made my world smaller and darker than it needed to be.
  • Accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
  • Pursuing my goals of higher education degrees in a family where at the time, only one blood relative had done so.
  • Starting and operating a home business several times despite not having all of the strengths needed for success.
  • Divorcing the man instrumental to my coming to faith in Christ when he would not return to our marriage nor his faith of sorts.
  • Embracing the Lord’s restoration of my life after much tragedy: a life total makeover of sorts.
  • Moving out of State to marry my Intended Beloved and start a new life in which I knew no one else but Steve.
  • Finding things that I could learn and still do despite a serious decline of my health and loss of my profession.
  • Never losing hope in the Lord or that better days lain ahead somewhere despite wretched convulsive episodes virtually every day for ten years.

Tough stuff, eh? Thank you Lord for your mercy and grace through it all! Tonight I’m not sure what to make of things when I find myself at the end of another road, another lifeline of a rope that has given me so much. After 3 1/2 years, I have decided to step down from my role as Editor of the monthly newsletter for the Extension Master Gardeners in our county. My 42 newsletters have been a labor of love for me: challenging my creativity, communication, and computer skills as applied to my favorite topic of gardening. I need to open up some time and energy to find new solutions to boost my health. Working on a newsletter in the middle of the night (because that is most often the time I am stable enough to do so) then being trashed all day the next day, then repeating this pattern a few times per month is just too much. It has become a dysfunctional pattern of living just to earn 15 volunteer hours every month. Regardless, I am sad to let it go. I need to let it go. I need to let it go not knowing to where the Lord will lead me from here. I will miss being “in the know” about our local volunteer gardening activities, upcoming events, and exciting developments on the horizon. Gee, I did ask myself about taking the next step towards becoming a board member and advance within the organization: a logical next step. Supervise the new Editor in addition to two other communications coordinators? No, came the answer to my prayer. Not this time or in this way. Sigh, I just wanted to figure out my next steps ahead of time. That’s not the type of road I am travelling on right now. The GPS is stopping right here. I have arrived at a blank screen. But why not?

Geez oh man. Talk about what is looking like another endless path with no answers. Let’s add a few more.

  • Why haven’t the thousands of hours of medical care, excess of a hundred thousand dollars of expenses, many hundreds of hours of research, and prayers of the faithful including my own yielded more fruit so to speak? We don’t know. No one knows.
  • Why did my Mother die right before I met my Intended Beloved? She never got to meet him. She would have loved him dearly.
  • Why did my former supervisor’s house burn to the ground the day before she intended to cancel my trip to see my estranged father right before he died? I didn’t know he was dying and had not seen him in 30 years. Turns out that I got to see him and she didn’t return to work until months later.
  • Why did my Grandmother die the day after I discovered my former husband’s affair? I couldn’t get out of bed to go to work, so overcome with grief.
  • Why have I survived all of the members of my immediate family with no one to carry on the family name? This leaves me feeling pretty empty at the holidays or special occasions.
  • Why did I get to marry the man of my dreams only to not be able to fly with him when he lifts off to so many cool places?

Just because, Gentle Julie. This isn’t heaven. You live in a fallen world marked by sin and evil with only glimmers of my majesty and goodness sprinkled amidst the darkness. Even so, I am God. I am doing a different kind of work in your heart, in your life with a different kind of reward for your faithfulness to follow me instead of the way of the world. I know all of your story. I know all of your sorrows, including ones that only I can see. I know because I am there loving you and seeing you through it all. Thank you for letting me in . . . could you do so even more? I grieve and suffer with you in ways that you can only imagine from what you can see, from my Word. Meet me there. I promise you that the strife, the unrelenting striving that leads to seemingly dead ends will be redeemed when I come again in glory. Lay your cares at the foot of my cross. I will hold them tenderly with your tears. Trust me. I will never leave you or forsake you.

So this blog is a bit of a downer tonight but it doesn’t end there. I write the truth as I know it and about the truth that sets me free. Me and you too, Gentle Reader. Do you know many sorrows too? Weep with me. Weep for your losses, your hurts, your unanswered prayers. Then take each one and place it beneath the cross of our Lord, Jesus Christ right next to mine. He will take them for us from here. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know where the path we are on is leading us when we are living unto the Lord and following Him. What matters is the trail we are leaving behind. JJ

Another Direction

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After enduring hell on earth with dental professional #5 in my search for answers, I have decided to go another direction. Nine hours from now, my beloved hubby and I will be in the office of a new oral surgeon who will examine me and remove my infected tooth in the same visit. The procedure will include IV sedation in his office and not in a hospital setting. By this afternoon, we will be home and I will begin another process of recovery. The shutdown of “elective procedures” due to the corona virus which has delayed this procedure 5 weeks since my diagnosis will thus be overcome.

Lord willing, the convulsive episodes triggered by virtually every meal, even the pureed ones over the last week, will diminish. Will the episodes stop completely? Only my Lord knows the answer to that question.

We have been here before in: 1) 2015 with the extraction of 2 infected teeth (one of which had a root canal with a hidden amalgam) and 2) 2018 with the fabrication of specialized dental appliances by a Craniomandibular specialist. Both interventions brought significant gains however they did not fully eliminate the problems related to the trigeminal nerve complex on the left side of my face. Looks like there is another tooth involved. Looks like that problem is about to be extracted, i.e. it’s OUTTA HERE!

I am weary, Gentle Reader. I am concerned about pain management. I am concerned that while this procedure will solve an immediate problem, it will not stop the convulsive episodes that continue every day. Actually lately it has been multiple times per day: every night falling asleep is when they occur most consistently. My neck and upper traps are quite painful from the wrenching and rapid repetitive movements of the seizure attacks. Everything hurts in my broken frame. I have a headache every day. The mandated quarantine orders and fear of viral infection has kept us at home for most of the past 5 weeks. No Doctor, Chiropractor or Physical Therapy or Detox or IV Ozone treatments. What a crazy time in history to be chronically ill.

With nothing left to give, I submit the appointment later today to the will and covering of my Lord, Jesus Christ. Please carry me and my beloved this day . . . .

The Sauna I Once Loved

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Like an old lover that must fade into the background of new life

My sauna must go forth to its new owner, leaving me FIR behind.

She needs it to arrest the cancer in her own body and that of her Mom,

Imagine that: a generational curse that threatens the life between them.

I am happy to pass to them this box of promise, of hope

Bringing them much relief as the toxins melt away with the wavelengths of light.

As for me I am melancholy this day, this night

For I thought I would fare better for the investment therein.

The last of my inheritance was spent the year the Sunlighten entered our home

Hopeful with the promise of a cure from what all ailed me at the time: at first, it was great.

The warmth was undeniable especially on cold Indiana nights

When nothing else would do . . . no nothing else at all.

But did it help purge the alleged chronic Lyme embedded deep within

The bacterium, the viruses, the fungal creatures claimed on imperfect tests?

I may never know as the onslaught hath continued from the rigors of this life

From living in a fallen world hell-bent on our demise, our redemption one day for us all.

Just don’t see how this tool that I once loved, held so much promise

Is worth holding onto longer when all it collects is dust in our living room now.

So onto the next thing I shall be: from the consult of last week to the specialist to come

When in the meantime I know it’s the Lord that is my Great Physician and yours:

The object of my greatest love indeed.

SOLD!!!

When you search no more

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Google and Google Scholar have gotten way too much traffic from me these past 8 years of battling serious illness. It’s time to spend less time there and more time dwelling in the presence of my Lord, Jesus Christ.

And so I shall.

Facebook has been my link to the world outside the comforting yet speechless walls of our home when there were no more folks to call on the phone. A recent relapse in convulsive episodes brings a state of mental fog afterwards. While not a true “post ictal” phase of an epileptic seizure, it is still a time when goal-directed activity (as I used to call it when working in my profession of occupational therapy) simply does not occur. Reading short phrases while lying in a passive state is about the best I can do. Well, except when my beloved is nearby and comforts me dearly. But I follow way too many disease-oriented groups on Facebook so spending time there is not really a break from life, a connection to the living, or even as entertaining as it once was. It’s time to spend less time there and more time dwelling in the presence of my Lord, Jesus Christ.

And so I shall.

Endless planning in my mind or on the calendar on my smart phone has increasingly become a source of frustration rather than relief or even hope. Focusing too much on the future brings tomorrow along too soon, robbing me of the gifts all around me in today. I simply don’t know when-or-if I will be a candidate for parathyroid surgery now that I have a diagnosis that explains so very much of what is wrong with my health. I simply have to wait for others to review my case and call me. Steve and I will adjust our schedules and lives accordingly. It’s time to spend less time there and more time dwelling in the presence of my Lord, Jesus Christ.

And so I shall.

Gardening has become both a hobby and source of identity when my role as an Occupational Therapist went away. I am grateful that a couple of months of better health in the spring allowed me to largely finish a rain garden project in my community as a Master Gardener. My volunteer work continues as the Assistant Editor of the quarterly publication, Canoe News (of the United States Canoe Association), and Editor of the monthly newsletter, Across the Fence (of the Master Gardeners of Purdue Extension, Allen County). Often these are difficult to get done; somehow with the Lord’s grace we do. But I am struggling to keep up with our own landscape that requires daily maintenance and some brute strength that is tough for me to do these days. The degenerative changes in my spine are not going to go away so what will I/we do about all of those flower and fruit and vegetable beds out there? Keep watering for now, pray about it, and realize that it’s probably time to spend less time there and more time dwelling in the presence of my Lord, Jesus Christ.

And so I shall.

Gee, suddenly I feel less stressed about things. Thank you Jesus. You care about these issues in my life and in those of the Gentle Readers out there too, holding every one in the palm of your hand, the love in your heart, with the promise of your return. Things will work out according to Your Divine plan for our lives. In this we can rest tonight.

And so we shall, eh?