Eleventh Hour Gift

James 4:17 “Therefore to him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin.”

A Moral Compass

Yesterday I was reading one of my morning emails by Max Lucado, this one was titled “An Eleventh Hour Gift”. If you’re a Christian, you might know where I’m going with this and what it all means. The eleventh-hour gift was the gift of forgiveness as Jesus hung on the cross dying.

When one criminal hurled accusations at Jesus, the criminal on His other side chastised him for saying such a thing about a man who had done nothing wrong! “Yes we did something wrong, yes, but this man is innocent!” No one knows exactly what was said while three men hung bleeding to death on a cross but Jesus said something profound, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” My faith tells me that THAT is the kind of man Jesus was/and IS all about, love and forgiveness.

What? This criminal? Paradise? Full of sin gets to see paradise? Yes, people, that’s what Jesus’ death was for this tainted world, forgiving our sin-filled nature. Did these men attend church? Did they wash Jesus’ feet? Did they tithe and read scripture regularly, picking it apart word for word so they got it right with the Lord? Do they get to see paradise too? 

It gets tricky and I believe this is why we have an era stuck in a world judging God/Jesus and the moral compass. They answer to no one and forcing them to read a Bible that is full of sinners, rapist, killers, sodomy, and incest, the line of teaching gets lost and they come out on the other end with their own truth. Atheist didn’t become that way because they DIDN’T read the Bible, no, more than likely they read it and came away with their own summation.

I have a son, nieces, and nephews from blood and marriage and I know the different upbringings each of them had and what they carry with them. They define God in their own way, no matter what the Bible says, their parents said, ministers say, they come to their own conclusion of what a Moral Compass even is; they answer to no one. And even the ones that turned out to be Christians, came out believing ‘God didn’t mean it this way or that way, again, making their own truth fit what they’ve read and learned.

This is sad but when I read that email of Max Lucado’s it seemed pretty clear to me, Jesus didn’t die because we were all perfect in our moral compass worlds. He died because we are ALL sinners. So does that mean we get left behind because we’re out here with our high and mighty Moral Compass? We do everything right and honorable and fall on occasion, so does that mean we’re just going to be forgotten in our eleventh hour? I don’t believe so.

Will all of the children growing up today be forgotten because they don’t understand what the bible and the message said? No, they won’t! They are not being taught and much of what is taught is misconstrued, mixed and a jumbled up mess of laws, vows, deaths, and sins, they see no hope in the Word and are not taught of the HOPE in the Word.

People today are so vindictive, so eager to have the upper hand and smite the neighbor, it is a long line of misconceptions we teach our kids that it is okay, because of what, God forgives? TO ME, it is us, who already know that it’s a sin who will have trouble ‘knocking on heavens door.’

What I’m saying is, today is Good Friday, it is the day designated as the day Jesus was hung on the cross. I say designated because no one, and I mean NO ONE, knows of the day or hour our Lord was hung on the cross. One thing we Christians ARE certain of is that He died with one last breath forgiving a sinner who didn’t know any better all of his life, that Jesus was the God that many searches for. He forgave mankind, point blank!

I remember when I broke my femur last September and I laid crying in pain, what kept me sane at the moment was knowing Jesus suffered more as He made his way to the cross. The images of Jesus being whipped and beaten as He dragged the heavy wood to the top of ‘Skull’s Hill’ gave me something to focus on other than what I was enduring. Every drop of bloodshed, every laceration, every wail of pain from an innocent man, left my pain feeling small and petty.

As the past six weeks have been filled with pains all over my body that I DID NOT expect to feel, I thought I could handle any pain after Septembers rain of pain but this pain is just as immeasurable and I failed to conjure the images that I know might carry me through to the finish. I feel like a failure as I head into my New Year, no longer looking forward to ringing in the New Year in the fashion that I’ve done for years now. It’s all changed. Life has changed, the world has changed.

Easter Sunday will be different this year. My husband has to work, my son has to work, the family will rejoice with food and one another, sharing and caring and I’ll be left alone to celebrate my New Year in the fashion that I saw it coming, alone, with the One that forgave man, all of mankind, for being the sinners they are.

One thing I can say is that this Sunday I will RISE from my bed, and embrace the chance to live another day, basking in His glory! Another sunrise and sunset to tell the people of the world that no matter the sin, no matter the pain and shame you feel, there is the eleventh-hour forgiveness awaiting each and every one of you. Remember, it’s your magnetic moral compass that will lead you north or south

James 5:15 “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.”

James 4:11 “Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.”

Unknown quote: “The more fake you are, the bigger your circle will be. The more real you are, the smaller your circle will be.

These are well known facts.”

May each and every one of you have a most Blessed Celebratory Day as we remember the reason for the Season!

Cancer: NOT a Death Sentence

James 5:16 “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

Not a Death Sentence

When I was first diagnosed with this dastardly illness that everyone takes to be a death sentence, I remained calm and wasn’t going to be allowed to be charged by fear. Fear to me was the tactic of you HAVE to do chemotherapy, the kind with a port, or you will DIE! DIE! They tell you!  "You need radiation, we need to cut the crap out of you then we’ll hammer it with chemo, that has been our proven course for years now and we’re sticking to it!" 

I said, “No, give me time to think.”

“Think? You’re gonna die! What is there to think about? Die DIE DIE!” They basically screamed until their voices drifted off to the distance because no one was listening. “We’re losing her. There goes our $350,000 kickback!”

I told my friends I had the Big C and at first, they were sympathetic, and lifted me in prayer, and told me they’d be there as I went through… 'the treatment’. Umm but wait, I’m not doing treatment. Suddenly they started to fall by the wayside like scales of a fish. After they told me I was crazy, didn’t know what I was doing, they knew better, have lost more people from this disease than me, blah blah blah, is all I heard; I smelled the fear in THEM. The disease meant FEAR to them. I DO NOT see it as FEAR! I see it as a time for change and growth. 

Some people are still my friends but no longer what I thought of as close friends, they’re distant friends, no different than Peter, Paul or Mary, they’re there. What I didn’t expect to happen was for new friends to come out of the woodwork. They were on my friends' list but we didn’t converse much, it was those women and men who came forward in prayer and support! Those were the ones when I broke my femur showed they cared by their concern for me. They came out on day one of my diagnosis and stood firm in their support, never to waiver no matter what I decided! THAT is what a friend is!

I showed people the success of others through The Truth About Cancer, and Chris Wark and how people are out here surviving WITHOUT chemotherapy. They went a different HEALTHY route without drugs and some ten and twenty years later, hundreds if not thousands of people still have no signs of the disease. Google either one of the above names, don't just take my word for it. And here I’m laughed and scoffed at because I don’t believe in the conventional route to saving myself? To ME, it’s like those hypocrites who say, “Oh yeah, I’m a Christian.” But when asked by God himself to do the craziest thing you’ve ever heard, they’re like, “Well, I’m not going THAT far. He put drugs and doctors here for a reason.” That’s all well and good for YOU but not for ME. A slap in the face to me AND my faith! 

I showed people what they needed and how to change their diet and some did, for a month or so but they weakened and returned to their old gobbly good ways. ‘I see it, I eat it’ mentality, not caring if it is toxic, poison, or unhealthy. Set in their ways, they do what they want. Hmm… funny, that’s all I want, is to do what *I* want. But for some reason I’m wrong and they're what, sickly, coughing, wheezing, colds, flu, numerous illnesses many times a season? Then there’s me, I just have a disease everyone thinks is deadly. Obesity is deadly, heart disease is deadly, COPD is deadly, but hey, they have a drug to help you out there too. No reason to change up your eating habits, it’s all good. Go conventional, the government wouldn’t lie to YOU now, would it? You’re special, you voted, it’s your team of saving grace. God slides into home and He’s OUT! 

A Death Sentence huh? I felt this lump in 2014 and through hours of painstaking research I found out that it has been in my body festering seven to ten years BEFORE it would ever be discovered. So about 2004 something happened so tragically in my life and body that the cell woke up and started to grow, from a dust mote sized cell to a tumor. In 2017 I was ‘diagnosed’ so when they give me statistics like ‘this could keep you alive for ten and twenty years’, I’ve already been LIVING with it for ten almost twenty years. Statistics are meaningless, TO ME! 

Chemotherapy has saved so many lives but in hindsight, how many has it killed? My trauma was so deep that no, the alternative route was not going to work for me but neither is the chemo that’s killing everybody either. I asked my doctor to let’s work something out. He is complying, I think because in some way he WANTS to know if there are other ways to heal this disease. He knows deep down that there is more to this disease than feeding it drugs for the rest of people's lives and let them die on chemo. My doctor says I'm challenging! I told him, "How else would you grow if I didn't challenge you?"

Just like obesity, heart disease, COPD and a host of other illnesses, there is ANOTHER way besides drugs and all their deadly side effects. The doctor sometimes gives you the clear picture of what is going to happen if you don’t change your diet but here, take this pill in the interim and we’ll get your disease under control. Control not CURED!

I watched a series on Asian medicine this week and how doctors over in Malaysia, Singapore and other places are all dealing with alternative treatments to this disease because they know, the Big C is NOT a death sentence! There is NO one treatment that can treat all of the people the same. Every cancer is different and should be treated as such with each individual patient! The one doctor said that his wish was to see the oncologist, nutritionist, naturopath all sit down together and discuss the individuals' line of treatment. In a perfect world, that is how it would and should be but we’re in a conditioned world trained to do what we’re SCARED into doing. And we’re okay with that, well I’m NOT!

I, like many before me, have given you tools to save yourself. It’s a hard sell as it's free and you only took a bite, you didn’t want to change, you just wanted a taste. Obviously, a healthy life doesn’t taste good TO YOU because you are conditioned to eat meat and potatoes, you’re good. And that’s okay, it’s just not okay for me anymore, I want to save MY life. I don’t want the government to control what toxins they spray on my food, I don’t want them to own a conglomerate of pharmaceuticals to hand out like candy to the people who like candy or the people that never cared for candy. We’re all individual souls! We’re not on the conveyor belt of life.

I’ve given you what I could, now I need to focus on MY healing. Your support means the world to me, to those who’ve stuck around. To those that didn’t stick around all I can do is pray for you. I’ve been an open book, I have not lied nor manipulated, all I did was hand you the truth, or the truth that I know. May you all wander through life seeking the truth within you, and be honest with yourself, don’t sugarcoat it because He knows and sees all He’s just waiting for YOU to admit, your truth. 

God bless you all for letting me into your lives. And thank you for sharing your lives with me. This has been a profound experience and I’m honored to have shared it with you, and continue to share! 

All praise and Glory to God! 

Matt. 9:35-38  "And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest."

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:”

Lost: I'm searching

2 Sam. 23:4 “And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.”

The days leading up to...

The days leading up to a chemo treatment are usually filled with anxiety. I try my meditation, my prayers, my refocusing of daily chores and hobbies, but still, I find I’m normal, in so much that, anxiety leaks through. 

I’ve been having good days filled with a lot of pain at night on my right thigh. I guess this is normal too, one of those lovely side effects. I try to understand what I signed up for but I honestly have no clue. I know I signed up for intravenous Herceptin, with no port, and it has side effects. What does it do? Well, one thing it doesn’t do is cure the Big C! It kind of sings it to sleep. 

Why do people assume that chemo is a cure? Do you not see the commercials from the ACS begging for money to help them FIND a cure? Sure they have treatments to prolong your life, but cure? THERE IS NO CURE! Just had to shout that out to those who are reading.

Here are the  COMMON side effects of Herceptin:

Diarrhea - nope
redness or irritation at injection (IV) site - well duh all needles have some pain/redness
muscle/joint/back pain - YES
stomach or abdominal pain - somewhat
Headache - not really
sleep problems (insomnia) - nope
nausea and vomiting (may be severe) _ thank God NO
weight loss - I sure hope not! Hard enough finding clothes now!
Rash - kinda
altered sense of taste - is that what that is?
mouth sores - nope
loss of appetite - still eating like a pig!
Tiredness - most definitely
cold symptoms such as stuffy nose, sinus pain, sneezing, or sore throat. - Runny nose, does that count?

Tell your doctor if you have serious side effects of Herceptin including:

bone pain,
increased coughing,
swelling of the hands/ankles/feet,
sudden unexplained weight gain,
unusual tiredness,
severe headache,
tingling or numbness (e.g., in the hands, feet, leg),
mental/mood changes, - going through menopause, so yes, before Herceptin days.
fast or pounding heartbeat, and
easy bruising or bleeding.

I don’t know the difference in BONE pain and muscle pain, I somewhat have an idea after breaking my femur. But…

THIS is the other DRUG he wanted me taking and I refused. The COMMON side effects alone scared the pants off of me! 

Common side effects of Femara include:

hot flashes,
warmth in your face or chest,
hair loss,
joint/bone/muscle pain,
tiredness,
unusual sweating or night sweats,
nausea,
diarrhea,
dizziness,
trouble sleeping,
drowsiness,
weight gain,
weakness,
flushing (warmth, redness, or tingly feeling),
headache,
constipation,
numbness/tingling/weakness/stiffness in your hand or fingers, or
pain in your hand that spreads to your arm, wrist, forearm, or shoulder.


I would hate to see what the more serious side effects are! When a trusted doctor tells you the side effects are a lot like menopause I beg to differ!!! Unless I’m a rarity among women!

This is MY choice of estrogen blocker that I showed him last Wednesday to see if he’ll ‘allow’ it in my regimen. I’m not giving him a choice.

DIM partial list of side effects:

This is not a complete list of side effects and others may occur.

One of the supplements used for estrogen dominance is diindolylmethane, or DIM, which is a natural plant-based chemical found in many cruciferous vegetables. The effects of cruciferous vegetables, such as cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts, are being studied as a treatment for cancer.[1] DIM works to create a healthy balance of estrogen and testosterone in your body and is available in capsules or tablets.

DIM Supplement warnings:
If you have a hormone-related condition, make sure to discuss DIM with your doctor, because it can sometimes block estrogen activity. Taking larger doses can be unsafe; possible side effects of using DIM supplements include headaches and nausea.

DIM Side Effects and Interactions
DIM is considered to be safe when consumed from natural sources at doses 100-200mg daily. Taking larger doses such as 600 mg each day, may cause side effects such as headaches, upset stomachs, and can cause reduced sodium levels in some people

TO ME, DIM is much safer than Femara and does the same thing in a natural way, albeit a tablet form. Yes, I’m still on a plant-based regimen! 

The Day of Dread and Doom came and looking for a chair in the chamber was almost impossible, filled with souls getting poison pumped into their systems, bald and aging, wrinkled and sagging. And then there was me with a puzzled look on my face wondering what on earth I was doing there.

The quick session was over (thirty minutes) and I was promised this one would not be as bad as the first session with the chills and pain. It was a lie as I arrived home, I went right to the bedroom cringed in pain, popping pill after pill to try and relieve some of this tension-wracked pain nursing my body and feeding the angst and desperation I never knew before.

Three hours of crying and wriggling in pain, I finally fell asleep. I woke but didn’t want to. I hurt like I’ve never hurt before. Eight years of arthritis and no meds, pain bearable but now, this pain was exhausting and unending. My mind was not accepting this. I did not in no way shape or form want to finish my life out in this kind of angst that is driving my body into the grave. My mind, almost gone. Is this what menopause is like? I don’t think so. Thank you, doctor, for bending the truth YET AGAIN!

Oh and my DIM supplement? He laughed in my face and offered me up another drug to kill me with less side effects. I said no ten times but his ears were obviously clogged so I appeased him, ok doctor, maybe next visit in three weeks.

It has been almost one week and I still feel like the crab on the ocean floor, sucking down the toxic poisons left behind. I still have my hard shell, I can still crawl and be plucked out of the water at any moment but for now, my body is filtering poison through my system and it’s not a pretty sight. Have you ever opened a crab up? Have you seen the filters and the yellow gunk that you’re told NOT to eat of the crab, just the meat? I don’t even have meat left to eat. I am a shell. My yellow gunk is on display. I have maintained my body weight since September, so I know I'm still fighting! 

My husband and son see this change in me; at their wit's end and hubby being sick with walking pneumonia, this isn’t going to fare well. Mother-in-law came out and I feel like she thinks this chemo is the cure-all I need and is good for me but then not after I tell her how it makes me feel. But then again, no one has a clue of the pain and isolation chamber I feel locked into.

I was strolling along enjoying life. Going to physical therapy three days a week when suddenly the rug was pulled out from under me and I fell, hard. Now, I get to the outside world, if I’m lucky, every three weeks for chemo. A doctor visit here and there. A stare out the window, a walk to the back door, and life going on in every way without me. I’m a shell with two eyeballs looking left and right and wondering, is someone going to get me out of here? 

I wake in the morning and don’t like who I see. I’m filled with anger, disgust, discouragement, hate, bitterness, pain and misery; all of these things are foreign to the me who just a month ago was enjoying the physical therapy, loving life and feeling God deep within every step I took. Now...it’s only fitting that during Lent, the season that is being swallowed up around me, I should be tempted and filled with everything the dark lord stands for. 

I’m here...waiting for the crab net to come swooping down. Run along now...it’s not a pretty sight.

Pss. 95:8 “Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:”

I’m hanging in here, Lord. Don’t leave me dangling...

Isa. 58:8 “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy reward.”

OPTIMISM: A New Day

Pss. 34:4 I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.

Optimism: A New Day

For the past two and a half weeks I’ve been walking around in a veiled fog. My brain couldn’t wrap itself around the simplest of things. I knew without the Oral Chemo I would start to fail. I don’t know why the nurse assumed, two weeks ago, I would jump right into the chemo Herceptin, she knows me and has been working with me for seven months but she went ahead and stopped all further shipments of my meds and didn’t, it sounds to me, get the doctors okay. He wanted me back on what I had left here at home, pronto! And as soon as I started taking it again, my body, muscles, and brain all connected, finally.

I was angry and bitter at just about anyone I came in contact with. I put up a good front (or not) but I muddled through each and every day. If you’ve been reading my blog over the years, you know I am an optimist at heart. I take everything to the Lord and listen ONLY to Him. Not my husband, son, doctors or family can tell me anything, I listen to God and wait for what He has to say ALL of the time.

This instance was no different as I told you last week. I prayed, I heard, and I listened. I also told you I didn’t like the answer I got and for that, I became bitter and disgruntled and in all honesty, ready to pick out my urn! Just an FYI: I want the cover of Dark Side of the Moon on it. Inscription will say: "I'll see you on the dark side of the moon."

Pss. 34:6 "This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles."

God wants me to go the Herceptin route and for the life of me, I cannot conceive why. Why would He do this to me? Why can’t I just be healed like everyone imagines how healing is done? You don’t have to answer that I already know the answer. GOD DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! 

With all of the healthy eating and supplementation, my body was being prepared to handle what the damaging poison would do to my system. It’s a fact that chemo destroys, it’s a fact that we have the power within ourselves to heal so we need to step up and take action to see healing through. I worked hard to build up my immunity and it may just be time to see if it is strong enough for the poison while the poison attacks the C cells. A science project in motion, if you will.

My body was ready for the Oral Chemo. After sifting through the lies that the doctor told, I had no idea the Oral Chemo was a short term route. I was led to believe ‘that I would see ANOTHER Christmas’. Well, if I don’t go the Herceptin route, I might not see another Christmas!

I have said over and over and over again, this illness is not like a cold. You eat some soup, take some vitamin c and you’re all better. There is no clear indication that just changing your diet to an organic plant-based and taking supplements is the secret to healing the Big C! I’ve NEVER EVER said that or misled anyone to believe that. I made it perfectly clear that there is an entire chasm of healing tools and chemo is NOT the only way to go either! And also, cancer is NOT the death sentence that doctors would like you to believe it is, it’s an enemy of your system, but it is YOUR system, your body, your healing, no one else can heal you but God and you!

The women I see healing alternatively have money, the choice of fine doctors at their fingertips, chiropractors, have been to the clinic in Mexico, have access to the UV saunas, have within their reach the ability to afford all the crazy organic Plant Based food, and many live in states where Medicinal Cannabis is legal. They have family supporting them and maybe they’ve never had a life of trauma. Yes, I know, we’ve all had hard lives but again TRAUMA is different than losing a dog when you were a kid or being whooped because you were bad. TRAUMA is stress that needs tender loving care to get through and it doesn’t happen in a meditation session, or on a psychologists sofa, or with drugs! There are elements to healing this disease that the poor impoverished person has a much deeper struggle to contend with.

So with that, yesterday I woke with an answer. Optimism! I’ve had a gung-ho attitude through all of this but in recent weeks my pep pooped out! Today, my poop got pepped! Ewww. Wait. Today my perk got prepped! Yeah, that sounds better. God said to me if I go into chemo thinking it’s going to destroy and kill me, by all means, it will. If I go in with the optimism that this is just another supplement (albeit a poisonous one) needed in my healing then we’ll find success, then so be it! We’ll find healing! 

God is not a God of fear tactics and scare traits. He wants me to see this as a love potion to add to all of my other healthy eating, exercising, and supplementation. This is just an odd leg of the journey that I did not want to accept. You heard me right, I didn’t like what God wanted me to do! After asking for forgiveness in my doubting Him and asking Him to hold my hand and lead the way, He shouted, OPTIMISM! We’ll walk with optimism so I can see a new day every day and see many more Christmas’! 

I don’t have to do what the doctor says, I’m in the passenger seat of this vehicle and God is my Almighty Driver! The doctors fear tactics have me on this Herceptin for years, ten to twenty. Look, people, I’m not a prisoner doing ten to twenty years for something I didn’t do. I am going to show the world that this disease can be licked, all wounds healed and scars tended to. Years down the line, the scars will be minimal with caressing, rubbing, touching, acknowledging and coming face to face with what brought them to me. 

My mantra will continue - I am HEALED, I am Healthy and I am WELL! 

All praise and Glory to my God! 

Pss. 34:1 "I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth."

Crossroad to Confusion

Exodus 4:11-12 (NIV) “The LORD said to him, ‘Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.’” 

Okay, so here I am reopening my blog writing again and you might be asking yourself why. Well let me tell you my story, yet again. The Big C came into my life on a black horse carrying with it fear and uncertainty. That was January 25th, 2017 when I got the official diagnosis. Now in all of my research, I learned that the C cells were awakened seven to ten years earlier when they were as small as a dust mote and no possible sign of them being seen even with the finest equipment in the 21st century!

I’m not going to rehash the entire story, you can read it here with this link and all of 2017 if you wish but fast-forwarding to 2019, after I was told I was stage 4, that the C cells had metastasized, meaning they spread to my bones, my liver and I have no clue where else. Doctors are funny that way, they tell you snippets of what THEY want in little increments of fear, so you stress and worry yourself, literally to death. But I have something no doctor has and that is FAITH in the Lord my God!

Yes, I know some doctors have faith but I can assure you, they think they are doing God’s work for Him. Maybe they are and maybe they are not, that is not for me to judge. They are NOT the God I listen to. In my heart and my soul, no doctor’s fear penetrates me so much that I override what the Lord tells me and says for me to do.

Around the time of my femur break, I was placed on (OC) Oral Chemo. That is not the same as chemotherapy, being hooked to a machine pumping poison into your system. This poison targets the estrogen positive cells going crazy in my body and attacks the little wanderers in other places.

My markers were extremely high and the doctor really didn’t feel like this OC was going to work but after a month in the hospital, the pills, often not taken on a regular basis until I got home from the hospital, were showing signs of working. The oncologist who visited me in the hospital for the ten days that I was there kept pushing for me to do the port IV Chemo which I AM firmly against. I know it, God knows it, the doctors know it! But Dr. Biscuit, a colleague of my current Onc., was astounded that the little time I was on the OC, my tumor was shrinking and the markers were sliding DOWN the sliding board at record speed!

Markers are blood cell counts. White, red, and C cells. They tell the doctor what is going on inside the body. Dr. Biscuit didn’t want to agree with me that my strict diet adherence is what made my body accept the OC so well when thousands of women across the country were falling sick with vomiting, skin problems, diarrhea, and other side effects. I was an exemplary guinea pig if you will.

Miracle after miracle, my markers, month after month was going down. August-September they were at an all-time high of 2711 dropping to 350 by November. What my doctor failed to tell me was that December and January there was a slight increase in my C cells, not my White and Red ones, so I guess it didn’t draw concern at that time.

During those months I thought I was home free. My current oncologist told me to eat what I wanted to get my weight up and like a fool, I LISTENED to the doctor! As I sit here in February all the junk food, meat, dairy, carbs all toxins I hadn’t had for almost two years were in my body doing a little dance, unbeknownst to me, with my cells! I weigh the same that I weighed when I entered the hospital back in September. So the doctor was wrong in telling me to eat what I want.

I was told to stop my supplements back in September but was allowed my Vitamins A, B12, C, D3, and E. I stopped all supplementation except two that I felt were essential, Green Tea/Curcumin, turmeric/black pepper. The doctor on many occasions LAUGHED at me and made fun of my supplementation. I let it roll off my back because I took jabs at his bald head, so touché.

Also in these months, I’ve been attending Physical Therapy to regain the mobility that I lost when my femur popped out of my leg. Yeah, it was not a simple break, it was a total disaster and they really didn’t think I’d walk again after repairing the damage, but again, miraculously, I PROVED THEM WRONG! I’m walking with a walker and often with just my cane! 

The other day was my oncologist visit. It was the first time they’d seen me NOT in a wheelchair. The one assistant squealed like a little girl in amazement! 

“JONI! What’s this? You’re walking!” Squeals of delight and smiles from the other nurses as I passed and little murmurs of “Way to go!” could be heard as I was led into the docs office. Even the doctor smiled and said, “You’re looking good!”

In the room, the talk began, the banter if you will. Him making fun of me and me listening to his rhetoric on chemotherapy and how people die without it. THIS is when he mentioned my C cells rising. The OC had done its job and can do no more. This is also the time, six months later, that he tells me the OC was only supposed to work for three months. Here I was five-six months out, still looking good for a stage 4 patient. My white and red were ‘plateauing’ as he put it, an evening out.

I got home from the visit sad, not my peppy self when the phone rang as we walked in the door...

“The doctor needs to see you again. Your markers are up.” PA says to me. I said a Wednesday visit would be okay. 

I broke. The tears that had been stored up for a few months all unleashed when the floodgates opened. I had been doing so good, I’ve been soaring, walking, healing, feeling great and BAM! Slap me in the face kind doctor! 

I was angry. For the first time in my spiritual life, I was angry at God! I lost two children and didn’t feel the anger that swelled up inside of me at that very moment. I was not as well as I was led to BELIEVE I was. 

“WHY,” I cried, “why is all of this happening again. I just wanted a break, a reprieve from the stress of healing! I thought I was. I was being misled down a path?” The tears filled the trashcan to overflowing with Kleenex.

That night I did what I always do, I prayed. I apologized first and asked what He’d have me do. No answer. In the morning on Thursday, I prayed as I always do and talked with Him. I had said in jest that if it snows on Wednesday (or snow inhibiting my visit) then my answer was to just say no, to chemo! I looked at the weather and while snow was forecasted for Friday and Saturday, three to four inches, it was sunny and clouds all next week. A deep sigh left me still praying and wondering. What was I to do?

I was told by the docs office to not take any more pills and they called the pharmaceutical place and stopped delivery of further shipments. Great, I’m dangling out here, alone. HA! The jokes on them! I AM NEVER ALONE! I have an Almighty God! An intense faith in my spiritual life! It surpasses anything in this physical realm! I know my friends think I’m crazy, surely the doctor does too, but I have an AMAZING Healer in God! I cannot and will not lose my faith!

I woke Friday morning feeling eerily good. Two days in a row of PT wore me down, the doc visit shredded me to pieces and here I was Friday morning, snow blanketing the fields, and I’m feeling pretty good. Wednesday I tossed the drugs in the trash and resumed right then and there my supplementation. No more meat, back to the strict protocol that OBVIOUSLY worked FOR me and not against me!

On to reading my morning devotional emails. I was going to read ‘Verse of the Day’ first but I inadvertently hit Encouragement for the Day. In it was a story of a woman who had in-vitro fertilization and was told by her doctors that these last four embryos were ‘inferior’. In his YEARS of study, knowledge, and experience told these hope-filled parents that inferior embryos don’t ‘hatch’, so to speak.

She was on the sonogram table listening to THREE HEARTBEATS! From the email: “As I lay on that table, looking at the glowing screen, those three fluttering heartbeats told me what a doctor had labeled “inferior” was exactly the kind of thing God uses to accomplish His will.
Our doctor briskly entered the room, breathless and looking perplexed. “I really don’t know how this happened!” He exclaimed.”

What message was I, little Joni, getting from this? Let’s look at the accompanying scripture and you’ll see/read for yourself.

TRUTH FOR TODAY: Deuteronomy 31:6, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” (NIV)

Exodus 4:12, “Now go! I will help you speak, and I will teach you what to say.” (NCV)

I closed down my writing because I thought I was done, I could move on. As you see...God is not done with me yet! A look at next weeks weather? A 70% chance of snow on Tuesday. 

All praise and Glory to a Wonderful and Amazing God! 

Just in case you were wondering, this was the other message received today. Our God is an AWESOME God! From Charles Stanley: In Touch
Pss 23:1-6

What Healing Looks Like

John 12:35 “Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.”

God's Healing Touch

What Healing Looks Like

Often times when people are in the throes of pain and suffering they can’t grasp what the finished product of healing looks like. I remember the day of dire diagnosis when everyone around me wore grim and sad faces, reaching out in sorrow to offer their hand of comfort and prayer during a trying time. I made it perfectly clear from the beginning I was not accepting the diagnosis as the death sentence everyone sees at the announcement of a Big C diagnosis. At this point in my journey, you could walk with me holding my hand or perhaps stand face-to-face in a guiding manner, or behind me drifting with the dust of the earth, your choice.

I saw the diagnosis quite differently and I think my stance took people by surprise, understandably so; I saw it as healing. Yes, you read it right, healing. When I took my daily walks, my mantra that I repeated out loud was, I am HEALED, I am Healthy, I am WELL! When I announced my mantra on Facebook my friends were kind of stunned, “You’re healed, really?” Their voices came through in words, clear, bold and loud.

“Yes, I believe I AM,” was my response very soon after my diagnosis of that dastardly death sentence announcement.

Pss.121:1-2 “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth”

Some people were so aghast that they stepped back and away from me, either thinking I lost my mind or I was in deep denial. To me, they looked like little beacons of light drifting off, holding candles as they slowly floated away from me, off into the night sky. Whatever the case may be, dear friends became people I thought were friends and no longer offered prayer or support in any way. As a few folks stepped away from my inner circle, others entered, droves of people fanned in from out of nowhere, stood up and rained support on me. Not only on Facebook, where my Spiritual family dwells, but my physical family and friends I knew were all in PRAYER for me. They offered the loving prayers in their weekly prayer box at their churches, announcing vocally that they needed prayer for ME, or silently in their inner prayer circle whispered my name asking for healing. Little old me was being healed by prayers!

I understand that not everyone believes in God and I’m okay with that. I do have friends who stayed by me that offered peace and light, and that is a positive I fully accept as a blessing. My healing is not about religion, it is more about FAITH and my faith grew ten sizes in a day through prayer and blessings, in return, I prayed for those souls who backed away from me; they needed my prayer. 

Pss. 103:20 “Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.”

I’m wondering if I came off as arrogant in my stance on healing besides people seeing me as if I was in denial. My first step in my healing journey was to stop worrying about what other people thought! Yeah, that’s a tough one for us all, but if it's healing you seek, cleanse yourself of naysayers right up front.

Healing is not about reading the bible more (though it can’t hurt), it’s not about knowing more scripture than the next person, it’s certainly not about dissecting the Word, word for word, and I can say it is truly not about claiming to know God more than someone else. We all own our own faith and beliefs, what you discern from your faith is where the true touch of healing resides. Although your actions are weighed, there is no amount of acts that can inch you closer than the next person to His embrace.

1 Sam. 2:3 “Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.”

Healing is found by touching base with God within you. Healing is not going to be found outside in the corrupt conventional world. Medical doctor’s are aids in healing, not the means. God is the greatest healing physician in our lives. For some reason, we’ve been conditioned to accept and trust that outside of God, we believers can find healing. Funny how that works isn’t it? 

Pss. 121:2 “My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.”

What does healing look like? How do I explain the explosive beauty of healing? Well, for one, you need to dig deep within the core of your being. WITHIN means not outside in a physical manner, DEEP within, in a spiritual manner; God, prayer, meditation etc., whatever the spiritual means to YOU. In that core realm is where God resides and is waiting for you to acknowledge Him and put your faith and trust in Him. That is when we find, touch and SEE the actual healing take place.

Pss. 121:5 “The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.”

How do we see within all that we are? You must be humbled by your illness, your trials, and tribulation. You might as well toss pride and dignity in the heap, also. This is not the time to panic or seek outside help. This is the time the prayerful meditative mind can touch, breathe, and be one with the part of God in you that needs to be reached. This might be the hardest part of healing, listening to God, not yourself.

I’ve always seen myself as a vain woman and that was a hindrance I could not release in my healing journey until I was forced to face the intense flaming fires of pain and hell, head on...

I was walking along proudly boasting that I was healed, healthy and well. I stuck my fingers in the breast of my jacket, proudly strutted my protocol, spoke to all about my alternative ways. I was sharing physically and vocally my success of this route that God placed me on. Only when I FREED my pride and dignity, I felt, touched, breathed my true healing. Yes, friends, with the aids of medical science! Go figure! The very science that God used in creation, He was now using to implement my full recovery. My faith, when falling into God’s hands, is what saved me.

Prov. 16: 18 “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”

My vanity, pride, and dignity all got swallowed by a black hole in an instant. When my femur burst out of my leg, in the depths of torments rage, I gave my all to Christ. It was at the very moment as I’m sitting on the side of the bed, pantyless and just a t-shirt that EMT’s had to come and pry me out of the room. Not just one or two, there were about four or five men and two women. They were either tending the gurney, the truck or me, bare and broken.

Pss. 121:8 “The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.”

I went blank, got lost in the swirling darkness that surrounded me with a couple of stars and gems in the night sky keeping my focus. I then woke to the reality of my healing on October Fifth, the anniversary of the day that Steven’s dad was released from this earth and went home; also the day that I was released from my torment and went HOME. In the midst of my affliction all of my pride, vanity and dignity were sucked up into a tornadoes vortex, to leave me, humbly picking up the pieces of mirrored glass I called me.

This is when God’s finger reached out and touched me. When I came before Him as Eve, sinful and bare, and begged for mercy. Instead of a soft touch, He embraced me, wrapped his ever loving arms around me shielding me and healed me with the warmth of His love.

Isa. 6:7 “And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.”

John 19:35 “And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.”

Acts 15:8 “And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us;”

Poetry Sunday: God's Healing Touch

Pss. 45:1 “My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.”

Shimmering reflections of pain I feel 

Lost in fragments I needed to heal

A mending touch if truth be known

Is in His fingers pressing stone.

By chance, my aches towered then crashed

A mighty sword by flames were dashed

Slicing through with torments rage

Remnants bound in an open cage.

Not being confined by a limited view

My heart beheld all that was true

The night sky opened gems bedazzled

Made whole of me the frail and frazzled.

Armed with faith my body to restore

The strength therein the open door

No longer doomed by fate I’m driven

With all the tools that God has given.

I was blinded by mortal shame

And only had myself to blame 

Shaving off my arrogant pride

Unearthed the healing deep inside.

Once I freed confined vanity

Not veiled behind bent sanity

I relieved myself of the crutch

Bare I found God’s healing touch.

Job 37:23 “Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not afflict.”

Good and Bad Days: We All Have Them

Matt. 13:48 (KJV) “Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.”

Good days and bad days: we all have them

I’m sure we all have our good days and bad days; we know they’re bad when things go wrong and we see them as good when everything falls into place like a row of dominoes. While yes, I admittedly suffer from PTSD, I myself see more good days than bad and to me, they are all positive steps toward my healing. 

Jer. 29:11 (NIV) “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

As home slowly becomes more familiar to me, I feel the healing in the core of my being. The first few weeks though, of being home, felt like an unending carousel ride. That very first Monday I was Mrs. Popular in that everyone wanted a piece of me. I had calls from the home health nurse, the physical therapist, my oncologist office and the Cancer Center’s radiation office. Emails were sounding in from my mother in law wanting to come see me, sister in law auntie and uncle, everyone wanted a piece of this broken woman and how do I tell them all to just SHUT UP in a polite manner? 

My first Monday morning was an assertion day, I was going to take hold of my surroundings, my activities, and my appointments. I was not going to be TOLD to come here, or do this or do that, I would tell THEM what I was willing to do! I was going to take back what I lost!

First up, the home health nurse, Mandy, the woman I had only met on that day I was exiting in an ambulance, yes, she could come. Physical therapist, yes she was allowed. The oncologist? I’ll see you sometime next week. The radiation nurse, I asked if it could be put off for a week as I regained my bearings now that I was home. They were fine with that, setting me up the following week for my two (week) five-day sessions. Ten treatments in all to the healing left femur.

The emails were more targeted to my husband than me because it hurt to type on my laptop. I didn’t have a bend and stretch out mobility, I had a stiff-as-a-board-lay-there-and-be- good, semblance. Computer stuff would have to wait for a spell. I’d send out a 'hey' to friends and let them know I was still alive and as I knew they would be, they were more than understanding and just happy to know I was home. 

Monday was going along smoothly except for me missing my husband who had to go to work with worry on his mind trying to remember if I was set up well enough to be alone. Since we fibbed a little to get me home, I assured him I would be fine, and I was. As scary as the surroundings were, I was HOME and that was good enough for me! 

Now keep in mind, I had not bathed in twenty days. A wipe-down at the hospital but not a thing at the nursing home! Not a wipe, not a rag, nothing! I even used my own kleenex when I had to do my business. So when my mother-in-law wanted to bring his uncle to the house because he’d be ‘in town’, I had to say no way! I was not up to ‘visitors’, I needed to HEAL. I needed time! It all felt so rushed and the kaleidoscope began with its pretty colors and I was getting dizzy.

She said she understood but could her friend from church bring out food? I think she mentioned cookies or something. I told hubby to gently say, NEXT WEEK! Dang. I loved that everyone was so concerned, but I felt like the people who just lost a family member and friends would clamor to come over and bring food at the most inopportune time. Not to be rude but please send love, condolences and give them some space and time. Not a month, just breathing room. Please, don't turn this into how you lost someone and loved those people doing that for you. I appreciated EVERY bit of stirring also. I was suffocating and I needed to BREATHE! 

All appointments set, I slept. I slept and slept some more. Now it was time to move onto healing. The home health nurse brought me a hair-washing cap. You place it on your head, rub your fingers intensely and voila, your hair is water-free washed. It worked marvelously! She supplied an ample amount of body-wipes, and hubby he produced a bucket of water and a rag where I felt refreshing water on my face for the first time in twenty some days! Moving right along. 

I did have the nurse in tears, not bawling because they need to maintain distance and composure in their job, but her eyes were brimming at the sad painful story I’d tell. I had to get it off my chest so each person, professional or family, my story spilled into their ears and leaked from their eyes. They were shocked, then amazed at the strength I carried. I made it perfectly clear it surely was not me, it was God that they saw IN me! 

My healing was nothing short of astonishing to all who were witness to me. The radiation nurses saw me go from gurney to wheelchair within a week. From assisting me onto the slab to minimal help to no help needed at all. This was happening in a ten day period of time! 

My oncologist even showed signs of wonderment at my speedy recovery time. Not only my Oral Chemo and blood cell count healing time but my physical mobility healing time. All were displaying awe and wonder and were quite vocal in letting me know that this was nothing short of amazing. Doctor’s will not touch the ‘miracle’ label, but here I was, in their face, a living breathing healing miracle!

So as I have good days and bad days, it is all a part of the intricate veins of healing. People sometimes think healing happens in the blink of an eye but they need to know and understand how to appreciate the time and effort that goes into producing a work of wonder. Noah’s Ark wasn’t built in a day, the great Pyramids didn’t appear out of thin air and Jesus Himself took nine months to make a physical show. One step at a time is truly meant to be one breath at a time, and it is never our time, it is always His time. 

All praise and Glory to God! AMEN! 

Ecc. 3:11 (NIV) “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Settling In...PTSD

1 Sam. 10:26  "And Saul also went home to Gibeah; and there went with him a band of men, whose hearts God had touched."

Settling in...PTSD

Settling into my home was not as easy a task as you’d imagine. Happy-go-lucky Joni was a shell of a being. The nurses had noticed in the hospital and nursing home, and they didn’t even know me, the physical therapists saw it, and my family just assumed I was sad. No, the trauma I had experienced was a little more than depression or sadness, it had all the earmarks of PTSD.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not a light analogy of depression or sadness, it is a severe trauma that is triggered ever so lightly by sounds, pictures, faces, or names. It is a fear so intense that not even the Light of God Himself standing beside you can wash away, it is THAT severe. People who don’t have PTSD will never comprehend the magnitude of pain a person suffers through.

Last year is almost a complete blank to me, except for the trauma. Have you ever opened an MS page and saw a blank screen staring you straight in the eye and you felt a trembling panic for a few seconds not knowing what you were there to write? Every morning I open my eyes a blank page lay before me; what I put on that page shapes my day physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. What people say or do become triggers like a bullet waiting to be tapped and released from the barrel, words can shoot a person down. Without even knowing the triggers, friends, and family set off a ticking time bomb inside the psyche of a person suffering from PTSD. Anger, fear, frustration, guilt, and shame all become an open floodgate in the way of tears streaming down my face at any given time. At home, the doctor's office, the physical therapist office, or even in the food store, tears unleash without warning.

When my home health nurse noticed my PTSD along with my physical therapist, I was put in touch right away with a counselor. While I liked Dee, she was more about telling me her story than hearing mine. It was fine because that is the kind of front I put up, I’ll help you, you can’t help me; it’s an unbreakable barrier. I basically thanked her for listening and sent her on her way as I cringed inside. I was broken.

I could see the pieces of myself scattered on the floor. I wanted ever so much to take a whisk broom and scoop the particles onto a dustpan and toss them in the trash but I was immobile, disabled. There was no scooping going on any time soon. I would sit in the silence of the house, meditate in the quiet of aloneness, and pray to the only God I know and worship. Only He could get me through this, in time. HIS TIME, not my time. Here we go again.

Settling into my new surroundings would have me fearful of nightfall. Sounds would ricochet off the walls while shadows would pirouette. You would think that home was familiar surroundings but to me, I felt as if I was an orphan dumped off to this house with a family I didn’t recognize.

As the fragments of my life lie on the floor, images of last year shine like a mirror swaying in the sun, blinding me as I see good and bad portions flailing about. This trauma was not a phase I was going to laugh my way out of as if nothing bothers me. Each step I take would be like tiptoeing in a minefield, a trigger to tears or to laughter, to pain or to joy. I don’t have a choice in the matter, I just tread lightly and make every day a new day, every step a step toward healing.

God's time is not my time as I stroll along the healing path. I’ll endure the steps I needed to take to get me to the healing sea where I will eventually take a luxury dip and swim like a fish in open waters. Right now I’m still in an saltwater aquarium awaiting release in the open sea. God tells me ‘patience’, ‘faith’, and most of all ‘TRUST’, and in Him is where I’ll find my healing. The Joni I remember is still there in the windowed world… it's just going to take some patience, faith, and trust to find her again.

Lam.3:23 "They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."

My Journey: I'm Home

Prov. 7:19 "For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey:"

“My faith is made stronger through trials, my strength more powerful through prayer.” ~ Joni

My journey continues: I'm home...

Friday, October 5th, we pulled up to the house. Being wheeled into the house, everything looked different, everything felt different, and to me, everything WAS different. My eyes kept darting to the left then to the right, I looked at things I had not seen for twenty-one days. The rooms either grew bigger because I wasn’t squished in a corner or shrunk smaller, ornaments were misplaced or moved, furniture rearranged or still the same, my dog Sassy was missing, as well as my son and I anxiously wasn’t sure what to make of my homecoming.

I’m home. I repeated those words in an eerie fashion, not much unlike Dorothy clicking her heels and repeating, ‘there’s no place like home’, mine was shortened but meant the same thing, I was HOME! In the safety of my husband's care. In the comfort of all I knew. In surroundings that were familiar. Home, the place where my heart was most secure.

Home to me took on new meaning. It meant no more trappings, no more nurses, no more poking and prodding, home meant to rest, for me anyway. To my husband, home for me meant he was strained with unfathomable responsibilities, new routines, new duties, more pressure, new to him caregiving. We both had major adjustments to get used to. Our wedding vow of ‘in sickness’ was now slapping us upside the head forcing us to embrace this segment.

He asked if I was ready to go into the bedroom but right at that moment, I just wanted to be placed in front of the window and stare out, repeating ever so lightly, I’m home, over and over again. No squirrels or birds to greet me, just an open cornfield that by the time I returned home was already harvested. I missed harvesting season, my highlight of country living. I call the squirrels and birds my animals and as I looked out the window, I could see my animals had not been tended to while I was away. This would soon change, just add another thing to the honey-do list mounting. This list would grow over the weeks as I was being cared for and lessen in the months, as I would heal with time and I could fend for myself. That day was still too far away to grasp.

My husband had asked if I wanted my computer but my mind was blank, still struggling with the fact that I was in new surroundings. While I missed my friends immensely and knew that they awaited word from ME, not my son saying I’m okay. They would have to wait three more days for me to make an appearance on Facebook to announce, “You can count me down but never count me out!” 

Everything in its time. It took time to adjust to home living again. It took time to acquaint myself with what it felt like being alone. It took time to understand that I was dependent on other people for my well being. Yes, God handled the majority of my spiritual care and for that, I’m grateful beyond measure but getting used to being home was a task for my family and me in and of itself. 

By the time nightfall came, fear was creeping in like a fog looming over me and holding me entombed in its presence. I held tightly to the blankets as I pulled them closer to my chin, tears were rolling down my cheek, and I began praying for a peaceful night sleep and for God to watch over me because this was a mind-numbing scary first night home. 

Steven would sit quietly at his computer tapping ever so lightly on the keys knowing I was safely in his care. I would listen to the new sounds surrounding me and map out the next days' task. As my eyes scanned the shadows on the wall, my mantra seeped from my lips, again and again, I’m home, I’m home. Now the journey of healing would begin to take hold.

Mark 5:19 "Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee."