Just Say No...

Everyone always uses that in the context of drug abuse, having sex, drinking, etc. However, what about life? Some just say no. Some decided that they do not want to live anymore with the pain of life. Sometimes people leave directions that say to not try to keep them alive if, something, an accident or illness, makes them unable to make the conscious decision themselves. I know this is a freedom that people have. God gave them that free will. I respect the fact that they believe that is their choice. Now, being a bible believing Christian people would think that I would take the stance against it because of the belief that it is a sin to take your life. However, really that is not the motivation behind my stance. I do think you should say no... to dying... for as long as God allows. After I share about my life, I will share why I have the hope and belief I do.
I want to share some of the journey I have had in this life because, I know there are people out there who struggle. With what they believe about life, death, pain, faith, all those things that become intensely real when things are tough or you have no control over a situation. Maybe by sharing it will give someone strength to let go, or strength to carry on...strength to continue in faith... I am not going to emotionally hash over the details of life. It would make a better read, but it is not the essential part of this telling. I will share some of the things that have happened. I will say I have suffered from enough different things that I can relate in reality with many people. I will leave huge holes because there is just too much, but this is an overview.
I was raped as a teen. I was in an accident in highschool that left me with back and neck injuries. I suffered domestic abuse by a man prior to my loving husband Ron, I had a baby out of wedlock, and I lost my first son to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when he was 2 months old. I have suffered from more health ailments than I care to remember. Nothing that directly threatened my life, but I have suffered pain that made me wish I did not have to live and I have had things where I was not sure I would make it. I am a chronic suffering of pain. That means I have pain that is there all the time, and it is my normal. If I say I am in pain with something else then that is on top of the chronic pain. 8 years ago, I started suffering from neuropathy. That is a disease or abnormality of the nervous system. My "abnormality" was that I have pain like sparklers going off in my legs, arms, hands, feet, and sometimes different parts of my face. I have had one pupil that stops working at times and it has affected my hearing. During the first 4 years of this particular journey, they did many tests. They diagnosed me with MS twice and then rescinded it. I have been on several different types of medicine to try to control it. One of the treatments actually caused what is called Forced Diabetes. I now have type 2 diabetes because of overworking my pancreas on glucose steroids. I had spots on my brain that I was told were lesions, then anomalies, then disappeared. We even discovered one of the medications actually had been making the neuropathic pain worse and we stopped it. However, I still have some symptoms that remain and a lesser degree of neuropathy pain is one of them. I have come to terms with the fact that we are left with just not knowing why it is there.  I have OCD and Anxiety Disorder that is controlled by medication. Scary thing to admit when you want people to take you seriously because so many write you off if there is anything wrong on a mental or emotional level. Nevertheless, I am being real here. This is reality. The last couple of years we have had the economy kick my family's butt, multiple moves, losing homes, losing friends, losing jobs, changing churches, and loved ones dying.
To bring you up to date I will say this last year I had a ligament snap in my leg (healed from that, minus the arthritis that was there before and worse afterwards), Have a vertebra that wont stay put in my neck and caused migraines for months. I now have weekly muscle therapy that has helped with that tremendously (God provided a friend who does it as a ministry for a lowered cost), and then when I started doing better from those in October/November I started having blood in my urine and pain in my abdomen, that was worse than usual. I have known I had endometriosis for years. However, things got worse and obviously crossed the line of normal with the blood in my urine. Upon running tests, they found other things going on, like a lump showing up on a mammogram. Thankfully, we ruled out cancer on that. I am currently waiting to schedule my laparoscopic surgery to determine the stage of the endometriosis and if that is what has invaded my bladder to cause the bleeding. Truthfully, I can handle most everything, but the pain is what gets me. Now, after all that I, at one time, would have thought, "Well, I would want to just die too." or "Wow that person has real issues." or "Wow, she sure is having a pity party." It is very easy to fall into all those areas of thinking. We are all human after all. Moreover, it is much easier to evaluate someone else in shoes you do not have to wear yourself. I've done it. That is not what I am doing. If you are reading this and know what I mean, have lived any part of this life I have lived, or are thinking those things it just means your human too. My stance is that I do not want to choose death before God takes me. He gave me life and when it is meant to be over, He will take it away, humanly, no matter what medical means are used. I am leaving my life in God's hands, but allowing the means available to stay alive if God so chooses to keep me here. I believe we all have purpose we cannot see. We all have issues, I have just found a Savior who shares my burden and gives me joy that I shouldn't be able to feel, and I don't feel sorry for myself, but I am embracing what I am experiencing and doing what I can, minus moments of weakness, to tangibly feel life and live life. In those moments of weakness I remember all this to strengthen me. God gave me more than just the trials and pain in this life. First, He gave me his only son to be my Savior so that this life is only the beginning of my eternal life. He gave me a family to call my own, people who love me as unconditionally as humanly possible, and He has given me purpose, even in the pain. He has given me friends that have stuck through all the others that gave up on me. I choose to focus on all that. I have to live with the good and bad on this earth, but I get to choose that by my free will. It is not always simple. Don't believe that I find it simple at all. I have to fight at times to live life rather than numbly bear it. I could not do that alone. No way. The bad would overtake the good and I would want to give up. But I know in the bigger picture this is a time of learning. One of my most favorite songs is by Laura Story, Blessings. Listen to it by copying this link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CSVqHcdhXQ It is not what you will think, but it says exactly what I believe and what get’s me out of bed, or through being stuck in bed, on my worst days. My prayer today is that this blesses you and helps you to keep your faith, or maybe find it.