polite Christianity

I have a confession to make. I don't watch videos when people post them in their blog. Sometimes. Rarely. Usually because I keep the sound off on my computer because I play(ed) those games continually and always had one of them on in the background and they all have insanely annoying music. If it's someone's kids or pets, I'm more likely to watch. If it's just some random video of your favorite rock group from 7th grade... eh, notsomuch.

So, being a complete hypocrite, I'm posting this twenty minute video and asking that, as a personal favor to me, you watch it all. The title of this video is "Is She Crazy"... it's the Preacher Lady of Riverdale. If you don't watch it, the rest of this blog entry will not make as much sense. I know you're busy. Watch it anyways.

A little background. I grew up in Riverdale, Georgia, on the south side of Atlanta, in a county that includes the bustling Atlanta International Airport (which is now called something else but I forget the proper title - it doesn't really matter) In my childhood it was the kind of town where kids played outside until the porch lights came on and we walked most everywhere we went. My grandmother who passed away in 1998 never owned a car, never had a drivers license and she lived in Riverdale for the last twenty years of her life and walked to the grocery store... walked to the "old folks home" where she volunteered... That's another great story but my maternal grandmother volunteered at a nursing home and would go every day and take care of the "old people", one of which was a lady who was her teacher when she was a child back in Mississippi. 

Riverdale was the kind of town where the junior high cheerleaders and football players would walk to the pizza restaurants on the main highway after football games and sometimes would even walk home afterwards. It was safe. Most of our parents worked for the airlines or at the Ford plant just up the road. It was a comfortable middle class suburb with little subdivisions full of ranch and split level houses.

Time and the economy have not been kind to Riverdale or Clayton County. My parents still live there but now they lock the door during the day. We didn't do that back when I was growing up. A teenager was shot in a driveby shooting the other night - on his own front porch. There are more pawn shops, check cashing businesses, thrift stores, buy here/pay here car lots and such than we had in the day. A lot of the things we grew up with are long, long gone. My friend Mary and I commiserate at times that we can't really go back home because the town we grew up in no longer exists. I imagine that's the case for a lot of people. 

Our high school class hasn't done a good job of having formal reunions but we do have a strong, close presence on Facebook. Yesterday I caught this video posted by two friends of mine on Facebook. As I mentioned, I don't watch videos that other people post but I enjoy the two girls who had posted it and I suspected that what was moving to them might be moving to me as well. I watched this one. It's about a lady who goes and stands on the main drag of my old home town preaching the Word of God day after day after day. She speaks in a loud voice. She doesn't worry about offending others. She reaches out to people, prays with people, waves to passing cars, she praises God. RIGHT THERE ON THE STREET!

I will tell you that I am not afraid of the Gospel of Christ but truly, I am not bold enough to so much as lean in to a hurting person and whsiper, "Do you know Jesus?". I will offer the typical, "you're in our thoughts and prayers"... I will sprinkle little non-offensive pleasantries without truly engaging others or opening the door for an honest, open, real discussion about THEIR spiritual needs. I pray faithfully for others but oh, so, very rarely evangelize. What good is an Evangelical Christian who doesn't evangelize? I root myself in polite Christianity but never really use it for much more than my own good.

My church sends forth a lot of missionaries... both full time and part time, hard core, one hundred percent unafraid soldiers of God who go into deepest darkest Africa, Thailand, Ukraine... spin the map, pick a place, we're probably represented there. We even have a girl who is in one of those scary mideastern countries where women have to wear burkas and you get shot for being a Christian. It's such a scary place that we don't even name the country where she is... we just list her name and ask for prayer. 

We go all over the world but we... me... I... a lot of times... most of the time... hardly ever... would have the courage of conviction to stand on the street corner talking about GOD. We will hang those goofy flags supporting our football teams... we will be openly passionate about things that don't really matter in the long run but we don't want to OFFEND anyone by talking about God. Not just the street corner... the virtual street corner. How many of us are bold enough to ask that person we share gifts from our zynga games WHERE they are spiritually? How often have you ... me... I... stopped short of really challenging people to think about their relationship with God? 

We accept the platitude that I am guilty of spouting myself where we say, "I am spiritual but not religious". It's not about religion. It's about relationship. Believing that there are "spirits" out there is not going to help you in the after life and I DO believe there is an afterlife. I believe that there is so much more than this world. How different would our lives be - and the lives around us be - if we put aside our polite Christianity and stood firm and bold about our faith? Why not be willing to allow people to wonder if you're crazy?

I am feeling tons better. Yesterday Austin and I went to Walmart to get his hair cut, went to Jamie's birthday party and I spent more time away from the nest than I have in a long, long time. I am still not able to eat much and I still have some soreness but the weakness is giving way to strength and I am encouraged that I will be back on track this next week. That extra week made all the difference in the world. 

I didn't get a lot of pictures of Jamie's party because I did try to stay in one spot in a comfy chair. There were a lot of kids going in a lot of different directions and I wanted to avoid a collision so I sat still. Here are a few of the pictures I took...

I wanted to show you this picture of Sarabeth and Jorjanne and Jessalyn... three of my  little adopted nieces who have grown soooo much in the past year. How cute is Sarabeth with her socks? She's such a jock!

Austin with our youth pastor's daughter, Emily. Kids love Austin.

Sweet Jamie girl greeting her guests. And may I just say... I bought that outfit for her last year and I think it's soooo cute on her!

Social little Jamie with her friends and their dolls

Sarabeth and Miss Kate - Austin's teacher in Catalyst. 

Our Jessie girl who hijacked the UGA Gymnastics jacket from  Jessalyn. Notice my angle... I never moved.

Added degree of difficulty that Austin has to interject himself in every picture.

Opening gifts... 

Me and Angie. I look awful. Baggy clothes... pale... but... there you go.

Kids love these riding toys but we had about a dozen wipeouts that included blood, screeching, drama, road rash... from  the girls riding these downhill ... eventually Jim had to do an intervention and put them away.

So that's the haps this Sunday morning. I'm gonna run out and enjoy the mountains for a little bit. Hope you have an awesome day!

finding my way back

I feel like the past 24 hours has been transformational. I'm not sure that's a word because spell check highlights it. But that's what it's been.

I have struggled over the past week with feeling like such an absolute failure. I mean, yes, there have been moments where my usual stubborn personality peeks through and I snap out of it... but my life calls for me to be not just ten feet tall and bullet proof but LARGE and IN CHARGE. I can't depend on anyone else because there literally isn't anyone else to depend on. Truth be told, I married my second husband, a control freak, because I was so bone weary of having to take care of everything myself. Obviously that was the wrong direction to go in... from famine to feast, where I had zero control over anything in my life. But for me here in these past few weeks to be stuck where I feel helpless and unable to do the things I need to do... it's been tough. Especially when I got to the beginning of the New Year and realized how sick I still was when I had bet the entire hand on being ready to go back to work on the 3rd... it's been a tough week.

I mean, y'all know. I've written some pretty pathetic blog entries this week. I wouldn't show that dark side of the moon if I didn't know that my transparency in these situations helps you to see my source of strength when I find my way back to Him. And He was there... all along.

There may come a time in my life when I'm no longer able to take care of myself. I have been told that my back problems are progressive, that they will never reverse, there will be no "miraculous healing", there is no surgery to fix it, there is no drug to take away the pain that will still leave me able to function. But for now... I'm still a single mom with a child who is facing his (prayerfully) last semester of High School and I. have. to. be. strong. Once Austin is grown... and we're so close to that day... he can go off to sow his wild oats in the same way my other boys have... and I can be whatever I want or need to be. I can be the relative who takes the elderly relatives to the doctor. I can be a top-notch professional career woman. I can be something in between. I can come and go as the Lord sees fit. I just have to make it four and a half more months. And counting.

Not that I've got a boot on Austin's butt pushing him out the door. He doesn't drive yet. Soon. Not yet. He has never *really* had a job. He's done odd jobs here or there but he's not exactly the go-getter. If he could design or test video games... he'd be a winner, winner, chicken dinner. But when I suggest, like I did yesterday, that we should get him an application for the new Dairy Queen they're building in town, he had a thousand reasons why that wasn't a good idea. He will go into a vocational rehabilitation program right out of high school. This prepares him for the job search process and even enlists local businesses that hire people with special needs. He's so smart and so highly functional that plugging him into the right niche will be very profitable for some local business, I'm sure. Whatever he knows, he knows very well and knows from every angle and is doggedly determined to do correctly.

My point is that I see the empty nest ahead and I am welcoming it with open arms. It's been a long, very tough, at times overwhelming journey to raise three young men on my own with very little assistance from where it should have come but, by the Grace of God, an outpouring of assistance from various and assundry places where it didn't have to come but did.

And as I sat here this week laid in my bed all week wondering if I would ever again be able to sit, wondering if was going to run out of steam in this last mile of the marathon of child-rearing... there was a fear that gripped my heart in a way that only fiercely independent people understand. I have beat myself up so many ways... made the call of shame four times this week to my office, apologizing profusely that I am not who I need to be right now... trying to explain without grossing anyone out or sounding too pathetic... that I plain and simply cannot sit.

There's been more. I mean... I'm lightheaded, unable to eat, weak as a newborn colt, perpetually sick to my stomach, dizzy, exhausted. I dread the toilet like a torture device. I've been unable to focus on any of the things that I usually fill my mind with... unable to find joy in the things that normally bring me joy (food and hours of computer games) ... barely at all able to bring food into the house for my child. I swear, Austin has dropped ten pounds over this holiday break, bless his heart. Thank the good Lord that the child loves canned tuna, canned corned beef hash, tomato soup and cereal.

Yesterday I hit the proverbial brick wall. I had missed the entire first week of work for this new year. My house is a wreck. I was facing an hour and a half round trip to the surgeon's office and back and there was no one to take me, I was going to have to drive the whole way. I spent the morning with the tv turned off and my bible open and poured out my heart to the Lord. I confessed every sin I've committed in the past year and some I might not have really committed. I sat in the stillness of my nest and instead of thinking about anything but God, I thought of only God. I went back through a mental inventory of the past 26 years (almost) since my first child was conceived and how blessed I have been as a parent, as a single parent. I got back to the things that really matter and it turns out that the things that matter aren't things. I rested my head on the shoulder of my Heavenly Father and let Him console me and redirect me. And I thought, "If it took all of that for me to be here... I'm ok with that".

I wish I wasn't so stubborn and distracted that it takes a crisis to pull my attention back to where it should go. Yet, I know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made and that this just part of the process as I go about perfecting the soul that will be with me for eternity. At any rate, after that time of rest in Him, I knew that I could face whatever I was to face in the coming months leading up to my next season in life.

I went to the doctor which I thought would be the focal part of my day and as it turns out, it's a minor part of the story. I found out that they did the maximum amount of repair that they can do in one surgery. There is a concern of scar tissue and making things worse if they take everything in one procedure. As with any of the other things that have caught up with me in my forties, this is a surgery I should have had years ago but couldn't because I didn't have time, money or insurance. The extent of the surgery pushes me to the far end of the recovery period and there was never a thought that I would have been able to return to work yet. They were surprised that I had even considered it. It's fine if I want to go back Monday but I'm by no means healed yet... healing... but not healed. It's also normal that my appetite hasn't returned or my strength. This was no minor procedure and I don't guess I've ever really had major surgery before so my expectations were out of line with reality.

The bottom line is that I'm normal. My recovery is normal. Feeling guilty about not being where I was not expected to be was a wasted emotion. Putting more stress on myself than was needed was not going to change my recovery time. Imagine that.

I made peace with God, peace with my recovery, peace with any repercussions from the recovery (such as having used a years worth of sick leave the first week of the year), peace with who I am and whose I am. I drove home... uncomfortable but not suffering by any means... and I finally, for the first time all week, I rested.

Oh, wait, there's more. I started doing budget math in my head and was a little frightened by the numbers I was coming up with. Then I realized I had not yet collected my paycheck from the last half of December (a short one but still)... I had not gotten child support from last week and I haven't yet submitted the hospital income claim for my surgery... in other words... there was about $700 that was supposed to be in my account that wasn't yet.

Now that I've spent the past hour telling you that... I'm going to turn the tv off again. Curl up with a Good Book - THE Good Book - and let this thousands year old manuscript give me a little direction for the future. Later - my Jamie-Gurl's birthday party. Love and hugs, y'all!

listen to your body, that's all I'm sayin'....

I didn't go to work yesterday. I psyched myself up here... went and took a shower, got dressed, started drying my hair and just about collapsed from exhaustion. I had prayed through all of that and I knew that there was a reason. My friend Pam confirmed some of the thoughts that I had - without even saying anything to her - which I think is awesome, it's always a bit of a validation to me that God is hearing me when someone else voices what I'm thinking he's telling me.

My blood pressure is up. My anxiety is off the charts. I can't eat. I'm exhausted all the time and... I'm still in pain. I still have the feeling that I'm held together with stitches. I rested a lot yesterday. I read the book, "Killing Lincoln" by Bill O'Reilly which was a great retelling of the assassination of Lincoln  - more in depth than I have ever read and I read a lot of historical stuff. I sat up a bit - as much as I could stand at a time. I didn't OVERDO but I did try to move a bit more and regain some of my strength.

This morning I'm passing a little blood. Not much. Not scary amounts like before... but if you have spent the past month with your rear end stitched together... a little is a lot. Especially after suffering through all of this to end this sort of thing. If I wasn't going to the doctor already today, I'd be parked in front of his office first thing this morning. I'm not sure how I'll manage the drive down there and back today. I was thinking I'd be ten feet tall and bullet proof by now and when I made the appointment, I thought I was fine. That is a looooong drive when you haven't been sitting well and it will be a loooooong drive home after having the doctor up in my business.

I don't like seeing the blood but it does drive home an important point to me about listening to your body. I've been tough on myself all week about not being ready to jump back in the saddle right away, on the predetermined schedule i had set for myself. I have felt - well, worthless - and have carried a load of guilt that I'm not sure was really mine to carry. I knew that I didn't feel right. I knew that things didn't feel healed enough for me to be sitting all day long. I just thought that I was afraid of the pain - and I was - but sometimes that fear, that reluctance, is part of nature's way of keeping you from undoing two and a half weeks of healing.

Have you seen the news snippets about the 18 year old mom who killed the intruder? There's more to the story than what they were saying originally... I kept thinking that her home looked very mature for a young couple... and I kept thinking that it was so sad and tragic that her husband had just died from cancer "so young"... well, it turns out that her husband who died on christmas was 58. I'm not judging, I'm just saying. It also turns out that several things had happened over the past month, such as her dogs being poisoned and this intruder stopping by her house randomly not long after her husband died. Turns out the guy she killed was a prescription drug addict that knew her husband died of cancer and thought he could score some narcotics. Mercy. I don't know that I could live with myself if I killed another human being but I KNOW that I would do just about anything to protect my babies and definitely would have, even at 18. and I was a mom at 18.

Back before we were heathen unchurched people, when my babies were all babies we went to Tara Baptist church. (yes, Tara, like the plantation in Gone With The Wind). There was a sweet young girl who went there who just had her first baby yesterday - TEN pounds worth of baby! Yikes! Fortunately she was a planned c-section but I'm thinking at ten pounds, she was a c-section about a week late. She is precious.

Austin's married friend, remember, the one who didn't have a wedding night because they got married at the courthouse? I think I told you that this mensa candidate is expecting a child with his wife... I think she's due in May or June. I can't remember... at any rate... I woke up at 4am this morning and this young married FATHER to be is hanging out with Austin playing xbox 360. I thought we shook that element when we moved here... but... exactly six months after the fire... he tracked Austin down and got his mother to bring him out here. She will pick him up later today. I mean, I know it's a different world and truly, Logan and Hillary have turned out to be really good parents... they just play their video games while holding Dessa. A gamer doesn't necessarily make a bad parent. It's just... weird to me. Austin, however, who has spent this extra long Christmas break stuck out here with a slug of a mother has been delighted to have him here.

I'm sneezing this morning. How in the world do you catch a cold when you don't leave the house in three weeks? Sneezing while trying not to let your guts bust out of you is a really interesting process.

Ok. I think that's it. Please keep me in your prayers as there is so much uncertainty in my life because of this surgery. I'm trusting God and still anxious about the future. I shouldn't be... He never disappoints me, no matter how much I disappoint Him. It just feels like a heavy burden this morning.

Happy Friday.

thankful thursday

I want you to know that I am sick of my nest. I would have never imagined that could happen because I love, love, LOVE nesting. Through all of my back pain last year, my nest was my refuge. Every day while I was struggling to stay at work, I would literally count the hours until I could come back to my nest. It was the only way I was ever truly pain free.

I can't escape the pain now. The nest doesn't take it away. The things that I entertained myself with for all those hours - all those computer games - I can't sit long enough to play. I can't focus on anything. The position that always made things comfortable with my back - hurts as bad as anything else.

And it's Thankful Thursday.
I haven't given up on going to work today. I've been up since about 3am with an upset stomach which hurts but not as bad as it's hurt in the past week or two. The problem is that every time I go to the bathroom I have to use a squirt bottle to clean up - just like after having a baby.
I'm thinking... if I pack the squirt bottle off to work with me... it just might work, at least for a few hours.
Since I'm in the back office now, I will be closer to the bathroom.
I think that a little return to normal life will do a lot for my mental well being.
Even if I'm not yet ten feet tall and bullet proof.
Even if I'm a little slower.
I've been afraid, not just of the pain, but of not being good enough at what I do to handle our competitive office setting.
It feels like a huge risk, but I have to take it. I have to risk failure. Crazy, isn't it?
When I first moved here to the mountains from Jacksonville, I was so broken. I was shocked to hear a new co-worker describe me as self-confident. I had zero confidence in myself but what I did have was a ton of God's grace and a lot of people praying for me and a determination to make a life here.
At some point over the last year I stopped living my life here. It hurt too bad. It hurt to move. It hurt to sit. It was easier (I thought) to check out and hide here in the nest than to risk pain.
Are you seeing my dilemma here? I've spent a year running away from pain... tucking myself into a smaller and smaller corner to try to avoid pain and now there's this new pain that never goes away no matter what I do. It will. This is an acute situation that will heal, eventually. That healing hasn't happened in the time frame that I gave it but it happen. But for now, until that happens, exactly what do I do with myself? What happens when you can't escape the pain?
You find a way to live your life in SPITE OF the pain.
I have less confidence than I had when I moved here but I have an even stronger testimony of how God works in SPITE OF us.
I don't know what lies ahead today. I'm supposed to move into a new office but I'm not cleared to lift anything yet.
I'm going to get a shower and pray.
I'm going to try to sit a bit and see if I can - right now it's painful but yesterday I ended up with a good hour or two that wasn't uncomfortable.
I'm going to push myself beyond what's comfortable, step beyond what I know I can do, stop hiding from the pain and take a risk.
Happy Thursday, y'all.

whiny wednesday - so sick of my nest

Two weeks have gone by.
It was another "up all night" for me.
The pain is back again but not as bad.
Is that the "two steps forward, one step back" that people keep telling me about?
It's still frigid cold out - sixteen degrees.
I know a lot of you live in places where you get much colder weather - I imagine you have proper clothing for such weather. Austin could only find one long sleeved shirt in his wardrobe. I have a big thick winter coat but I can't find it. He doesn't own a coat. I've tried to buy one for him but he refuses.
Little Kitty - Trouble - has been sleeping under the covers with me which I find adorable. He has also been "helping" to undecorate the Christmas tree which is less adorable. He will search the tree... find an ornament and swat at it until it comes off the tree. He then chases the ornament down, picking it up in his mouth if possible, and carries it to his little hoard under my bed.
I want to try to go to work today. I can't sit at all right now so that is pure folly. Part of my problem is that the piriformis syndrome affects my right cheek so I can't lean to the right off center... and my sciatica affects the left side so I can't lean to the left... I sort of counter it in my recliner by sort of balancing,  putting my weight more on my back but that's where there bulging discs are. I can't stay in that position for long.
I think I should have discussed more in depth with the surgeon how recovery could be impacted by my back problems. We did discuss position during surgery because I knew that if I was unconscious and they moved me in a position that put my weight or a lot of pressure on those damaged discs that I might come out with a whole lot more trouble.
They didn't and honestly, not sitting for the past two weeks has really helped my back. I haven't had near the amount of back pain that I was having. I've had some muscle spasms when I stay in one position too long but the pressure on my back has been much, much better.
In the whole scheme of things, where God works things out for our good, I wonder if these other issues causing me an extended period of rest was divine design.
The two places where the pain pump went in are both irritated again... I'm worried about those spots, especially since they oozed so much in the days after the pump came out. The doctors office said that was normal. I just don't think anything oozing is normal.
I go back to the doctor on Friday. If I could go earlier, I would. Surgeons, though, you know, have such tight schedules.
I watched a lot of caucus coverage last night. I like Rick Santorum. My fear is that nobody is strong enough to take a commanding lead for the Republican party - or that they will beat each other up so bad in the process - and we'll have four more years of Obama.
It's amazing to think about the fact that this contest last night went down to an 8 vote difference. Every vote really does count.
Austin just took the trash out in his boxers. He's on that vampire sleep schedule where he's up all night and sleeps all day. I, quite frankly, don't mind him sleeping all day as I haven't had the energy to entertain him and he is mostly quiet overnight when he's awake. I just see it as one of those teen things... rights of passage... sleeping all day and staying up all night. Soon enough his life will change and he won't be able to do that.
I've been keeping track of baby Dessa via facebook and it looks like her mom and dad are crazy about her and are taking great care of her. She has red hair - and you know what a sucker I am for little girls with red hair!
I haven't seen much of Sarabeth or Jamie since surgery. They came by to exchange Christmas gifts but they were both sort of timid around me, afraid to hurt me. Jamie's birthday party is Saturday, I hope I will be up to going. She's 7. I missed one of her birthday parties - back when we were in Jacksonvillle - and it broke my heart. I have somehow misplaced my memory card for my camera, though, and I need to find that before  then. I know it's in this house because I took pictures on Christmas Eve.
I ate slightly better yesterday... yogurt and half of a kashi frozen meal. that's not really better, I guess. I just don't have any appetite nor do I have the energy to fix anything. Pretty much everything in our house is past date so I have to do some food shopping. I also need to clean out the refrigerator.
I just need to be well. That's all.

it's too cold, my head hurts, i can't eat and other complaints...

I started writing a status update and it felt more like a blog entry...
I'm wide awake at 5am and I want to leave this house and go to work.
I'm tired of nesting. I never thought that would happen but I'm tired of being here in the same room 24 hours a day.
I need to go to the bank and the grocery store in a bad, bad way.
I want to go to work. Did I say that already?
I can't, though. I can't sit for more than a half hour at a time.
I can't eat. I have finally unlocked the greatest diet secret of all time: if you know it's gonna hurt like broken glass when it comes out the other end, you're very careful about what you take in.
Yesterday I ate a fruit and yogurt parfait from McDonald's.
That's it.
I've got to do better. I'm not going to heal this way. I've got to get some protein in me. I can't remember the last time I had a real meal. Sunday I had a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Saturday I had some rice. I've got to get back to work.
I have a nasty headache, can't even pick my head up off the pillow. I'm sure that's from not eating but also from not having coffee. After being up all night Sunday night I didn't want coffee, I wanted sleep.
I slept alright last night.
Little kitty woke me up a few times by patting my cheeks. It's annoying but so cute that I don't get mad at him. I think he was cold. It's really cold outside - 22 degrees - and I know that's not cold for some of y'all but it's cold for us. I'm so glad that Austin's still on Winter Break so that he doesn't have to go to the bus stop in that cold. They don't go back until Monday. They had a three week break because the new middle school is ready and they had to move into it.
It's a real pain to type laying down.
With the Iowa caucus today, Fox and Friends is on early today. It's kinda crazy the way that we let two random little states carry so much clout in our presidential elections: Iowa and New Hampshire. I don't think I have any blog readers from Iowa or New Hampshire so I think I'm safe in saying that. By the time they have finished voting, we've usually got a candidate in place... so the "big" states don't have as much of a say. Although, honestly, in this race, Romney has been the presumptive nominee for six months now. It's really more a question at this point of who will be the VP - and I'm leaning toward Marco Rubio from Florida.
It's now 21 degrees and my stomach is churning. I dread going to the bathroom so much... I can't even tell you.  I am beginning to wonder if I'll ever be normal again. I'm worried about not going to work and yet, I know that there is no way I can sit for any amount of time and this morning I'm so dizzy and headache-y that I can't sit at all.
Even when I'm not in pain... all it takes is one trip to the bathroom and I'm in tears.
I know I needed the surgery... there were a lot of times that I would pass a lot of blood. It was something that had to be done. I just wasn't prepared for feeling this bad for this long. I figured... if anything ... by the time it was time to go back to work that I might be a little lazy but I had no idea that I would still literally be unable to sit.
Yet, I will say this: today is better than yesterday. Yesterday was better than the day before. I'm getting there. It just hasn't happened in MY time frame.
It's 20 degrees now. I guess the temperature will keep dropping until sun up.
I'm going to have a cup of coffee and get a shower and maybe have some oatmeal. Maybe that will get me back on track.
I also have the new Beth Moore bible study on James, I think I need to start digging into that. Maybe refreshing my soul will heal my body.
Love and hugs and Happy Tuesday, y'all.

monday update... it's been 12 days....

I started a blog entry this morning but it went something like this, "I haven't had any sleep and I'm in so much pain" ... and I just kept re-writing the same idea over and over again.
So if you're wondering how I am... I haven't had any sleep and I'm in a lot of pain.
That's about all I can tell you.
My time frame for healing was different, it seems, than reality.
Everything I read about this type of surgery indicated a recovery period of 2-4 weeks. It's not two weeks yet and I'm frustrated.
I can tell improvement since this time last week.
I still am no where near being able to sit up for any length of time.
I haven't gotten my appetite back.
My sleep schedule is all off whack.
I'm in a lot of pain. You think you know... once you have kids... you think you have conquered the worst pain possible...and if you've lived with chronic pain for the past year like I have, you think... pain is pain... I can handle it.
I'm here to tell you... I can't handle it.
Like... I can't tell you how many times, just in the past twenty four hours, that I've thought... this is INSANE.. and have found myself in tears.
It was different when I had the pain pump.
It was different when I was still on the major narcotic medication.
I guess that's why I thought that I should be better... otherwise, I would have more pain pills left. Right?
The cupboards are bare. It's time to pay my first of the month bills. I'm supposed to work TOMORROW and I can't even sit up.
It really stinks.
I haven't even checked on my Farmville in days.
I haven't washed my hair in days.
And why did they move the Rose Parade to the 2nd? I was so confused about when New Year's Eve was because the Rose Parade wasn't on yesterday... so it couldn't be New Year's Day.
But today is the 2nd. So. Yesterday must have been New Year's Day.
I can't remember the last time I ate. There's a spoon with peanut butter residue on it beside my bed. Apparently, at some point, I ate peanut butter.
And seriously, I haven't had narcotics in a week. I just have been in such a haze of pain that I can't think straight.
I've taken a lot of baths... it's the only thing that helps... and poor little kitty, he gets so concerned when I'm in the tub. I guess because he is afraid of water... he makes the saddest little whimper whenever I'm in the tub... he puts his two front paws on the side of the tub and makes his little whimper until I tell him I'm ok... but he keeps his eyes on me until I get out of the tub and towel off.
So.
That's the deal.
I'm not sleeping. I'm in a lot of pain and. that's it.
Happy New Year.