Another One Bites the Dust

It’s days like yesterday, where I began throwing up somewhere in the 6:00 hour and 6 hours later my stomach was still churning, that really prove a mental struggle. Between simultaneous throwing up/offensive diarrhea, attempting to correct bickering children from my porcelain throne, and Jeff gone to work, I just wanted to break down and cry and scream for what was lost because I didn’t think I was strong enough to handle anything else that day....much less more days like that. My strength was running perilously close to empty.

Days like yesterday remind me what I’m missing. Days like yesterday remind me how hard life has become. Days like yesterday remind me that my life is still a constant battle and always will be. Days like yesterday remind me that I am now disabled and prone to stretches of despair because I so desire for 'wholeness' of body again. Days like yesterday reflect those weaknesses and worries in my heart that steal joy. Days like yesterday remind me that I am not strong enough to do this intestine-less life on my own, for I need Christ’s strength simply to make it through to the next hour. Days like yesterday are necessary, though.

Sometimes fighting my physical battles becomes plain wearisome and I just want to power down and go into hibernation mode where I can’t see, think, or especially feel. I get tired of trying to alternate my eating and drinking times, making sure I get enough fluids in so I’m not dehydrated (which is probably why I was throwing up so much yesterday), and to make sure I take in enough food so that I maintain my weight (because the TPN can’t do it all). I can’t eat and drink at the same time because it all slips through faster than a torpedo shaped water slide on a hot summer day. It’s exhausting to mentally plan whether or not I’ll eat breakfast or drink breakfast or if enough hours have passed from breakfast to my next feeding/eating time, and then come lunchtime what should I do, and on and on and on…also knowing that for all my effort, it’s all coming out anyway. It’s enough to make a sane person crazy.

On top of all that, add in a mother’s schedule of school drop offs, pick ups, naps, meals, laundry (and all the other cleaning I don’t get to), church activities, and a wife’s schedule of trying to be helpmate and all that’s left by the end of the day is a fleeting impression of female, a wisp of my morning self - - a woman who still has to pull out her TPN and prepare it and mix it and then somehow drag herself to bed just to start it all over the next day. Oh, I think I forgot to shower in there. Yep. That happens regularly, too.

It is days like yesterday that put ‘me’ into perspective. I may be the gear-shifter in my life, but this life is not simply about me for I am a simple weak fool prone to bouts of mental discouragement over my physical limitations.

(Insert 24-hour break because I had more throwing up to do and by the end of that I was too exhausted to continue writing…and as I begin again, I can’t even remember where I was headed with my last paragraph, so I'll just hop on over to another thought.)

Here I thought things were finally beginning to look up. At my lowest weight during my fissure problems, I was 120…not the best place for my height. I gained back 7 pounds which was terribly exciting, I've kept the weight on, I finished the 2nd round of growth hormone right before Christmas, and had two days running where I woke up and didn’t have diarrhea until well after noon. Progress is terribly addictive.

I try to remind myself that after every ‘bad’ period things usually take a turn for the better. It’s the rough days, the REALLY rough days that keep me tethered to my Lord, though, sharply reminding me of the parallels between my physical life and my spiritual life. That’s where Christ wants me, in a total and complete place of dependency on His strength, and I know this…but I get careless, lazy even, and pride in my own abilities (and complacency) begins to creep up and I start to think “this ain’t so bad, I got it today.” And boom. A REALLY bad day hits and I know I got nothing but…me and the toilet.

These days of pain (and torture) are necessary; though my focus is on me and what's going on with my body, my cries to God are real, my tearful query for His aid is heartfelt, and my thoughts are immediately turned to Him. It's become a good time for me to pray (well, not during the throwing up time or the rocking back and forth time, but the other times) because I'm stuck and I ain't going nowhere.

This particular blog hasn't struck me like some of the others, but the the one pervading thought I have as I end this is that I've got to be like Paul, "pressing on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 3:14)

Though storm and snow and rain and thirst and hunger and cramping and crying may be just a sunrise away, I will not give up and I will not be downtrodden (for long). "I will rise on eagles wings, before my God, fall on my knees....and rise." I like to think that my prize will be two-fold, eternal life with Christ Jesus AND a new intestine! For why shouldn't we eat in heaven?

My weary heart feels lifted just by the thought... and at least I can say about my very bad horrible no good day that..."another ones bites the dust!" Amen.