Relapse

I've been blanching and freezing carrots and green beans, chopping chard for morning stir fry, processing and freezing basil pesto, and composting our spring lettuce and cilantro plants that have bolted and become bitter... planting in their places kale, spinach, snow peas, and more lettuce that I hope we'll be able to enjoy early this fall. I've also murdered hundreds of cabbage worms (This is becoming a yearly tradition.) that had eaten our smoothie kale (our nickname for curly-leaf kale that grows really well all season here unless it is being eaten by hundreds of voracious cabbage worms). Now that the worms are gone, the kale is resurrecting itself. I'm hoping to start adding it to our smoothies again in the near future.

I've also been wrestling with the conundrum not only of a relapse of symptoms related to auto-immune junk, but some added symptoms that I've never before experienced. I'm getting the fridge and the grocery list ready to put myself back on a modified AIP, backing way off the caffeine, trying to take time out to get some mild exercise, and forcing myself to chill out.

While I'm dealing with several auto-immune diseases, the diagnosis that gives me the most angst is Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. I've been enjoying a relatively long "balanced" period, but typically I'm either making too much thyroid hormone (The current situation.), or not enough.

I was placed on an iodine supplement close to a year ago to counter an under-active thyroid, and while it absolutely corrected a lot of problems for a while, I'm currently under the impression that it's helped knock me back into hyperthyroid mode. I took myself off of it for about a week and a half, started to feel a bit more like myself, and then tried one on Monday just to experiment and make sure it was one of the culprits. Tuesday I felt like death and Wednesday morning I had a panic attack on 7 making my way to the new Leesburg Wal Mart. I had to exit at business 7 and go home a back way after taking several minutes to get myself calmed down in a church parking lot. Trying to mask the symptoms for my kiddos, I pretended that I was lost and grabbed up my phone to look at my map apps, simultaneously trying to breathe deeply, blink back tears, and pray while losing an argument with Jonathan who knew exactly where we were.

I also took myself off a thyroid supplement I'd been taking, which, like the iodine, had wondrous effects when I first started taking it, but is now, very likely, working against me. Initially, I started taking them every other day. Now I'm off completely.

I figured I'd flipped over to hyperthyroid when I started feeling anxious, irritable, and tense again more often than not. My normal heart rate is on the low side of normal, so when my heart starts to race, I know something's up. Another weird but apparently common symptom for some folks is plantar fasciitis. I get it in my left foot when I flip over into hyperthyroid mode. I didn't even realize it had started up again until some folks noticed I was favoring my right foot at church. Just a few days after that, it was full blown and I was ordering new athletic shoes.  

Heart palpitations and mild anxiety are pretty common with me, but the extreme anxiety and panic attacks associated with driving are pretty new. My first panic attack behind the wheel was February a year ago on a return trip from Tupelo, MS. I was trying to drive on I-81 for Jason so he could relax a bit. I had to exit just a mile later. I didn't seem to have trouble in slower town traffic until I had to drive Melanie to an eye specialist in Ashburn several months later. I struggled a bit there (mostly in the faster sections on 7), but since I had to do that drive many times before her eye issue was resolved, I managed to struggle through and get over it relatively quickly. Now I'm getting on the highway and devolving into full-on panic almost immediately. At first I thought I was just panicking on overpasses and mountain passes. Last week, I managed to drive over the mountain and long-ish Shenandoah River overpass to Charles Town, WV. While I did struggle quite a bit, with God's help, we made it without a full-blown attack. It was a shock to experience one on Wednesday heading the other direction on a relatively short, level jaunt.

Since the fridge and the pantry were pretty bare, I had to go to Giant this morning. While I actually struggled to drive there (three to five minutes from home), thankfully, I only experienced mild anxiety on the way and almost none on the way home.

We've started school as I continue to prep for the coming months. The kids are learning how to help at home and be fully-functioning members of the Allen team, but they still really need me to be on as much as possible. My little guy can sense that mama feels yucky in increasing intervals and his preferred method of helping is constantly attempting to make us all laugh, which just really makes me want to cry. He senses and internalizes that too. So while I work out how to cope with and treat this latest relapse, I don't want to lose sight of my biggest and best job. I want to make sure my kiddos know that their pain and their triumphs are just as important, if not more important to me, than my own. They are awesome kids.

I'm currently pre-reading some of their "textbooks". Jonathan began reading a biography on his own this year called Poor Richard (Benjamin Franklin). He is giving me more detail in his oral narrations than I wrote in my pre-reading notes. This is neat because it's been our target from the beginning. The idea is that it will eventually all translate into detailed and fluid written communication. I was more overwhelmed about this aspect of our school year than any other, and he is definitely rising to the occasion and exceeding my expectations. The jury is still out on whether or not Melanie will start to read the same books on her own when she completes her reading program this year. In ways she is a better reader than her brother (better at decoding difficult words - he still does a lot of guessing - more laziness than anything I think), but she hasn't reached his level of comprehension. Most likely, I will hold off with her until next year.

I don't want to divert my attention from raising, ministering to, and educating my kids. So this health stuff really frustrates me. And while I feel like the Lord is protecting me from falling into the grip of depression and defeat, I do not want these setbacks to dampen my children's experiences.

The other day, I took an afternoon to look at all the activities and necessities available in and near our town and accessible by slow back-country roads. Turns out I can get to co-op, the new Wal Mart, camp, swimming lessons, ballet, gymnastics, the new doctor, and soccer without topping a mountain, crossing an overpass, or getting on the freeway. Do I want to stay in that rut? No way. But for now, I'm not completely grounded and I can give myself some margin to breathe.

And while I pre-read school books for my kiddos (My occupation for at least the next eight years or so.), I'm also pre-reading and completing some personal Bible study/quiet time materials I purchased to work through in an effort to test them out before handing them over to Jonathan and Melanie in a few years. The first is an in-depth study of 1 Peter. I'm just going to have to purchase new booklets for the kiddos because I've decided to make this one my very own. It is perfect material for the current situation. While I'm combating this with prayer, a highly anticipated doctor's appointment in early August, exercise, herbs, essential oils, supplement addition and removal, and some serious grit, nothing beats the power of God's word to set a heart and mind straight.

I've been hesitant to share this because I'm always concerned that in a faith community, folks assume that anxiety, panic, and fear denote a lack of faith or some hidden sin. Well, that's definitely possible here (I'm constantly asking for more faith and for eyes to see my own blind spots. I know they're there!), but it's also true that these issues are triggered by unavoidable chemical imbalances. We are fallen creatures after all. So for anyone else out there that might be facing this, you're not alone! Let me encourage you to ask for help and ask for prayer. I'm trying, and failing a lot, but I have hope that this will be a short season. Something I'm also considering is finding some Christian counsel or psychiatric help that I can easily access either by phone or a back roads. 😊 Now that I've had panic attacks while driving, even when my thyroid situation has leveled out, I'm concerned that I will panic anyway in those same scenarios. I want to be safe on the road, especially when my children are riding with me.

Here's hoping my struggle will help someone else.  While I don't wish this kind of thing on anyone, just a quick Google search is all I need to know that what I'm dealing with is all too common. If you're lumped in there with me, take heart and ask for help! 💗

FYI: While thyroid disturbances (including early-onset thyroid disease and cancer) are actually hereditary on both sides of my family, the symptoms are sometimes mistaken for bi-polar disorder and other mental illnesses. Lithium (a common medication used for bi-polar disorder) actually causes even sub-clinical Hashimoto's Thyroiditis to kick into overdrive. Mis-diagnosis in that scenario can often have grave consequences.
 

Perelandra

I woke around 3:30 this morning unable to go back to sleep. Lying there in the dark, trying to relax enough to re-enter dreamland, I couldn't turn my mind off. Once I was awake enough to think clearly, it hit me to go hunting for a book given to me around my 40th birthday by a precious friend with a rare soul. We were preparing to move to Northern Virginia in those months, so this book was likely laid in a box almost as soon as I got it home. I've been missing her lately-- missing that compatible/compassionate spirit, missing the near-weekly meetings at the Barnes & Noble coffee shop, missing those lively and sweet discussions on our Bible study, current reads, families, and relationships. Pulling out her gift felt like pulling her close again.

The book she gifted is a mostly-abridged compilation of the works of C.S. Lewis called The Essential C.S. Lewis. Because I own many of the complete books included here already, I haven't really opened this book much except to scan through it. It would likely be a great, non-committal introduction to anyone interested in tiptoeing into Lewis' work. More than almost anything, I enjoy reading his letters... a place where I feel I can, without the ability to actually meet the man himself, know his heart more completely and delve into the intention behind his writing.  This book includes some of those too!

Last summer, on a recommendation from a couple in our home group at church, I read Lewis' Space Trilogy. I borrowed the books from them and returned them just before they moved. Something about theology combined with pseudo-science and good fiction really speaks to me. Hmmm... what does that say about me? 😂 Lewis writes in such sweeping, overarching, epic themes and yet, in other works, writes with straight forward common sense regarding God and Scripture... almost "in your face"... and in my own opinion, another very relatable/enjoyable style.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the entire Space Trilogy, Perelandra was the stand-out favorite. In fact, it may be in there with my short list of all-time favorite books. It can be read as a stand-alone, however, I think you lose some of the depth and meaning if you don't read the books on either end. This is the book I woke this morning hoping to find in its entirety within The Essential C.S. Lewis. Thankfully, it is there and it is complete. It's been slightly over a year since I read it, and I feel a compelling need to read it again.

"Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." ~Matthew 18:3 NASB

Lying awake in the pre-dawn stillness, I tried to wrap my mind around what it is that draws me to this particular work of fiction. It may be the "what if" quality of the subject matter. It may be that it paints such a lovely landscape of what living in a sinless Eden must have been like for Adam and Eve. But mostly, I think it just appeals to the child in me... and another child... the child I must become if I'm to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Aside from the person of Jesus Christ within Scripture, no where else have I encountered the childlike attitude of a true believer in adult form, and it is something I find I desperately need... something I have a strong, innate desire to mimic.  

While I doubt I'll drop everything else (My book bag is full again with a whole bunch of partially-read material that will likely take eons to finish. 😑), I will be revisiting this and reminding myself that Christ made a way for us all to live in child-like faith. I'll get a chance to be reminded of all those incredible attributes that accompany the One who is sovereign over all our moments... such an easy thing to receive within the pages of Perelandra.

Safe Above the Weather

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. ~Isaiah 40:31 KJV

I recently finished a book that I've been anxious to read since it's release date almost a year ago. I purchased it just before beginning several house projects that included drywall repair, a palm sander, and lots of paint. I'd decided that I'd use the book as a little after-project dessert. Unfortunately, I've never been all that conventional about meals and dessert, sometimes having dessert for dinner, especially if that dessert happened to be ice cream. Needless to say, I was halfway through the book before I got done with those projects, and finished the book the same day I completed the final task... putting the last coat of paint on the baseboard in my daughter's closet. 

Madeline L'Engle holds a special place in my heart. While I've only ever known her as the writer of a beloved trilogy that I read in sixth grade, that trilogy became a quintet somewhere along the way without my ever knowing it. A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet were books that I absolutely inhaled. My memory of the images those books conjured would not allow me to see the recently-released movie. I still cringe a bit when I accidentally happen upon a preview.  

What I love about this author is her obvious love for Christ and her vision for Him in history, science, art, psychology, and prose. Opening a book by Madeline L'Engle is like holding a kaleidoscope to your eye next to a brightly-lit window.  For a dorky kid with an interest in almost everything, escaping into her young adult fiction took me to another place completely; a place where I could feel as if I were on quest with the Murray kids; a fully-accepted, highly-valued member of the clan.

Recently, a sweet friend asked me to bring a devotion to another friend's baby shower. The effort to write that little devotion was more pronounced than I felt it should be. I explained to her that I wound up trudging through a lot of my own muck before I could arrive at anything worthwhile to share at the shower. In fact, I spent hours and hours on the thing, only formulating something mildly presentable a few hours before the actual event. The writing wasn't about me. I needed to get to a place beyond myself to truly honor my friend.

I didn't realize this before starting on this journey, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I'd had it worked out that truly gifted writing can by-pass all that muck. Too many "I's" in a finished product, well, that's got to be the work of an underdeveloped writer. However, I'm finding that this process is quite a turbulent one. To be authentically yourself, which I think most artists strive to be, you have to explore some of the hard stuff in that effort, and while that seems like an okay thing for a little blog with a narrow following, I don't believe any of that self-exploration should find it's way to a published work unless it's a person's aim to publish their own memoirs. Clearly, I am a very immature writer.

That's the problem I had with A Light So Lovely. I didn't purchase the book to read about Sarah Arthur. I purchased it to read a faithful account of Madeline L'Engle's life. Acknowledging the fact that it feels somewhat impossible to leave yourself out of your own writing, there are some more surreptitious ways of including yourself. At times it felt like the author was downright hostile toward her subject.

Despite this, Sarah Arthur seems to have a deep understanding of one of the authors that awakened my senses to a world that could include faith and science and utilize fiction as a vehicle to bring us to ultimate truth. Jesus' own storytelling takes universal truth and brings it to our human cognition via fictional stories... big ideas encapsulated in easily-digested parables. While slightly struggling with the author in her presentation of the subject, the biggest issue I had with this book was putting it down to finish the house projects. There's so much beauty here. 

"We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it." ~Madeleine L'Engle

Quite possibly my favorite part of the book centers on an idea I've been exploring myself for some time now. This section brought me to another book recommendation that found its origins in Madeleine's mentoring of budding authors. Several quotes stood out from the surrounding text in this particular chapter. 

"The artist, while creating, is in some kind of communion with the Maker who made us in his own image--who made us to make things--which has implications not only for individual artists but also for religious communities and their engagement with the arts." 

~Sarah Arthur 

"...my art was actually a vital expression of the gifts I had been given and therefore a responsibility." ~Aleah Marsden

"Art is not merely a task but also a kind of spiritual surrender." ~Sarah Arthur

Another striking aspect of this particular chapter was the stern admonition toward artists against projecting truth from culture, a practice we see in ever-widening use today.  And that is the place where I believe every artist struggles...seeing things through the lens of our own life experience, our own family culture, making it necessary to get above the turbulence of life in the now and life in our pasts. Writing through some of my own struggles in an effort to find a higher place, safe above the weather, has informed my own realization that what we experience as truth, living life in the same household day in and day out for eighteen years with other people, is not necessarily the same experiential truth our housemates cling to. Strong connection to our Source for ultimate Truth is our only solid lifeline. 

Next in line... Walking on Water... a book by Madeline L'Engle herself, and perhaps those last two books in the quintet that I missed on my high school foray into the world of Stephen Lawhead, another Christian author and contemporary of Madeline L'Engle that I can't wait to share with you. 😊

 

June 29th

Today something extraordinary happened. I held a little box full of plastic toys in my hand while explaining to my son and daughter all the reasons why we couldn't keep those particular toys and their corresponding cards in our home. Our son, the eldest, willingly gave them up, his hands open and his heart accepting that his parents, in their love for him, wanted to protect him completely. I hugged him and told him how much we loved him... how he blessed us with his trust in us. Our daughter immediately followed suit and received the same affection and benediction.

Some 25 years ago, almost to the exact day and hour, I sat crumpled in a corner of a room, completely doubled over in grief. I remember my dad coming and and hugging me hard... sobbing with me. In that too-warm Texas twilight, I was ill with sadness. I remember the color of the sunset reflected on the wall as I sat dumbly watching the light fade on that day. A single, weak candle was lit on the dresser... the only light in the room.

Not quite a year prior to that event, I remember begging God for a relationship that seemed impossible. And yet, somehow, I was noticed and pursued by a young man I'd admired from afar for some time. But even as I prayed, I knew I was asking amiss. I knew it every single time. I badgered my God and eventually, He succumbed to my persistent requests. I was not a flirt. I was so shy around this young man that he had to be pretty bold to help me understand that he was interested. 

On June 29th, it all came crashing down. Investigators believe that a solitary hike led to a fall from an extraordinary height, but the only evidence was a bike chained at the bottom of a mountainous trail. I couldn't make myself attend the memorial service. I couldn't believe there was anything to memorialize. It took ages to convince myself that he would never return.

A few months later, I stood singing the Vaughn Williams Mass in G Minor to a congregation with my college chorale group in an Anglican cathedral-style church we jokingly called Fort God. There was a gaping hole in the tenor section. The church sat at the top of one of the only hills in Ft. Worth just above the line of apartments where he had lived. I struggled to sing as I remembered an evening when we'd watched the sun set from a ledge outside a stained glass window full of moons and stars. Gazing above the men, I watched the sun set from the other side of the same pane that evening, struggling to hold back the tears and survive the performance. I heard the Kyrie on my way to church this morning, but those measured patterns did not bring the same sensation today as they did that night over half a life ago. 

Graduation and teaching and seminary happened in there somewhere, but it all seems like a blur. I remember getting extraordinarily angry after coming home to an Arlington apartment and trying to prop my hood to make sure the oil change I'd just received was a proper one. Only, the hood prop was broken in two and laying on top of the engine in my little five speed Civic. I gunned it back up to the garage and stomped in with the rods in hand, furious and weary with those battles, yet too defensive and afraid to dismantle the wall around my heart.

This evening, standing in dappled light on the western edge of our garden, a perfect calendula stem lay broken in the straw. I couldn't help but feel it deep... something so perfect, delicate, young, and beautiful, broken against a hard reality of earth. I left it to dissolve there.

I remember sitting near a sprawling live oak in our big yard in Rendon, Texas. I might have been four. I might have been younger. I loved wildflowers even then. My mother explained to me as she pulled weeds out of our gravel drive that God could make Himself so small that he could sit on the tiny yellow cushion of the dandelion I gripped in my sweaty little fist...small enough to inhabit the heart of a tan, tow-headed, barefoot little girl.  

Somewhere between June 29th, 1994 and June 29th, 2003, my fists loosened. Always looking to the future, I had a list of short-term goals on one side of my bathroom mirror and a list of long-term goals on the other. I'd given up on one dream to pursue another. I loved mountains... particularly Colorado mountains. I had oodles of credits towards a master's degree and an almost-complete master's thesis sitting in a plastic filing box. I could get many of those credits to transfer towards a Christian counseling degree at Dallas Baptist University. I'd decided to become a licensed professional counselor, move to Colorado Springs, work for Focus on the Family, and climb and hike on the weekends. I'd also decided that marriage was clearly not in God's plan for my life. Colorado 14'ers were calling my name. I had cousins in Denver. With God's help, I would make it happen.

In Spring of 2003, my aunt drove to Arlington and accompanied me to Dallas Theological Seminary. I'd turned her on to Elisabeth Elliot and we were going to hear her speak. I'd read just about everything she'd ever written and I was hungry for her spoken words... her countenance. In all my contradictory self, in all my shyness, I needed to see her, hear her, experience her, breathe the same air as this woman who knew what it meant to give in grief. I needed to know how to do that... how to give up the images I'd always held in my consciousness of how it was all supposed to be. I could see that stained-glass window, all the moons and stars in tiny fragments on the stones, but I couldn't walk away from the horror of it.

I remember smiling as soon as her husband, Lars, came to the podium to introduce her. I knew his face from photos I'd seen. And then, there she was... tall, thin, queenly, and yet simultaneously so completely ordinary. In that hour, it was her ordinary self that was so comforting. Lars was her third husband. Would she tell me how she'd done it? Was there a formula to transform a heart turned to stone?

Driving home that evening, I had a difficult time ordering my thoughts. My aunt is a talker, so I listened and nodded and drove. When I sat down at my computer that night, my old seminary study buddy, Jon (a youth minister in Mississippi), had emailed. We kept a running correspondence. Always delighted to hear from him, I brewed up a mug of hot decaf. tea so that I could savor the note and the refreshment together. A fellow introvert, we conversed best through email. He was going to be in town in late June and wondered if we could meet up. His good friend was getting married in Fort Worth and he wanted me to join him for the festivities. I hadn't dated anyone seriously for some time. I wasn't interested in starting anything now. I'd lived on my own for quite a while by that point and I'd learned to enjoy my independence. I was busy getting my paperwork in to register for classes at DBU and scanning magazines for pictures and information concerning life in Colorado Springs.  I wanted a space to make my own.

On June 29th, 2003, Jon and I walked in on a guy sitting at a computer. We'd just met up at the groom's bachelor pad, and this young man was spending a couple nights there. He'd just pulled into Fort Worth in a beat up Nissan truck with a small U-Haul trailer attached... a friend from Mississippi State who was heading down to College Station to complete a master's degree in Macro-Economics and Foreign Affairs at Texas A&M after the big wedding. We all went to dinner that night and returned to play board games. This guy, Jason, was a marathon runner, well-read, super energetic, and super smart. He'd been a teacher too and spent his summers working at a Christian guest ranch in central Colorado. Oh, and he'd hiked a few 14'ers along the way. 😊

The wedding happened and Jon went home. Jason had passed around a little note pad to get everyone's contact information before our little gang parted ways. I simply scribbled in my email address. While definitely intrigued and overwhelmed at everything we had in common, I was trying to be a good wedding date to the very end, and I'd decided quite a while back that I wasn't marriage material. Why bother barking up that tree again? Once I was back at my apartment, I received a phone call. Jason and Jon had shared a hotel room and Jon carelessly left my phone number laying on the nightstand. Jason, a numbers guy, memorized it quickly. I was shocked to hear his voice on the other end. We went out that very night and when we returned to my apartment, we talked for hours.

Just outside our second story bedroom window are sunflowers growing in garden boxes that my husband built and filled with soil. He knows I love the flowers and the scads of goldfinches they draw when the flower heads begin to fade. Between those boxes is another enormous box full of sand for our kiddos to play in. Shading that sand box from the western sun is another box brimming with black raspberry canes because my best friend heard me say the first summer we spent here in Western Loudoun County that the black raspberry had to be the most perfect berry in existence. I walk to those canes for my breakfast almost every morning when black raspberries are in season.

On June 29th this year, we marked 16 years of knowing each other by helping each other replace some parts and pieces of the suspension and the alternator in our older model van. I got a little annoyed at one point during the day because apparently the thing that's actually creating the weird noise we've been concerned about is a tie rod on the driver's side. He started working on that at about 6:45 pm that night. The day wasn't going the way I'd pictured it in my head... a common problem for a person who deals with life in images. But watching our son sit and hand socket wrenches to his daddy... listening to all the questions and answers, I caught a vision of a daughter and a daddy at the same activity years and years ago... a daughter who was well-trained by a man who could easily have been an engineer and who wisely insisted that his daughter and sons assist him whenever he worked on any of our vehicles. That experience was very much appreciated when I found myself with a killer headache trying to get out of a busy intersection in a vehicle with a swiftly expiring alternator. I knew exactly what was wrong with the van the instant it began to act up, and I knew exactly what to do about it, all thanks to a wise father.

Overwhelm is the only way to describe it. Overwhelm that God knew all those years ago that I would need that information to get myself and my children to safety. Overwhelm at the incredible difference between two June 29ths separated by nine years... that sweet reminder that, out of 365 days, He would pick that day of all the days on the calendar to bless me with Jason.

Driving from Keller back to Arlington that day, I had a knot in my throat. I knew I'd just met someone important. I knew it so well that I called my mom and told her that I felt like I'd just driven away from something predestined, but I didn't quite know what it all meant. It felt just like that day with the dandelion. Running my fingertips over the soft yellow cushion I sang "Jesus Loves Me". I recall peering up at the enormous cumulonimbus clouds expanding with the summer heat in the distance. The sight reminded me of the pillar of cloud in the desert from the Old Testament Bible story. I asked mama if God could be big like that too. "Yes, honey. He is any size He wants to be... any size He needs to be to take care of His children."

June 29th doesn't mean much to many people, but it's a little whispered "I love you and I didn't forget about you. And as much as you've resisted... as much as you still resist... I won't stop loving you and I will prove it to you over and over and over again." A little over a year later, Keith Sanders, the guy whose wedding Jason and I attended just after we met, married us in the little Baptist church where I was baptized when I was nine years old. We honeymooned in Colorado on the slope of Long's Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. The Father who asked me to open my hands a decade before had to pry them open in His love for me. I did not give up willingly. But once they were open and He could trust me to keep them that way, He filled them to overflowing.