I FINALLY logged back on!!!

So, let's see. It's been how many months!? I just decided to start another blog (www.southernhemisphereofthebrain.blogspot.com)
(I know, long title...) and when I went to log back in to that one, it popped up with this one as well! And after all this time when I had given up hope of EVER figuring out how to get back into it.

Well, no guarantees (as you should know by now), but I am going to start this blog back up as well. My kiddos are so cute and precocious that I need to have an outlet for it. Now if I could just have an outlet when they are bouncing off the walls and making me wonky...

Ms. Gimp

The loss of my mobility is a staggering blow to my psyche. I am a go-getter, a doer. I do not sit still and wait for life to happen; I make my life happen. To wake up one morning and have the ability to move as I like suddenly be missing is a serious obstacle to my determination to be stoic. I cannot cope with it. I have tried to make myself walk normally and it doesn’t happen. In the past, I was always a mind over matter kind of girl. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and all that. These days, I’m lucky if I can remember what a will is.

I never realized how my concept of self was tied up in my mobility. I am not entirely sure exactly what the hang-up is for me. Is it looking like a cripple? Is it not being able to be as limber and agile? Is it that I can’t keep up with my family anymore? I imagine it has something to do with all of the above.

Healing and Suffering

I have been thinking a lot lately about the role that suffering plays in my life. As I look back over the last ten years and more, I see a definite pattern. I see seasons of pain and suffering interspersed with seasons of calm and quiet. Hand in hand with that, I see seasons of growth and seasons of rest. The times of growth directly correlate with the times of pain and suffering. I am often reminded of the song refiner’s fire. It really strikes a chord in my heart. My heart’s one desire IS to be close to you, Lord. With out those times of heartache and trial, I don’t know that I would have that closeness that I so often find myself looking for.

I find that when I am living in a season of rest, I become complacent. I have no driving urge to seek God’s company. I have nothing (or very little) to push me to seek him and to rely on His strength to sustain me. Why should I? In those times, my life is at peace. Why put in the extra work if things are comfortably gliding along? Until fairly recently, it has only been during the times of crisis that I have felt God, heard God, and reached out my hand to Him. All other times, I have let Him fade into the background of my consciousness while I live my life on my terms. It’s as though he is my secret weapon to be pulled out in case of emergency.

As I reflect on these patterns, I feel a certain sense of guilt. I don’t think this is how a relationship is supposed to work. I have been in these sorts of one-sided deals and they breed nothing but frustration, anger and resentment. I know this and yet I live this way. It’s as though I cannot reconcile my emotional and my intellectual selves.

Anyway, back to my main point. I look back and I recognize that I have been given a gift in my sufferings. I can look back at each of those moments and see multiple blessings that came out of them. Things that I never in my wildest dreams would have considered to be a byproduct of some of my experiences, and yet God brought those blessings out of those moments. My point is that without that suffering, I would very likely have missed out on those blessings. I am not saying that we should seek out trouble or that God only blesses us through our problems. But I do believe that God allows life to function.

Healing can come in many forms and to expect it to take a shape that we have conjured up is to deny the sovereignty of God. Perhaps healing for me will be emotional – I will learn to live my life in the way that God wishes for me to. Maybe it will be a healing of my mind – I have already spent more time in reflection and in writing than I have in the last several years combined. I know that God has this plan for me and yet I repeatedly struggle to embrace it. Perhaps this healing that everyone is praying for and talking about is not my healing, but a healing of others that God can bring about through me.

Should I pray for the removal of a burden?

What if the burden is something I can live with? Should I always automatically pray for it to be removed? What if I feel that this is part of God’s plan for my life? A part of me doesn’t want to be healed. I think it may be because I feel closer to God this way; I know I HAVE to rely on him more when I am burdened. Perhaps it has something to do with my being in crisis mode for the last ten years.

Why AM I struggling to pray for healing? Why do I hesitate to pray the God’s will be done, knowing that it may lead to healing?

So I have thought about this for several days now, and The Doctor had a very good insight when I broached the subject with him. I like to be in control. I am a doer and I like to know what is happening so that I can control the situation. I think that is why I am so good in crisis situations; why I keep a level head and calm demeanor. If I flip out, I lose that so very important control.

The Doctor’s thought was that if I start letting people pray for me, lay hands on me, etc. then it is one more way for me to feel out of control. See, I would like to think that it is more along the lines of my first thought. I am so in tune to feeling God’s presence in times of trouble that I can thank him for giving me trials. See how holy and godly I am? Unfortunately, one of the things I have recently been gifted with is a clearer vision of self. I think, no, I know that Jeremy is on to something.

In past situations, I have still maintained some semblance of control, albeit a small portion. Tater Tot’s allergies – I can change my diet to accommodate her needs. Big Guy’s Asperger’s – I can read books, join an online support group, find therapists to work with him. Doodle Bug’s sensory seeking behaviors – I can wear padded pants or decide to live with bruises, and I can build him an indoor playground. Life with The Doctor – I can even maintain some control there. Admittedly, it is much harder, and definitely more complicated than it is with the kids. But with this, the MS, I am losing control. Maybe for the first time in my life. Why is that so hard for me?

I find that I am scared to let go and allow others to actively pray for me. I feel it is one thing for anonymous people to offer up anonymous prayers on my behalf, but quite another to have people you know and have relationships with surround you and demand that God heal you. The quiet part of me feels like they are trying to steal something from me. How dare they do this!? It feels like an invasion of sorts. A friendly, well-intentioned stripping of part of who I am or what it is that I am made of. You see, at the moment I am more relieved than anything to be diagnosed with MS. I have lived this way for ten or twelve years. I have had worsening symptoms for almost two years now. I have cried over these confusing and infuriating ‘minor’ problems that add up to a poorly and barely functioning me. I have questioned whether or not I was losing my mind or imagining symptoms and over-exaggerating. I have spent the last several years increasingly fretting about what was wrong with me.

While I swing back and forth between relief and fear, I find that I have been spending the majority of my time on the former. To finally understand that I am OK! There is a reason for the way I am. I am not simply weak or exaggerating or losing my mind. I do not have Alzheimer’s. I do not have some new, unheard of type of bone cancer. I am not overly stressed, tired, or malnourished. My thyroid and iron levels, and all my other levels are fine. I just have multiple sclerosis. To me, at this point, that it such a comforting thing to wrap my mind around. And to have those who care about me want to take it away makes no sense to my lesion ridden brain.

One of the most difficult things for me to read about MS is that the only predictable thing about the disease is its unpredictability. That and the statistics about the decline people who have had the disease for a while seem to go through. I am starting to understand that with this particular journey there will be little that I will be able to keep under my control. On one hand is the disease whose only defining trait is its inability to be securely controlled. On the other hand, people who love me and care for me are asking me to trust that God will heal me.

Both directions are fearful to me. The MS for obvious reasons. Trusting God and the prayers of those around me is a little more difficult to understand. The Doctor’s thoughts on my desire to maintain some control though opened me up to a new train of thought. I can’t control God. I have learned that lesson very intimately several times over the last few seasons of my life. Any time I have challenged God to anything, I have come out the sorry loser, bearing scars from the encounter. I know what happens when you open yourself up to letting God do anything he wants with your life. While I firmly believe in refining through fire and that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, etc. I also don’t jump at the chance to turn my life upside-down as I have in the past.

The last time I prayed, demanding things of God, I asked that He let me prove that I trusted him. He definitely gave me that opportunity, and I still struggle with the wounds. I naïvely challenged Him, and the funny thing about God is that He will take you up on that sort of thing. So you’d think by now, I would have a better grasp on the idea that I am not at all in control. I have had that truth thrust in my face time and again. Yet I still trip over the concept. As with all the other truths I keep discovering, I seem unable to cement them into myself. I seem to constantly take three steps back to ever two forward. Is this a part of my forgetfulness? My lesions making my memory blurry so that I cannot remember lessons learned?

I fear not. I suspect this is all just a part of my humanness. I know that after a point, it is just an illusion that I am maintaining control. Life is too complex and multifaceted for me to be able to control it.