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."

Working Through Stress

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

Working Through Stress

Wow, what a difference a week makes. I’ve been on a stress relieving kick for some time now and some things I didn’t even know were stress came to a head. Like a pus filled pimple, I felt it surfacing and last week it burst, stress sprayed all over the place and now this week I’m cleaning up the mess it left behind so I can move forward.

For starters, my son- Since last December when the business my son was working at closed down, my son began the hunt for a job. K-Mart was to be his first job and the only place that would give him a chance seeing that he had zero experience. He is a twenty-one-year-old young man with a complete mind of his own and with that mind he has the gamut of emotions that he’s carried through life from anxiety, depression, insomnia the whole kit and kaboodle. After numerous (I’d say hundreds) applications and no calls he broke down and applied at the place his step dad works. Not his first choice but he succumbed to defeat.
Last week, HyVee called him, he went in for an interview and got the job. They offered him part-time fifteen to twenty hours a week. He worked five hours last Wednesday and was scheduled for fifteen more hours starting this Wednesday-tomorrow! Don’t worry it wasn’t in the same department as my hubby and his hours would be nighttime, hubby’s hours are early morning. He’d take the job because he was desperate. 
The next day another job called him and he declined because he had this job. But then it happened, the job he really wanted called him, he jumped at the chance for an interview. They liked him, hired him; Saturday and Monday he was with them doing the technicalities of the hiring process. This job has forty hours a week and more money than the food store, and a medical package too in sixty days. Excitement overflowed but then there was the anxiety of having to quit the other job. This is his journey and I’ll go no further.
Needless to say, when a mother sees her child struggling, the stress is real. Unneeded stress during this time for me but it is very real. Like God does for us kids, He offers himself to us but He doesn’t come into our lives and do all the work for us. I had to watch my son wiggle and squirm as I stood by as the support he’d need but this was something that he and he alone would have to do as the new adult he's become. He’s moving forward in life and that in itself is a bundle of stress for the both of us.

Cannabis oil – Yes, I’m seeking avenues for this curative medicine. My niece has put me in contact with people who are covered by lawyers but money will be my hindrance. It’s okay though because I’m allowing the Lord, myself and my supplements to do their work before I reach out and make the CBD oil happen for me. I’m not at a desperate place yet and have no plans to be but it is good to know that the opportunity is out there waiting for me to tap into.

My GP doctor – Stress is surrounding me in wanting to make an appointment and not wanting to make an appointment. She is leaving in July and I was waiting for my hubby’s eye doctor appointment to be over before I made my GP appointment. I can’t have him missing work in an already short part-time schedule. He’s willing to miss work for me but I need him to get taken care of too. 

Hubby’s Eye Doctor – This was a check-up that he didn’t have last year because of circumstances ie: weather, a change in the doctor’s schedule (he went from coming to our area from Omaha on Thursday’s to coming on Monday’s). Finally, this appointment happened. He went on and on telling us how this success story was pure luck, one in a hundred he said where someone goes from being completely blind to seeing again. Hubby said, “If luck is what you want to call it.” I could see his mind in there thanking the Lord for this MIRACLE, not a stroke of luck.
Anyway, the doctor went on to say that he wouldn’t be coming to our area anymore and that he would be turning hubby over to a new doctor. A sad moment and tears welled in my eyes before the doctor stepped out saying his good-byes. Doctor’s  seem to emotionally disconnect from the patients but it wasn’t so easy for me, or my hubby. Hubby didn’t bawl his eyes out like me, my eyes would not stop leaking. This entire year has been an emotional roller-coaster and this was the icing on the cake so to speak, my emotions of the culmination of stress were released through drippings of tears (not sobs). I let it go.
I thought it had been four years but I miscounted. Hubby had been under this doctor’s care for six years. From cornea transplant to eye removal, to infections to healing this was a powerful relationship coming to an end in a swift blow. I made a swift dart to the front door after hugging the assistant who has also been there for us over these years. * poof * 

The washer – For a couple of years now our washing machine (a GE I might add) has been going on the fritz and two weeks ago it had its last spin. We’ve repaired the wounded soldier over the years but this time we checked into it and the repair would be more costly than a new one. The poor old gal was 14 years old. We laid her to rest and used a ‘for emergency’s only credit card’ to purchase another GE washer. The cheapest one they had but brand spanking new to me. The nearest laundry mat is over twenty miles away so that was never really an option. Just the cost of gas and the cost of using the place weekly would cost more than a new machine. 
The stress never ends….

The dentist -  Hubby has been suffering for MONTHS needing to see a dentist but I had my needed medical attention so he put his on hold. I’m putting my GP visit on hold until he gets this problem looked at so that’s where we are. The stress is coming and going in ripples on the shoreline. I’m strong, I’m alive and I’m THRIVING. I can’t say the same for his aunt who is more than likely on her last week of life, succumbing to this disease. THAT will NOT be me!!!! 

While some may laugh and scoff at my choice in moving FORWARD not succumbing to the slice, dice and poison method. I choose to THRIVE, BE ALIVE, BLOSSOM, and SHINE! Healing is in the palm of my hand! I work through this stress that bombards me daily, with God by my side.  

All praise and Glory to my God!  

“Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”

 ~ Charles Swindoll

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” 

~ Theodore Roosevelt

Poetry Sunday ~ A Hazy New Year

A New Year
***
As all the people gather round
swigging drinks, guzzling them down
They hold the festive new year show
to move the calender to a new low.

They think it’s fine to wander from Him
for just this day to revel in sin.
As He sits right on their shoulder
they blink Him away, as blood gets colder.

They’ll praise His name the very next day
as the smell of beer lingers this way.
As all the folks try to look upright
The Lord Himself has bowed out of sight.

Justify why their breath has been poisoned
the wine with which their lips were moistened
Carry me from this hidden society
into a world of livid sobriety.

I sing a song of praise to You
as we embrace on Heavens hue.
Glowing Light shines forth for me
A New Years delight, for all to see!

***

Happy New Year
may it be full of blessings for you!



Judges: 13:4 Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing:

***

Deut. 32:33 Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.