And The Beat Goes On

Pss. 55:6 “And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.”

And The Beat Goes On

In between all the angst of the chemo days, a lot of cruddy things happen in what seems like the beat of a drum. One thing, two thing rat a tat tat, and the beat goes on. This might be the proof I needed to show you that NEGATIVITY breeds NEGATIVITY! All of the instances below began at the beginning of the acceptance of Herceptin, it's when everything was negative to me.

In the midst of our illnesses (my hubby's and mine), our three-year-old fridge decides to make an extremely loud clanking noise in the middle of the night. Loud and irritating, (fridge not hubby) my husband decides to be jarred awake and go bang on the side of the rowdy fridge. The clanking stopped, but the momentum had the cookie jar on top of the fridge, toppling over, the lid came crashing down on the floor shattering into a million pieces, and at three o’clock in the morning, clear eyes are not to be had! Clean up. * sigh *

Then our twenty-year-old clothes dryer decides to play the fridge game and begins its own riotous annoying noise. Not at three a.m. and still heating and drying, its all good, just a pain in the EAR!

His twenty-one-year-old truck decides it’s going to do some booming and banging and as we were heading home from the doctors one day the clanking was obviously the muffler, that had fallen off, dragging behind us. We pulled into a safe place (there are no safe sides of the road here), and hubby pulls the muffler off and places it in the back of the truck. We don’t litter. More sighs are in the works with maybe a few eye-rolls. Next...

Hubby looks all over for his thirteen-year-old phone. I hear something heavy and noisy clanking (this post title should be clanking) in the washer that he had just loaded and started up. I tell him the noise doesn’t sound right from a new washer, but as a man (all men) who don’t listen, goes on with his day, until its time to get clothes out of the washer and what drops to the floor? His phone! The old phone went through the entire wash, rinse and spin cycle. He fruitlessly tries to save it, to no avail. He panics. Our phones are everything to us out here in the middle of nowhere with no landline. Besides being a shop-o-holic, the man is addicted to technology (like the rest of the world)!!!!!

I finish up the clothes, drying and folding and putting away as he runs off to the store to buy a new phone. Payment will just be added to our bill so no out of empty-pocket cash necessary. My anxiety rears its head because it just seems like everything is hitting us and hitting us hard. The fridge, the dryer, the truck, chemo crud, and a clinging cold/allergy session, and now, the phone.

Two hours later he returns with what they had to offer. A deal. UH OH! I hope he didn’t… he did. He fell for what they had to offer: a Smartphone and a FREE tablet with all the fixins and trimmings. A case, a keyboard, and they even tossed in some GPS thing for the car. Swindled. A week later he was returning, the phone shield (not free) and protective phone cover, keyboard to the tablet and the case (also not free). For what they were charging him HUNDREDS of dollars for, he purchased on Amazon for under fifty bucks!

I happen to despise the smartphone and everything that it stands for. I’ll hold my ground with my stupid phone as long as I can, but wouldn’t you know it, ironically, maybe less than two weeks later since his purchase, my phone stops working. Keys don’t function, the battery barely holds a charge, and the only key that worked in the end, was a way to get my contacts before my dumb-phone went dark, never to open its eyes again. 

I cried! I wanted my stupid phone! My only active contacts on the phone were my texts to my son, a text to hubby when he was on break at work, and two calls on the weekend to my mother. That’s it! Now the phone has gone into the ether. What will this poor woman do??

Hubby snapped into action, he ordered me a phone online and it would take two days to arrive. Thank God my son has a FB messenger app that when I write to him from Facebook, it goes right to his phone. Two days not talking to him, my lifeline, would tear me to pieces. Facebook finally came in handy! The only problem? With our phone service (I have no idea what it all entails, and I don’t care to know. Technology is a blank to me, a total blank!) the only phone they force on you is, you guessed it, the Smartphone! They offer NOTHING but smartphones! 

So my phone conveniently goes up in a puff of smoke when his phone was accidentally fried. Now I'm forced to get a new phone. It’s a conspiracy. It seems everything can and is going wrong like a train derailment skidding into a stop position but no sign of slowing any time soon.
But wait all of this began happening when my perky positive self took a turn for the worse. I’m an optimist, positive sharer of love, and giver of smiles and joy, but when I knew I was going for chemo in the vein, my world toppled! TOPPLED! I lost hope, I lost laughter and joy and optimism. Optimism is what God wanted me to have but hope was veiled, I couldn’t find positivity and every single day it is a struggle to see the Light shine, and lack of sun and warmth is no help.

Also on the familial level, I feel like a forgotten soul. Do you know how hard it is to love online Spiritual Family, that actually embraces me daily, more than any other family I'm connected to? Don’t get me wrong, I love the families God has surrounded me with but it is hard to see people as caring with an every-three-month email or visit (if that) saying I’m praying for you, hope things are okay. I’ve shut down. If you want to know how I am ask ME, I’ll be glad to tell you, if you don’t ask, I won’t, it’s that easy.

I’ve written a blog for well over ten years. My family could sure learn a lot about me if they read the pain in my words but no, they’ll wait until I pass and say, “How come I didn’t know about this?” Well, you did but you didn’t care enough to read the very heart and soul of the one you claimed to have loved.

Now to turn this around into a positive! I HAVE to see positive beauty in life, the life I WANT to live and not give up on. I have a husband, a son, and a Spiritual Family that cares for me, touches me, and gives me strength every single day to go on and be the me they know me to be! I am HER!!! It’s just hard digging her out of the trenches the sandy soil has encompassed me with.

The truck still runs, the chemo might get better, we did get new phones (that’s a whole different story) and my hardy Salvias are trying to peek their heads out and show me that life IS worth sticking around for. Until I got wind of a Blizzard Warning for the end of the week. HA HA HA HA! 

I’m looking up! I need to continue writing because that is the emotional healing that I NEED. Where you all follow along, read, and support me, my family here doesn’t know much at all and is full of questions. That pretty much sets me back because my path is NOT the path they’d choose, nor would any of you for that matter, but you RESPECT my chosen path! I love you for that. 

When I say I don’t look forward to living. The family gasps! You guys reading this understand me and know that this is just a phase and offer prayer, support and strength as I wiggle my way through this setback. You lift me up and make me WANT to live! Give me a REASON to live! And just as I typed this I peeked at Facebook before posting this and here’s what greeted me. “Our thoughts and feelings have an electromagnetic reality. Manifest wisely.” 

I think my Spiritual Family actually gets this, I thank you and love you for knowing and understanding me! Manifest positivity and it powers through! Manifest negativity and everything can and will go wrong. 

Mark 1:10  "And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him:”

Comfort Zone

Isa. 49:13 Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains: for the LORD hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.

Through prayer people find the comforting arms of the Lord surrounding them in their time of need.

These past few weeks I have been down, depressed and not wanting to go on in life and the only thing that got me through was prayer. Even us good people have our moments of darkness shrouding us but we MUST go on and in prayer I find healing. 

Lam. 1:16 “For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.”

I spoke the other day about our loss of electricity due to a substation malfunction and me being ever the optimist saw light in those many hours of darkness. Here I was, at a low point and who would have thought that hours without electricity and the unknown return of the electricity could spring optimism and hope?

We were sitting at the kitchen table with a kerosene lamp and candles lighting the room but it was the Lord’s presence and warmth I felt the most. As I looked at the shadowed faces trying to pick a card to throw out as we played Rummy, I smiled. I felt comfort and loving arms hugging me and allowing me to see a light in this darkness.

Facebook for some is a game room where they play their games and have fun, for some it is a place to joke around and have fun while for some it is a political pedestal that they can stand on and promote negativity. The U.S.A is a pool of negativity these days and I can’t wrap my arms around it or swim in the cesspool of hate. 

Facebook to me has become an ocean of prayer. There is not a day that goes by that someone isn’t in need of prayer; whether it is an illness they seek out prayer for, a medical procedure, or a death in the family. People seek out prayer because of the healing that they feel wash over them.

While I sat at home, wallowing in my own self-pity, I was still drawn to the power of prayer and continued on my facebook journey to see who needed prayer on any given day. Through praying for others, I felt an emotional healing within myself, and the day we lost electricity it became a God-slap moment.

In the previous weeks I had cried, I ranted and raved and sang the woe, woe is me plea. I didn’t know if anyone knew of my predicament but I do know that I have a friend on facebook who prays daily about the downtrodden and on this occasion, these prayers were for me. I could feel them holding me in place.

I used to use facebook as an avenue for writing and my writing friends but it quickly became a place of prayer for me. I can be fun and jolly with the rest of the playmates but my focus is on prayer and those in need on facebook and outside of facebook. 

Take for instance my mother. The other day she informed me that they might be raising her rent. Knowing she and my father have limited income and are swimming in medical debts, she was worried. Instead of worrying with her and adding to the worry, I chose to pray. Yesterday when I spoke to her she said that they DID raise her rent by forty dollars BUT and this is a BIG but, she was okay with the increase. I feel in every fiber of my being it was because of prayer that she was comforted. My mother, the worrywart, was comforted!

I end this week from a different perspective. I’m not down, I’m not up, I’m right in the middle seeing hope at the end of the tunnel. I see that life is not about religion, or how one practices their religion, it is not about judging people for the way they practice their faith, it is about strengthening people in their walk of faith and being a prayer warrior that they can turn to and trust and hopefully find some comfort. When all is said and done at the end of the day, I’ve found my comfort zone… in prayer.

God bless you all!

Matt. 9:22 “But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.”

Alone

Num. 11:14 I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.

I think I’m being selfish here.

I have no desire to live and every time I have these thoughts God places something on my heart to keep me here.

Is it Nebraska I’m tired of? Is it the life I made for myself that I’m tired of? Is it just me throwing a pity party for myself?

I think I’m tired of being alone. Alone in my thoughts, alone watching football, alone in my world where the only people I have to communicate is my son, and my internet friends who sometimes are the only thing that keep me alive. Yes, I know, with God I am never alone but I need a physical, emotional kind of love in my life that I’m not getting. Is that being selfish? Wanting to be loved?

The enemy has placed himself here in this house and I have no way of ridding him when I myself am hanging in the balances. I feel like a failure as a mother, a writer, a wife (when I was one) and definitely a failure in the relationship department. Anti-social is not me but out here in the middle of nowhere, one can begin to feel a little isolated from the world.

So where did the road start to twist and turn.  Well right after Adam graduated I felt it shift, then a month passed and we quit going to church. That was a depressing time, but I pulled myself out of the hole with the help of Bob offering me a place back in the writing world and I took that as a promising sign but the world around me was still crashing.

I continue to slowly spiral down with a few puffs upward mind you, but still, plummeting down. I completed a six-week fiction writing course and it was good, but I realized I’m really not cut out for fiction writing. I was seriously considering self-publishing until someone said, “Make sure you get it edited, your grammar is lousy!” This as my book of poetry was to be handed in THAT day. I backed out.

Then I fell. I tripped over my computer wire and didn’t have the ability to catch myself and I went down hard injuring my already throbbing back, the fall turned it into a bass pounding thumping that had me clinging to my cane for a day. Yes a cane, go ahead and tease me how only old ladies use canes, it’s not like I haven’t heard it before. I only use it for emergencies and this was an emergency.

Then there was the three days off. He had three days in a row off and I knew what to expect, a thirty-hour plus marathon of You Tube. Yeah, that’s real communication isn’t it. Uh oh, a dangling participle, sue me someone!

Then there was the news of our Christmas. Yeah, no exchanging of gifts, just a day of food and family. While it is HIS family and not mine, I’m sorry (selfish moment here) the exchanging of gifts, all sitting around, taking turns in opening them was a highlight of five years of Christmas’ here, all to be silenced by food. Joy! I’ll enjoy a few nibbles and savor every moment I have in a FAMILY atmosphere. Something I NEVER had or have in my life.

Can you tell I’m at the end of my rope here? I’m dangling and there isn’t one soul who is reaching out to comfort me, here in the pit of isolation. Then to top it off, a friend lost his mother, another friend lost his daughter, and yet another friend lost their father. Then there is this whole scare with Ebola and I’m clinging to the only light I had in my life these past few years, Pastor Mike. I listened to his sermon and I felt the fishing rod pulling me back to shore.

On an okay note, Medicaid sent me an application to RENEW? I had it the first year I came to Nebraska, but then the next year I became ineligible. Apparently living with someone means I make too much money (even though I don’t see or have a dime.) It came out of the blue and since there’s no guarantee I have nothing to lose, right? Right! I either get it or I don’t. That’s like saying I either live or I die, no biggy, I’ll take either one.

Will anyone read this? Will anyone care? Probably not. If I don’t post in on facebook, no one will even know this posts exists.

I’m sounding like an ungrateful whiny brat, I know. But I’m done. I’m not anyone’s doormat and I have to be done.

I don’t know.

I just don’t know.

Even in my darkest days, He assures me I have a REASON to be alive.