Hi everyone, I hope you all are doing well. It has been a while since I last blogged and I just wanted to share what God has been doing in my life and be honest about the fact that even with the good that happened to me in 2020, this continued pandemic makes life still a struggle; but that is okay. I have continued to grow in my faith at my new church and that has been wonderful. I love having a pastor that really gets into the Word of God and helps us apply it to our lives. The most recent series we have begun is one on having the heart of prayer. At first I thought oh this is a no brainer I love to pray and I do this all the time. But like all of us, we think we know it all when we only know a piece of the puzzle. I realized that I really haven’t been praying as often as I should be and I have been putting other things in my life as more important than Jesus. Also, my pastor mentioned being able to listen to what God has to say to us instead of us just speaking our requests and praises to him. You see, I have in the past had very deep meaningful conversations with God where I have listened for a long time, but I was a lot younger...and this got me thinking...why have I stopped this?
It isn’t God who stopped wanting to pursue me as this summer I learned He would do anything to prevent me from taking my life when depression put my mind in a place it had never been in before. I believe a lot of it has to do with the devil knowing exactly what to use to distract us, and us tricking ourselves into thinking we will put off prayer until the end of the day...but then it ends up being short or we fall asleep. We are always fighting our fleshly desires because it’s a battle between the spirit and flesh. I have bad anxiety so my mind is always filled with 1,000 thoughts a second. I am hoping that as I relearn to pray more often again and also listen more instead of just talking (and trust me I am a talker in general but I have become a good listener to my friends) that I will be able to hear God more, my anxious thoughts less, and be able to surrender better to his will for my life. I hope this helps you too. You don’t have to start big, just start a few minutes a day and you can work your way up, asking God to help you and he will :)
On another note, I still struggle with being impatient with where I am in life when it comes to my chronic illnesses and where I want to be career wise. I am so ready to use my Master’s degree and do something meaningful with my life. I feel so insignificant when I have to reschedule one of my two jobs several times a week because I have debilitating migraines or have a seizure. I am thankful for my jobs, very much so. But I just feel like I need to have it together already at 27. I know I have talked about this before and I know God has a purpose in everything and that a job is not what gives someone purpose in life. But it is connecting with people that I desire so deeply and even more so, helping others. Oddly enough despite the way life has ended up so far, God has set up divine appointments where I have met people I never would have otherwise met and I have had life changing conversations with them. This summer I met people who needed to hear what I said about Jesus as much as I needed to hear what they had to say to me about not giving up on life when I was convinced there was no reason left for me to live. And I have made friends everywhere I go. My best friends are my college friends plus my big sister I made from that blogging Facebook group. She’s 51 and i’m 27 and we both have chronic illnesses.. Both are Christians and both are a lot alike. I am so thankful for her in my life.
I have other blogs where I talk more about how it was God who led us to meet because I needed someone to help me with a situation I had no idea I was in that she had been through.. Narcissism is a keyword here. But I also have some friends I have made from being restaurant regulars (covid messed that up but we still keep in touch) and now it looks like I am making some good friends bonding over my favorite TV online. And I shoot for the stars so just like I said I wanted to be friends with Yael Grobglas one day, the same stands for my favorite actress Sharon Case and her lovely boyfriend Mark Grossman, another lovely actor. We both love Sade the artist so there is a connection already. She is so much fun and does meet and greet events such as OpportuniTea which as contributed to good organizations such as March for Dimes in Canada-- which helps people acquire independence from debilitating physical disabilities.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6 NIV
I had a hospital stay a few weeks ago to try and capture seizure activity and of course the whole five days I had not a single seizure...bummer because my neurologist wanted to learn what part of the brain they stem from. But, we found out I have something else that goes on called essential myoclonus and my seizure meds help with it otherwise I am constantly having body jerks and spasms. When they took me off of that medication I thought I was going to lose my mind because of the intensity and pain I felt (they took me off of all medications trying to induce a seizure while I was there). All it did was make me an emotional wreck, but I enjoyed talking to the EMU techs who had to keep coming in to fix the electrodes on my scalp since my thick hair kept making them come off. One woman and I instantly bonded over her talking about having endometriosis and I mentioning that I have PCOS and all this other stuff. When she left she asked did I need anything else. I said no and she was like, are you sure? I was like yeah why do you ask, and she said I looked like I wanted something from her but was afraid to ask. I felt myself blush because I didn’t realize it was that obvious I wished she was my friend haha. Usually I am much harder to read. I should have asked for her # when I was discharged because she was cool.
My entire stay made me grateful that I am able to do things for myself and that I should count my blessings. It made me so happy that I have a husband who was willing to take care of all the dogs while I was there without complaint because he said they kept barking and having accidents in their crates because they missed me. And because he is the best husband ever he cleaned them up, video chatted them to me, and brought me yummy food every day and brought my service dog to me each day too (she wasn’t allowed to stay overnight per hospital protocol). I am so thankful for Robbie because he drives me everywhere since I cannot and he loves me despite these illnesses that were not there when we first dated and got engaged/ even married. My first seizure presented itself a month before we were married but I didn’t know it was a seizure until a year later. My chronic migraines began two months into our marriages and the first one was ocular only, so I was terrified at the visual show I was seeing to say the least. That was like two weeks after my dad had a stroke so I was like dear goodness please tell me I am not going insane! Thankfully I wasn’t. But migraine auras are scary.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8: 38-39 NLT
Back to now, I get discouraged when I see covid #’s rising again and things having to be locked down again. I understand why and I want safety, so that’s not what I am implying here. It’s just I worry about people I care about and even people I don’t...and I also miss people I haven’t seen in forever. It’ll be two years in April since I was supposed to see my bestie Kristin. We see each other once a year usually since she moved to another state. It is usually my birthday gift to me to travel plus chillen with her and her hubby and my hubby and all of our dogs. I suppose for now we need to set up a phone call soon. Ya know it’s crazy we were roommates my senior year of college at Ohio University and then we became best friends. She is so chill and I am too but she is an introvert who likes to have fun and I am an extrovert who doesn’t go too crazy lol. I learned quickly she is a ride or die for me and I am the same for her. Many memories of us sharing those Athens exclusive champagne slushies at Broney’s and then just hanging out talking about life. Blasting the music on car rides to the grocery store together. When my puppy Luke got sick and flea medicine caused him to have a seizure, I didn’t have any cash on me for gas $ for my now hubby’s car that night and she tossed money at me and said go rush him to the emergency vet. I was crying my eyes out hysterical and she was like I’ll clean up all the dog throw up. When she had boy problems and some dude was a jerk to her I was about to beat him up but...then I introduced her to a guy friend of mine and they are married now. Ahh I can’t believe that was so long ago. I think for all of us to get through this pandemic we need to reflect on good memories and what we have to look forward to. If we think about what we have to look forward to, we can be safe and we can know it won’t last forever.
Furthermore, if we put on focus on Jesus and remember he is in control, it’ll be okay. I have to continually renew my mind and remember that I can cry out and pray to Jesus whenever and he is always there to listen. When I am worried about my family members getting covid, I can pray that God protects them. You can do the same. If we are worried about politics, or finances, or when will this ever be over, we can give it all to Jesus. We weren’t called to carry this all on our own. We just surrender it to Jesus and ask him to give us peace and guide our steps. For me it has literally had to be a moment by moment thing. I am nowhere near where I want to be in my walk with Christ. One min I am like yes I am making progress, the next I feel like I went back 10 steps. But the thing is it’s a journey and God is patient with us. We just have to keep getting up. And take things one breath at a time. I am my own worst critic, my therapist said that’s where a lot of my problems stem. I am betting you are probably your own worst critic too. We don’t have to be. Jesus sees us through loving us. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, even when we mess up, he sees us as righteous and with love, not with anger.
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. Zephaniah 3:17 NIV
So we need to give ourselves some grace and stay in the race. If you haven’t already asked Jesus into your heart to be saved, I hope you would consider it. All it takes is believing Jesus is Lord of all and that you need a Savior. Just telling him that you are sorry for sinning and you want to be saved. After that your life will be forever changed. I look forward to seeing you in heaven on day <3. God bless.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Ephesians 2:4-5 NIV
If would like to see my blog on how 2020 became a year of restoration for me you can check it out here:
https://traveldogloverangel.blogspot.com/2020/10/2020-year-of-restoration-after-almost.html
Also here is the link to my main blog: https://traveldogloverangel.blogspot.com/
Also here is the link to my main blog: https://traveldogloverangel.blogspot.com/
