Asthma

Life is all about learning. Sometimes I feel like it takes me a little bit longer to get "it" than it should. Today I realized that we can have bitterness and anger toward a thing, not just toward a person who is associated with pain.

Kind of a crazy concept actually.

Today I realized I have allowed asthma to consume me to the point of having bitterness and severe anger in my heart regarding this horrible disease.

I rarely feel heard on the toll it has taken on my life. I have watched my daughter, the person I gave birth to, the person I would lay down my life for, suffer at the hands of this chronic illness.

It is a chronic illness. Very few seem to get that. If she had cancer, diabetes, or some other juvenile disease people would stand up and take notice. But asthma...it's no big deal.

I have carried this burden alone. Others have helped shoulder it at times, but the bulk of it, it has been carried by me. I am the one who has been there every time she has had difficulty breathing. I have spent nights in hospital rooms watching her pulsometer drop to dangerous levels and her heart-rate monitor skyrocket to where I thought her heart would not be able to take it. I have been left wondering if this might be the time I could lose her. 

We have played hours of Sequence, packet Libby her "hospital" dog, and her blanket made by a community of women called the Linus project. All of this to say, we actually have objects in our home that are meant to go to the hospital with us. This is real. It is not something we have made up.

I have argued with emergency room nurses and doctors who take me for a fool because I don't have a degree when in reality, I know more than they do about asthma. I am not blowing smoke when I say that. It is true. I have argued with teachers that she hasn't missed school because she wants to but because she has been struggling moment by moment to get air into her lungs. I have argued that her grades shouldn't suffer because she wasn't there to participate!

I want to be heard  at least if people can't understand. Listen to me! Asthma can't be fixed by not eating salt and keeping your limbs warm. Can you imagine walking up to someone with cancer and saying, "Well, Laura, if you just didn't eat salt, you wouldn't have this chronic illness. Just stop!" If there is ever a time for the word bullshit, this is the perfect time to use it. Bullshit! She can't fix herself, and I can't fix her. Asthma can't be fixed. It is what it is.

Do we make excellent choices to keep her healthy? Yes, we do. I hate when people ask if we have an inhaler at home. An inhaler? Really? That just shows how little people have listened to me about what we face. Yes, we have an inhaler...and a daily medication of a very high dose, and a nebulizer with two different kinds of medication, and steroids that make my baby cry when she has to take them because they take such a toll on her body. We are literally doing everything we can. Please don't doubt that.

I want to scream. I want to curse. But most of all I just want to sit here and cry. I just want to be seen in this whole thing, to be heard. I don't want pity. I want understanding for my child and for myself. 

And I want to heal from this bitterness I have allowed to get into my soul. 

Lies

Why lie and cut deeper than you already have?

Why not finally be courageous enough to speak the truth?

Why cause tears to fall when there are no tears left?

A selfish heart is no heart at all.

STOP

Accept your choices as that.

Your choices.

Stop blaming others.

No one separated you from your life except you.

It is time to take responsibility.

It is time to heal

First yourself

And then

Maybe someday

The broken hearts you've left behind..

Or you can choose to stay.

Continue to lie.

Continue to blame.

But why?

Has this path of deception lead you to where you want to be?

Maybe so.

No one can decide that but you.

Tears

Why do we hide our tears

wiping them away before they have a chance to make their cleansing journey?
Why do we turn away or try to fix the pain
when we see the tears in others' eyes?

Maybe it hurts, causes harm
to not let them flow.
Maybe the tears heal
allow the pain to escape.

Can we allow others into our hearts,

into our healing through tears?
Can we cry,
escape the damage done by holding them in?

Tonight I cried

let my tears fall down my face.
They gave me the strength to face the things that break my heart.
Because I felt, I am stronger.

*Today I spoke with a woman who is in more physical pain than most of us could imagine. It reminded me of something I wrote a few years ago. She said she hated it when she broke down. I asked her why?

Today

Today

I feel hope

for today

for tomorrow

for my life.

It has been a long time since hope has visited me.


Today

I said the words

pray

Jesus.

It has been a long time since those words came without struggle.


Today

I saw light

like being born

passing through the darkness.


Today

I know I'm going to be ok.

I will have a healed heart.

My pain will be used to help lonely souls who no one gets.


Today

is the day Hope

found

me.

Journey

I believed

I fiercely depended on

I knew

I had confidence in

I carried severe hope in

I intimately conversed with

HIM.

My faith was strong.

It really is that simple.

I believed nothing could rock my faith, let alone shatter it.

I was wrong.

Crushing words, rejection, devastation

Things that smother life

Wither and decay hope

They came at me...hard.

I became tired and discouraged. I was rocked to my core.

I lost my north, was left spinning and confused in my heart.

How does faith become cracked?

I am blindsided by these feelings.

This is not a choice. I found myself here. I didn't walk here. I didn't do this to myself any more than a person with disease brings illness upon themselves.

I truly don't know what happened to my heart.

I feel angry, misunderstood, judged that I did something wrong. But just as we might find ourselves sitting next to the hospice bed of a person who inhabits a place in our heart, someone who believed, depended, hoped, prayed they would be healed, we don't always choose our journey. Are they weaker than the one who was healed? Did they stray "too far" this time? Do we pity them because they just couldn't find their strength to heal? I cringe at that belief.

The truth about me is, I just can't find my strength. I can't find my God, my hope.

But there is a faint light. I can feel it at times. This is not in vain. I'm not lost. My God is right here, and He will bring me through

Stronger because of my weakness

Understanding more because I was misunderstood.

I will have hope again.

I will feel faith like I once did.

And who knows, maybe this journey, this time of my life, I've been charging toward His throne all along, not lost but found.

More pieces of my heart glued together to make a more beautiful me...

Ripple

A blink
A moment
That is all we were to you
There are others just like us
Walking wounded
Sliced and diced
We are not unique

So cold you are
Casting your ripple upon this earth
No care to who is wounded by it
You stay the center
Living in your counterfeit pleasure 

Ashes you've left 
Blown to where is not your concern
You took what you could
Left the wounded dangling
Grasping to find their bearings

As you sit on the cold stone do you care
Or is that indifference in those eyes
Indifference for the lifetimes needed to find healing for the pain
Indifference for the innocence stolen
How do you live locked in your shell
How do you rob so casually

But the forgotten
The abandoned
The ones with scars cut into their flesh
Into their hearts
We have hope
Beauty can come from these ashes
We can be free from you

But you
Will you ever be free from the things that haunt you in the dark
The faces that whisper for you to stop in your dreams
Or do you even sleep
Where is your hope now that someone has noticed your cruelty.

Indifference

Emotions

One minute I feel peaceful, the next regretful.

Sometimes horrific familiar indifference seeps in.

I feel it crowd me.

It causes things to go dark.

I hide.

I avoid.

I don't like hanging out with it, but it is a very real thing for me sometimes.

Maybe it is from exhaustion.

Maybe it is allowing myself to get worked up over things that may or may not matter so I shut down.

Maybe it is frustration that most of the time it feels hard to walk this out.

But I don't like myself when I feel this way.

I long to be fearless.

but

I fight difficult.

I avoid it.

I am tired from difficult.

The bottom line...

I don't want to be hurt by the world I live in, but I don't want to live numb either.

Numb is ugly.

I need to feel.

I need to be still.

I need to breathe.