Are you listening?

I am simply at the end of my rope, dangling by a thread and unsure of what I will fall into. I am in so much pain, my doctor won't help, my husband doesn't get it, my kids well... are kids. I don't know what to do. I contacted a lawyer who told me that in order to get disability I need to quit my job. I can't quit my job because it would hurt my family. I can't keep working because I am in so much pain and nothing is working!! I have had a kenalog shot, a round of prednisone and I am taking the last of the pain medication I had on hand that was prescribed for my back. The doctor will not give me any pain management and I am self medicating at night with OTC sleeping pills, ibuprofen 800 mg, and the pain pill just to sleep. I keep praying for something to happen and yet it doesn't change, please please pray for me. I hate to ask others to intercede for me but I don't know what else to do.

Superhero

So for awhile now I have been having some pretty bad symptoms. I had very heavy fatigue, the kind where you are dragging your legs around and feel like you weigh 1000 lbs. The kind that never goes away no matter how many naps you take, how early you go to bed or what kind of activity you are involved in. The doctor has been told, she doesn't understand and asks my if I am taking my vitamins and folic acid. I am screaming, "DUH!! That is why I am asking you!!" When I went for my yearly physical and blood work with my family physician my blood came back with high cholesterol, this was no surprise as I have had it before and my family history is full of it. Doctor said to take fish oil supplements, ewww never met a fish oil supplement that I could stomach they all come back as fish burps. I started thinking about the family history, high blood pressure, Rheumatoid Arthritis, type 2 diabetes, heart attacks, plaque in the arteries, cancer, asthma, arthritis, high blood pressure and heart disease. Wow did I sound like a ticking time bomb, tick, tick, tick. I started think what can I do to change my cholesterol which would in turn lower my likelihood of getting some of the other stuff. I knew meat would have to go, I had been a vegetarian before and knew that it had made a major effect on the cholesterol. I began to think some more and decided to read a book that I had seen on the morning talk shows, the book was the kind life by Alicia Silverstone. I know what you are thinking the girl from Clueless, come on Tina! Yeah well she is a great writer and encouraged me to take some bold steps in my life, I became a vegan! At first my decision was purely to affect my cholesterol and risk of heart disease but I found some added icing on the cake. My energy level is back to normal, if not better than normal I feel like a human again. I have steady energy that lasts all day and at night guess what I do? Sleep! Like a baby. All the stress I felt before about my day, my family, my work, school, it is now gone. Alicia tells us in the book that animals are under a tremendous amount of stress before they are slaughtered and all that stress hormone is secreted into the meat we eat. When I sit down and eat a meal my food comforts me, it heals me, nourishes me and gives me a sense of peace because it is living food for a living body. I know it sounds so hippy but it is true. I am not going to make anyone feel bad for the food choices on their plate, it is not my job and everyone has to make choices for themselves but I am giving you a challenge. Go meat and dairy free for just two weeks and see what a difference it can make in your body! 

How did she get so brilliant?

I was talking to my daughter about life, how I really felt like a failure because I don't have energy to do anything. (stupid Rheumatoid Arthritis) My oh so wise daughter reminded me that pain in our bodies, the aches, the fatigue is so temporary. That in reality it is our spirit and heart that are well and doing what God wants us to do in the this season. That we need to keep our mind on the spirit and heart and move away from thinking about our temporary bodies. How did she get so brilliant?? It sparked in me, like a light bulb, like the switch was turn on. Why had I never thought about it that way! Here I was defeated, thinking I was a failure because I can't do what I use to do, can't do what I want to do. I was letting the enemy win! I might not have the energy and strength to run a marathon but I can keep my mind on the things that are eternal, that have real meaning, and in this way the enemy has no place in my life.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are[e] being renewed every day. 17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

I am sure that my daughters were all sent from heaven as a blessing to me, they remind me everyday of the truth, the light, the freedom in Christ!

The Isolation of Rheumatoid Arthritis Pain

I am not superwoman

According to my family and those who know me I am superwoman. I have always been able to keep going, to get things done even when everyone around me was withering from exhaustion. I am trying to get my family to realize and understand that I am not that person anymore, that my body is now being ravaged by a disease that slowly takes away my physical strength, mind and spirit. The disease is Rheumatoid Arthritis. For years I have struggled with undiagnosed pain and fatigue and now it has a name. I am fighting it with all I can, my strength, my spirit, my heart and my mind. The pain sometime is so unbearable, my body just wants to rest in a hot tub and try to unwind itself. But I don't do that, I keep going, keep working, keep trying to have a assemblance of normalcy. I am not the type or person to ask for help, to complain or to make my needs known. Is that bad? I expect my family to help me, to understand. How can they when they don't know what this feels like. When it hurts to walk because you have bulging discs in your lower back, your hips are inflamed and of coarse your knees and feet hurt because your RA will not settle down. Oh yeah and I am suppose to walk 3 miles to work each day and teach 3 year old's. Yes, I am complaining. I know I shouldn't but lately I feel like no one is listening.

The dictionary describes pain as:

pain

An unpleasant sensation that can range from mild, localized discomfort to agony. Pain has both physical and emotional components. The physical part of pain results from nerve stimulation. Pain may be contained to a discrete area, as in an injury, or it can be more diffuse, as in disorders like fibromyalgia. Pain is mediated by specific nerve fibers that carry the pain impulses to the brain where their conscious appreciation may be modified by many factors.

Pain is also a term specifically used to denote a painful uterine contraction occurring in childbirth.

The word "pain" comes from the Latin "poena" meaning a fine, a penalty.

 /peɪn/ Show S

Contrary to popular belief my RA pain does not go away with Ibuprofen, Methotrexate injections or muscle relaxants. It does not ever go away it simply migrates to another joint and continues on it's coarse.

Ok now what?

There have been many times in my life that I have said that I just couldn't take anymore. My mother passing away, losing a baby, many breakups and tired points in my life. Each time my heart would break and somehow God sealed it shut again and healed it. When you are in those times you feel like life could never change, that things in turn could never be good again. It is only when we look back at those time that we can see what God has done through our own pain and anguish. Some might call this refining and while I see the similarities all pain is not refinement. Some pain is just pain or part of living in this broken world. Refinement is done on a heart level and it can have nothing to do with your physical surroundings.
This last year has taught me that you can take nothing for granted, not health, employment, housing, security, or future. All of these things are like dust in the wind, blown away when the storms of life come to us. My oldest daughter, beautiful and pure, a young women full of sweetest and light has suffered tremendously this year with her health and state of mind. It really became serious rather quickly, one week we are looking at colleges or mission trips and the next week she is suicidal and in the hospital. Shock is the only word to describe how I felt. My baby was lost in the darkness and I had no way to pull her back to the light. She spent 5 days in the hospital and was released to our care, we had no way to care for her. She was being swallowed by something so big and we felt helpless to help her. Meanwhile my husband was fired from his job, a job that he cared about, a job that we all felt was what God had called us to do. This snowballed into loss of income, foreclosure of our home and we were left homeless. We packed up our things and moved to Florida to live with my in laws. A blessing not to be on the street but still those things that had just happened had lasting effects on us. My family now questioning their faith, the church, the future now in Florida without any direction, treading water. I am still too close to the situation to see what God is doing through it. It still hurts, we are all still processing the information and trying to make sense of it all. So 2010 was a hard year for all of us here, I have never been so happy to see 2011 come because I know in my heart it will be better than last year, it is my rainbow filled with trusting in God's promises.