Some Answers

Part 1

Quite a bit has happened since my Dear God post. Most of it encouraging, some of it disheartening.

I wish I could explain my struggles more specifically, but it's difficult. I am very much aware that some may call my questions a lack of faith - and that may very well be so. I realize that, unless one has struggled with anxiety or depression, it is difficult to understand. I don't know how much of this I've written about before, so I'll give a brief overview.

I have a chronic disease. It's called endometriosis. It's really hard for me to type that and even harder for me to say. But sure enough, if you google it, you will see that endometriosis is just that. It's an autoimmune disease - which in short, means that it pretty much messes with my entire body. There is no cure for it and no cause has been found. A surgeon who took out some large blood-filled cysts on my ovaries a few years ago and got a close look at my uterus told me that I have stage 4. That's on a scale of 1-4.

The short list of what it does to me is this:

So far, infertility. Although it is not proven that women with endo can't ever get pregnant.
Estrogen dominance (and all the hormonal wonders that go along with that)
Fatigue
Muscle and joint aches
Severe cramping and pain
Clotting
Depression
Anxiety
Bloating
Difficulty losing weight

It has also been found that women with endometriosis tend to have:

allergies
food intolerances
asthma
decreased immune systems

I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out - but you get my point. All of this kinda sucks to one degree or another. To be honest, I never really gave a lot of thought to it until a few years ago. It was normal for me. But all of a sudden, when I had to start taking care of children, a husband and a home, I realized I couldn't be sleeping 10 hours at night and taking 2-3 hours naps every day. I needed to be joyful and patient in order to train and teach my children. All of which is challenging if I'm not feeling well or in pain.

So the depression and anxiety thing.... now, I am totally not saying that I lay around in bed for days on end thinking the world is coming to an end. In fact, I don't do that. There's just to much to be done in a day. More usually, at certain times during my cycle - I'm guessing when my hormones are the most messed up - I struggle. I lay in bed at night next to Justin imagining "what ifs" and wondering about life's eternal questions. Death, heaven, my children, getting old etc etc. etc. My heart starts to race, sometimes I'll start to hyperventilate, my chest tightens, sometimes I have tightness across my back and I often feel like crying. An anxiety attack. It's as much physical as it is emotional.

My theory is this - There are these things in the back of my mind that I have little seeds of insecurity and doubt about. And most of the time - when my body is behaving itself - I can remind myself of God's truths and specific scripture. I can "preach to myself" what is true and what is not and I can fit those little doubts back into the "don't worry about that now" box. But when I'm laying in bed on those other nights - I'm not able to do that. The doubts become bigger than my preaching and pretty soon my body starts reacting and at that point I really can't do much but try to breathe slowly into a paper bag. I'm really hoping this is making even a little bit of sense.

And the depression part? Well, it's during those times again. And again, put out of your mind your stereotypes of depression - no laying around in bed all day. Mostly, the little stuff that only sort of bothers me the rest of the month, really bothers me for 2 or 3 days. Like a little grey Eeyore cloud that might sprinkle now and again making me wish I could lose weight or dress cuter or be cuter or be younger or have less grey hair or be less emotional or be a better friend or a better mom or a better daughter or a better Christian or or or... blah dee blah .....becomes a huge storm cloud. And it clouds the rest of my rational thinking about these things.

So is it a lack of faith? Well, I suppose the root of it is. Until it gets bigger than that. Fortunately, since faith is a gift of God, I'm not too hard on myself about the fact that I can't somehow muster it up in those moments. The Lord has given me tremendous amounts of faith in other areas of my life - and I'm thankful that He's starting to give me some answers in this one.

Wow. This is getting longer than I expected. I think I'll finish it in a Part 2. Before I sign off for the night though - I want to say how encouraged I was by your comments on my Dear God post. Sometimes I can start to think that I'm totally loco and that I'm the only one who struggles with these thoughts. Just hearing that some of you "get it" and a little bit of what you do about it pushed me forward a little bit. And I needed a push. So thank you.

But stay tuned! There's good news in Part 2.

And some photos, of course. These joys are what get me through the rough days.

At the Beach
We're very blessed to live less than half an hour from the bay
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Xochi sportin' her gangsta look.
Ehhhhhh, Vato!