in the desert with some n'oatmeal and jesus...

many years ago... 15 years to be exact... I donned hiking boots, a bandana, a sunhat and my bible and did a hiking tour of israel.  i had been spurred by the uncertainty of my relationship with kjaer as we were still young and carving our own paths, getting closer to each other while he kept saying he didn't want to get married.  (maybe that deserves its own blog post).  desperate to figure myself out, i signed up for a tour and ventured overseas by myself for the very first time (i guess no one could ever accuse me of not being independent!).  it was an incredible journey that made my faith come alive and shaped me as i grappled with who i was and what i wanted.  

me and my roomie, shelley.  we met on this trip
and have been friends ever since!

was i really this young?

the tour was set up to mimic what it would have been like to follow a rabbi.  we often didn't know where we were going and our teacher would use the original hebrew and the landscape to teach scripture to us.  usually we would be dropped off knowing there was a destination in mind... an old archeological dig site or something to hike to.  

this particular morning our bus dropped us in the middle of nowhere... in the deserts of israel (israel isn't all desert, by the way.  this was just the particular area we were in during a portion of our trip).  any direction you looked... there was nothing.  

just rocks... and maybe some camels.  

see?  camels.

our rabbi started walking and we all uncomfortably looked at each other as he forged his way into the nothingness.  

so we followed.

i was painfully aware i was wandering in a literal desert... 

the terrain wasn't sandy like in the movies... it was rocky and void of life.  

and we just kept walking.  

soon we ended up by a group of children and a few sheep.  this was where we stopped.

for awhile we watched these kids, tossing rocks around their herd... keeping them together and moving them using the sounds of rocks landing by their little sheep feet.  their aim was impeccable as they chatted and played and tossed rocks.

eventually, the silence was broken by our rabbi... who started reciting psalm 23.

some people joined in... after all, it's an all time church favorite.  then it was over as the hot desert wind whipped the cords of our sunhats around and we stood waiting expectantly.

then he said words i will never forget.

THESE ARE THE GREEEN PASTURES

my american image of green pastures - which actually looked a bit like Ireland - flickered and then shattered.  you see, david had been a shepherd in israel before becoming a king and penning this psalm... in this actual geographical place.  stooping down you could see a little clump or blade of grass here and there... but it was by no means the fields of ireland.

what i learned that day and have tried to hang onto over these years is that God gives us just enough.  He doesn't just plop us in a green field and forget about us.  He is with us in the harshest terrain, the sometimes bleakness of life, pointing out the blades of grass and fighting off the wild beasts that would devour us... if we let Him (and even when we don't, too).  

He gives us just enough. 

i'm writing this because, my friends, i feel like i am in that desert again.  and as i sat down this morning for my quiet time... my coffee with too much cream in hand, i read psalm 23 and felt my young, athletic 20 something year old self standing uncomfortably in that 100+ degree rocky, desert realizing that my God didn't promise me the fields of ireland...

...but He did promise me that He'd take care of me.

this past year has been hard for everyone.  we've had those typical Covid stresses.  all of the stuff that came with our children learning at home for first semester, working from home simultaneously, jobs we had to relearn and the stress of living in a world up-side-down.  we've been there... done that.

kjaer was overaged this year at his school and is leaving the place he has called home for the past 14 years.  this has been devastating.  my part time status wasn't funded by the district for the next year.  this has flipped our family life on its head as i prepare to return to work full time for the first time in 9 years.  people we love suffered from Covid and were hospitalized.  a few people we love lost their homes due to rent increases and some have had to consider moving out of state because they can't afford the market here in colorado (and they happen to be a huge part of my support system).  i'm telling you... it's been one brutal punch after another.

on top of all of this, i have had unexplained health things happening to me in spite of working fastidiously to take care of myself, eating extremely healthy (we'd done a couple of rounds of whole30 and continued to eat that way 90% of the time) and exercising.  first, i began feeling drained all of the time.  my days home with ophelia felt unproductive and exhausting.  i began gaining weight for no reason... even though i was counting calories and measuring my food and exercising. in september i broke out in an unexplainable rash that lasted for about 6 weeks.  when i chatted with a doctor they just shrugged and said i should probably be looked at by an immunologist but failed to write the referral as my rash had been mostly healed by then.  then, i started having terrible stomach pains, waking up in the middle of the night to a stabbing sensation on my right side.  an ultrasound in december revealed nothing.  january i had a random breast biopsy... which felt traumatizing as i had just gone in for a routine mammogram and before i knew it they were prepping me for a surgical procedure.  (don't worry, it came back clean).  a couple of weeks later i broke out in a bigger rash.  this one covered my entire torso, my arms and started creeping up my neck (don't worry, i won't post pictures of it! 😂)  an immunologist suggested crazy things... bed bugs, laundry detergent.  nothing turned up.  he asked me to have my ferritin levels checked (part of an iron panel) but for a myriad of reasons i didn't go get my blood drawn.  instead i met with a dermatologist who had diagnosed me before she even talked to me because of the pictures we sent her.  i had pityriasis rosea, a rash that lasts 10-12 weeks that is usually caused by an immune response to a virus.  she asked me if i had been sick... which i hadn't.  we were all stumped.  it vanished early march... and i was glad to be done with it.  a week later i started having shortness of breath and my chest felt tight.   nothing seemed to help.  i tried my inhaler, breathing treatments, and allergy meds.  after two weeks of gasping for air (and a negative covid test) i chatted online with a kaiser doctor who tried sending me to the emergency room.  i was like, "i just am having trouble breathing and pressure in my chest, it's not chest pain."  to which she replied, "actually, that IS the definition of chest pain."  but i had already paid through the nose for a biopsy and was 90% sure i wasn't dying of a heart attack so i pushed back and asked if i could come into a clinic.  appointments were a month out but she reluctantly agreed and squeezed me in.  they did an EKG and chest Xray (which i passed with flying colors) and drew a bunch of blood.  nearly everything came back perfect... but that ferritin test from months before had also been there waiting in the cue.  it came back at a 4... normal levels are 18-300 mcg/L.  essentially my red blood cell count was extremely low... meaning that i was having trouble transferring oxygen around the body and my organs were screaming at me that they needed air.

kaiser was of little use.  my primary care physician returned my blood labs (she was filling in for the doctor who saw me in the clinic) and nonchalantly said i had a mild case of anemia.  she suggested i talk to my primary care doctor to find out about my iron levels... to which i mentally replied "YOU ARE MY FREAKING PRIMARY CARE DOCTOR!"  she had also not taken into account my ferritin test that had been ordered by a different doctor and was failing at seeing a bigger health picture.  

i was suffocating.

when i told her i had started an over the counter iron supplement and within an hour i could breath better... she told me she didn't think that was what helped me.  whatever, lady.  i know what happened.  (also... you were too lazy to look at the levels of my ferritin test because you didn't order that one... but it still counts).

feeling disillusioned, i decided to try a naturopathic doctor, dr. miller.  you guys know that since my VBACs with Henley and Ophelia i've been a little, how shall we say it... experimental with my healthcare.  i've been frustrated by doctors over and over again and have found such good healing with looking at ways to address root causes with things like diet and herbs.  so, with my fresh labs in hand, i met with her one spring day... i was having such a hard time breathing on the drive there i removed my bra while driving.  i actually tried to convince myself that maybe it was my bras that had made breathing so difficult for the past month.  i was second guessing myself.... something i had gotten really good at doing for the previous 7 months.

first of all... she spent 2 hours with me pouring over the bloodwork and my medical history.  it was so validating to hear that the things the doctors were shrugging off were no shrug-worthy matter.  when she saw my ferritin she expressed how uncomfortable she was with that number.  she confirmed i couldn't breath because of my low ferritin levels and set out to find the root cause.  she also confirmed that this was why i could start breathing better when taking the iron... like i had thought.  the larger question was, why was my body losing blood?  we have done many tests over the past few months... some have not been so pretty.  i may have even submitted to a stool sample that i had to do at home with my three young children knocking on the door at precisely the worst moment... but i digress.  by may we had ruled out internal bleeding, meaning that my loss of blood was being contributed to by my heavy menstrual cycle. however, the tests were bringing back some other red flags and we still had to figure out why i was losing so much blood.   

by mid-june i was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Hashimotos Thyroiditis... 

a crushing revelation, of sorts.

when i was diagnosed it was like everything fell into place... the exhaustion, the unexplained weight gain, the low iron, the heavy periods... it all made sense and yet felt scary all at once.  while i can work to put my hashimotos into remission,  it is going to take extreme dietary measures (AIP)... like more extreme than whole 30... and a lot of tweaking meds and herbs.  remission, if it happens, can be a 6-12 month journey... sometimes years for people.  the other frustrating thing is we still are digging for the root cause.  so now we are onto a whole other round of testing for SIBO and food sensitivities.  the goal in getting to the root cause is to heal that part of me that caused my immune system to go haywire and then work forward from there.  addressing the root cause can give me a better chance to put my body into remission.

on top of it all, apparently my immune system has also reactivated Epstein-Bar virus in my body (mono)... because, why not?  firstly, i never even knew i've had mono in the past.  secondly, that you could reactivate it.  reactivated EBV can cause a whole host of health problems including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, thyroid issues, lupus, vertigo, tinnitus and can contribute to anxiety, chest pain and asthma.  dr. miller seemed more concerned about treating the EBV virus with a ten week protocol before hitting the hashimotos hard core and so i've been spending the month of july stocking my freezer with AIP recipes and finding ones that i like so that when i return to work i can successfully heal my body while following a strict protocol to support my immune system in "turning off" EBV.  

you guys... i'm making weird ass things like carrot and banana n'oatmeal and spaghetti squash porridge for breakfast right now.  (both of which are extremely delicious, surprisingly!)

adding to the stress of this is the AIP diet.  when doing whole30 and basically cutting every food from God's green earth... i relied heavily on some staples... eggs, nuts and seeds, potatoes and coffee.  ALL of these will need to be eliminated from one to several months for me to be able to heal. 

did you hear me?  ALL OF THEM.

when dr. miller was like, "don't worry... there are lots of delicious coffee substitutes out there",  i nearly fell out of my chair and begged the sweet Lord to take me home.  (and the sad thing is... after our lovely chat i started drinking the almond amaretto herbal coffee  for my afternoon and evening cups. i even convinced myself i could come off of coffee only to learn i can't have the nut coffees on AIP 😭).

all that to say... i feel like i'm in a freaking terrible, endless, rocky desert you guys... and it keeps getting hotter.  oh... have i mentioned that my autoimmune disease gets worse if you are stressed?   so there's the cherry on top!

a couple of weeks ago, i woke up, took my kids to swimming lessons, drove home, started boiling hot dogs and had to lay down mid-boil and ask kjaer to take over because i was too exhausted to finish.  as i laid there on the couch, tears dripping down my cheeks, i felt myself crying out to God.  

how in the world am i supposed to be able to work full time when i can't boil f-ing hot dogs?

i felt isolated, alone and scared.  consumed by the worries of letting down my family, my colleagues and myself.  i was and am terrified that the busyness of a full time job might push me to the brink if i couldn't even go to swimming lessons and boil hot dogs without taking a nap.

i'm in the desolate desert and i'm worried i won't be able to get out without some sort of mental break down or my autoimmune disease ramping up even more.  

being the planner i am, i've started trying to prep myself.  call it what you will... but i'm calling it self-care.  i'm trying to hire a housecleaner, i've asked our babysitter to take on light housework this next schoolyear and the kids' laundry (an idea that i think is quite brilliant), i'm cooking and freezing meals for the fall and my AIP adventure, i've taken up yoga, i'm planning on walking during my lunches as work.  i'm trying to anticipate the challenges and be proactive.  but it still leaves me feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.  

so this morning as i sat down in my chair and started reading... i read psalm 23 and was moved.  i felt it, you guys... like to my core.  i have read and recited that psalm my entire life without skipping a beat... and today God grabbed me by the hand and walked me through my previous valleys of the shadows of death (which were way worse than my green pastures right now)... my rebellious pits i put myself in, the horrific illness and loss of my father, my postpartum depression, and some hairy stuff i walked beside kjaer through a few years ago.  and if felt it like a whisper and a loud roar all at once.

I was there with you.

I will be here with you.

and then i did what any bona-fide church girl does when she hears just what she needs from God.  

i started singing great is thy faithfulness... obviously.  

what?  that's not what you would do?

it's true though, because when i heard those words above... my heart remembered everything He has carried me through.  i mean... God and i have been through some sh-- together.... you know?  He's been my ride or die for the last two decades.  and always on the other side of those dark pits came a new facet to my faith and a new understanding about myself.  

i understand that this can make some people uncomfortable... and rightfully so.   a lot of folks have been hurt by the church or someone who claims to be a Christian, or have been scared to believe or resistant or simply just don't believe in God... that's ok.  but the thing is... i do.  so i just wanted to let you all know what's in my gas tank as i head into a year that feels bigger than 2020 was for me.  and here's the thing about God... whether you believe in Him or not... He's a gentleman... He won't force Himself on you like imperfect humans often try to do or scare you into submission.  just know that He's there if/when you call... just like He was for me 21 years ago on my apartment floor when i had reached rock bottom and was wishing death upon myself.  He was there and He'll be here...

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  Lamentations 3:22-23

so should we cross paths sometime in the next few months... just know i'm working through some stuff.  i'll probably have a headache from lack of caffeine so if you call my name i might squint at you or even look at you with contempt.  please don't hold it against me... it's the coffee's fault for being bad for my adrenals.  i may also be carrying around some sort of weird root vegetable breakfast doused in coconut milk with a catchy name like "n'oatmeal".... don't hold that against me either.  i may also have to relearn how to have professional hair and have outfits that don't include leggings... give me a few months to figure this all out.  it's just to much to be a glamorous working mom for me right now.  because underneath it all i'll be working my way through a low valley for myself... a change in my family life as i leave behind my part-time days for now, trying to kick some auto-immune disease ass, and trying to find rest and peace enough to heal when life feels so wild and crazy right now.  

because the main thing i came here to say is... today i was reminded that i won't be doing it alone.  and that feels a bit like an oasis to me... something i can rest in and know.  so i'm going to sit my little self down in this dessert with my n'oatmeal and lean on my shepherd... because without Him i'd be walking into a wasteland of despair this next school year...  but with Him i have hope.