While my disease journey is ridiculously glitterful and filled with blessings, love and light, there are dark, gloomy and cloudy parts that I struggle with. These consist of feelings of shame, guilt, and even embarrassment. I dream of being able to come back from an appointment with my specialist and let everyone know that things are improving and from a health standpoint I’m doing great, honestly I’d settle for a no changes, everything is status quo report, and I’m sure my friends, family and medical team would too.

What hurts the most is not sitting in a Dr.’s office getting the results or bad news, it’s what follows. It’s having to call my mother and tell her the MRI showed progression, it’s knowing she’s going to ask what we do now and knowing I’m going to have to tell her that there is nothing else to even try at this point. It’s the looks people give you when you return to work and they ask how your appointment went. Generic answers like “fine” and “okay” aren’t well received, especially by people who care about you, and can see straight through that fake smile and can hear the sad undertone even through the over the top cheeriness that my own voice struggles to expel. It’s the hurt in their eyes that matches mine, it’s hearing them apologize that this is my life, and wishing they could do something to fix it, it’s knowing that they truly mean it. The reality is, I wish they could too.

I struggle with feeling like a constant Debbie downer, a constant drama queen, I find myself wanting to yell at my own reflection “just get it together already, enough of the same old song and dance.” I worry that others feel the same.

The medical side of me, wants to yell at my own reflection even more; “why can’t you just get better already, look at all the resources that have been thrown your way, the countless hours multiple physicians have spent on you and your case, to get you to specialists, to get you top of the line medications, all for you to continue to have disease activity, all for you to have the rarest possible side effects leading to termination of the medication. Can’t you see how much time and energy, not to mention money that’s been wasted on you?” I feel guilty and ashamed; I worry that I’m a burden for my physicians.

To the amazing group of family, friends, coworkers, nurses and physicians I have beside me, behind me, constantly loving me, supporting me, cheering me on, and holding me when it all comes crashing down around me; I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not getting better, I’m sorry loving me isn’t all glitter and sparkles. I’m sorry loving me hurts sometimes. Please know, that if I could wiggle my nose, snap my fingers, or dance around my yard in a circle chanting some nonsense to fix all of this , I’d do it in a heartbeat, not for me, but for you.

Thank you for loving me, when it isn’t glitterful.

-Laura

A few weeks ago the MS society posted a question on their Instagram page that asked, since being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis have you had to redefined who you are and what you want out of life?

Absofreakinglutely

It didn’t happen right away. Immediately following my diagnosis and for the first probably 8 months, I vowed to not let a diagnosis redefine me. I refused to allow a diagnosis to be who I now was. Looking back it’s almost comical, for me and my story, because holy roller coaster of a first year batman. My first year with MS was a whirlwind of a ride. It set the course for what now has continued to be a wild roller coaster of the highest highs and lowest lows, plagued with unforeseen drops around every corner. Luckily I’ve learned to fasten my seat belt and use that grab bar since the first year 😉.

When you’re in your first year as a registered nurse, charge nurse, semi-real life functioning adult, trying to maneuver through life as a newly diagnosed chronic illness patient life is a little overwhelming. That’s a lot of new undiscovered territory, with not a lot of road maps and direction to go off of. I spent the better part of that first year fighting not the disease, but rather the diagnosis. My first instincts when things get hard, has always been to run. Ignorance is bliss, and this was my way of coping. I was convinced that if I worked 60+ hours a week, then I couldn’t be sick, because sick people don’t do that. I was compliant with medications only, I canceled and rescheduled doctors appointments regularly, convinced that if we weren’t talking about the problem, then it wasn’t there. If we weren’t obtaining MRIs then we couldn’t see progression, so all must be stable. This ridiculous game plan of mine lead to multiple hospitalizations and ultimately an over 4 month admission, where I underwent hours and hours of physical and occupational therapy, spent almost 6 months away from a job I loved and was unable to walk for most of. Spoiler alert: when you take a girl that lives life at 100mph and take away her independence and ability to walk, life comes to a screeching halt.

In an inpatient rehab hospital you spend 3 hours a day with physical and occupational therapy. That leaves 21 hours alone in your own head. It leaves no options for anything but redefining yourself. The first few weeks were hard. The shame, the defeat, the embarrassment that came with losing my independence; it still hurts to think back on. There were days and weeks I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. I felt like a burden, I couldn’t look my family or closest friends in the eyes but I had never needed their love and grace more either. During this time I, thankfully relied on my faith immensely. I knew God didn’t bring me out into the waves to drown, and I knew there was a reason behind every single one. For once in my life I didn’t fight it, I allowed every wave of sorrow and defeat to crash over me, and I prayed for a reason and something meaningful to come out of each one. That’s when I truly redefined who I was, and what I wanted out of life. Consciously and subconsciously. By allowing myself to come face to face with reality, I was finally able to take the first step accepting who I now was.

Long story short this was the start of this blog, of realizing my journey could possibly help others or save them from the pain my mistakes had caused me. It’s what lead to me being able to stand here today and say yes I have Multiple Sclerosis, but it’s given me far more than it’s taken. Since being diagnosed I’ve realized just how special every day is, how magical independence is, how breathtakingly amazing every step is, how unbelievably blessed I am and just how amazing the people surrounding me are. It’s made me a better nurse, it’s taught me what empathy really is and has completely changed the way I view every patient encounter. It’s shown me what friendship, family and love are. My diagnosis has taught me that life is messy, it’s unpredictable and just when you begin to think you’ve got your bearings the next loop and twist appear and the roller coaster continues.

Have I had to ultimately give some things up since being diagnosed? Of course.

Was it easy? Absolutely not, it came with its own heartache, and somedays that heartache reappears and is just as fresh and raw as it was previously. But no matter what it is, a diagnosis, a marriage, a new job, life will always come with it’s fair share of disappointments, it always requires new plans, and revisions to current ones. Otherwise life would just be boring, and who likes boring? 😉

As cliche as it sounds, my diagnosis lead to me learning to let go of the pretty pink glitter filled imagine of what I thought my life should be, and allowed me to step into life as the person I feel called to be. Not every day is perfect, there are still days I struggle to let go of that image in my head, but those are the days life has a way of reminding you just how blessed and loved you are, and that my friends is breathtakingly glitterful.

– Laura

Maybe I’m just not a yes girl.
I’m blessed with so much and so many people I don’t deserve in my life. But recently I’ve realized that I’ve had more closed doors than opened doors in my life, more nos than yeses, and more failures than successes.( ohh that last part rhymed, someone call hallmark because I’m pretty sure that is definitely card material 😉)

While I’ve definitely never “had it rough” or ever had a closed door that didn’t lead to a opened door somewhere, I’m a girl whose life literally began with a no.
I was adopted at birth. My adoptive mother ( who will forever be the one I’m referring to when I say mother, mom or parents) was in the room when I was born, my adoptive father (see above parenthesis for future referencing) was in the waiting room, and they brought me home from the hospital to the home I was raised in, to meet the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and family that would be mine. That blessing happened because of a NO. My biological mother didn’t want another baby, she had 4 at home already and was only 1.5 months postpartum when she became pregnant with me. Financially she couldn’t do what she wanted to do to terminate the pregnancy, so she went to her father who also met her with a no, no to loaning her the money and no to allowing another mouth to feed to be added to their family. So he had an add put in the local major paper and the rest is history. A couple who’d tried for 10 years, had 11 miscarriages, failed IVF and was ready for a baby said YES, and along with that yes I got 2 amazing parents, and was welcomed into a hot mess of a extended family that couldn’t be more mine if we were blood. This was the first time (and literally started before I was even born) that an initial no, lead to an even better blessed yes.

Fast forward 19 years later and approximately 88272 nos and yeses along the way. I was a brand new CNA, taking my pre-reqs for nursing school and ready for a real big kid big hospital job. I applied for I believe 3-4 different positions at the other “big” hospital in town and never even received a single call back or an email, much less an interview. So I held out for about 2 months waiting then accepted that as a NO and applied for the first position I came across for at UMC. My clinical education/assistant director called the next day to set up an interview. By the end of the week that initial NO from the other hospital turned into a YES at the best ( and only magnet designated in the region 😉😂🤷🏻‍♀️) hospital, filled with coworkers who’ve turned into family, strangers who’ve changed my life during the worst and hardest days, physicians who’ve changed my journey as a patient, saved my life, and put up with my nurse patient hot mess self. 7 years later here we are. Still living out the blessings and dream job that, that Yes lead to, with the most selfless, loving and coolest people on the planet beside me.
Next came a no that not a lot of people know about, but one that is important. My first time applying to nursing school was met with a big fat NOOOPE. And it hurt. Like I cried until I was doing the hyperventilating, unintelligible mumbling ugly cry. ( I found out years later it was because my application was thrown out because I didn’t have that stupid meningitis vaccine so it was technically “incomplete” 🙄)

I applied again next semester and received my YES. And let me tell you, if I would not have been in the class I was in, I would NEVER have made it through the hell that was nursing school back then. Seriously y’all students these days don’t know what hell is. Just ask anyone who attended SPC before 2014. 😂 That YES, also lead to some of the most valuable, and realist friendships that still exist today, even if it’s just a ” hey how are you?” during a patient transfer or a “hey you work in [insert specialty here] do you have any advice or recommendations for who to go to for a specialist.”                                    ((And No, Autumn, you don’t get a shoutout here, nursing school didn’t give me you as a Nestie. It gave me you as a damn evil blonde chick who threw Potter & Perry books at my head in 1st semester. 😂😉))

 
Believe it or not my initial diagnosis even began as a NO. I innocently and naïvely thought when I couldn’t see out of my left eye suddenly it was just an eye infection and went to one of the walk in clinics, they told me no, refused to see me and sent me to the ER. Long story short that lead to an MRI that lead to the “Hey you probably have MS and you’re being admitted for a week.” conversation.
Throughout this illness journey there have been several Nos, multiple closed doors that I still wish would have been open or could be reopened. I was once told I would never walk again, because there was absolutely nothing clinically wrong with me. That NO, lead to 2 open doors that have changed the entire course of my life as a patient. One to the physician and his nurse practitioner who would immediately recognize the problem that did in fact exist and eventually lead to the ability to walk again and work again, the other leading to a MS specialist, who would identify more answers to the problems I was living with and who would work tirelessly over the next 2 years to give me the quality of life I so longed for.
Medication and treatment wise the nos and closed doors have unfortunately outnumbered the yeses by far. And here I am, once again finding myself in the doorway of a yes, a door that was prayed to open so hard, and by so many people, and all I can do is stand here and watch helplessly as it closes. Luckily, this door will close slowly. In 18 months. My dream drug, my last Hail Mary, the drug I once compared to a child (🤷🏻‍♀️) will unfortunately not be a permanent solution or option for me. After beginning the drug JCV negative, 4 months in I’m now positive with a astronomically high index which I found out yesterday will end in my physician terminating the drug in roughly 18 months. My dream YES, is now a NO.
Like all the other initial NOs I’ve referenced above (with the exception of the first one because my little fetus self obviously didn’t care) this hurts. It’s a form of heartbreak like most nos are and it might even be worse to have those 18 months left, knowing what’s coming. Knowing that unless some other drug gets approved in that time I will be left with no alternatives, no other medication. But not left without hope. Because as you can tell by now, all of my favorite yeses, began with a no.

Until then, I’ll keep fighting for the glitter, and being thankful for this incredible glitterful life I live.❤️
-Laura.

Nope, you read that title right, chances are if you have a chronic illness you can agree,and relate the that title immediately. If you’re lucky enough to not know what that could possibly mean I encourage you to keep reading and to thank your lucky stars.  

I won’t speak for everyone with a chronic illness, the story, emotions and expressions are all my own, but if you spend more than 30 seconds in a chronic illness group on Facebook, or browse hashtags on Instagram you’ll quickly see I’m not alone and the isolation our illnesses can cause though individual and varying are common.

I recently came to the hard realization after spending 3 weeks unable to play on my phone, write, read or do anything other than get lost in my thoughts, pray, and do way too much over thinking when I experienced an episode of optic neuritis in my “good” eye, leaving me virtually blind and with every reason to jump straight into that cozy, cave of darkness and isolation that I tend to make my home when something like that occurs, that I too turn to isolation, and struggle with the darkness so common in chronic illnesses. I tend to forget that I’m not some emotional bad ass brick wall made of steel that is exempt from having to face the hard parts, the messy parts, the sad parts and that crawling into my cozy hole of isolation and dealing with it all alone doesn’t actually “fix” a single thing and definitely doesn’t “save” the people who love me, no matter how hard I try to convince myself otherwise. Because if we are being truly honest, all bullshit, sugar coated little white lies aside, that is the hardest part of the entire journey for me. Feeling like a burden. Feeling like I’m hard to love. Feeling undeserving of that love and believing that it hurts to love me. You see God gave me this journey to walk in life. And I’m 100% fine with that, because I wholeheartedly trust Him, even when I don’t understand the paths, directions and detours the journey tends to take sometimes. However, the amount of associated guilt, hurt and pain I feel knowing that my family, and friends walk this journey right beside me and go through the heartaches right along with me is without a doubt the most horrible, painful feeling one could ever know. So even though the rational part of me knows that choosing to fall into that black hole of isolation hurts them too, it’s my selfish, vain way of protecting the ones I love most. Because honestly,  I could not have a better, more supportive, loving, beautiful or perfect group of people surrounding me. They are the reason I’m here,they save my life everyday without even realizing it. I love each and everyone of them to absolute pieces and would do anything in the world to save them, including from myself. Which is why I tend to push the ones I love and need the most away. So when my illness makes me disappear, turn into a hermit, hide away in a land of darkness, please understand the “whys” behind my actions. My worst fear is y’all realizing one day that I’m not worth the pain that comes with loving me, and you consequently walking away. So please don’t stop calling. Texts are great too but so easily dismissed and ignored (especially when I decide to be dramatic and take the visual impairment to the extreme.) Please don’t stop praying for me, praying that I’ll keep the faith as my big brother would say, and praying that I’ll find my way out of the darkness and into the glitter again. 

I also want to let you know that I’m okay. Even when I feel unworthy, I know it’s the darkness trying to win and I know even on the hardest days of this season/ journey that I’m exactly where I’m suppose to be, and that I’m still who God has called me to be. The ugly, dark, hard parts of this journey are in his plan, and someday I’ll hopefully see the reason why, and be able to give one heck of a testimony from it. A blog post explaining the last few months, my absence and reasons behind it is coming, so bear with me and throw a little patience and grace my way. 

And to the ones I love so dearly, please don’t give up on me. I know I’ve fallen down, lost every speck of glitter and the spark I once cherished and built an entire life around, but know I’m trying, and soon I plan on rising as the whole damn fire. In the mean time thank you for loving me when I definitely don’t deserve it. You are my why. 

“Whenever you feel unloved, unimportant or insecure, remember to whom you belong.”                     —Ephesians 2:19-22❤️
-Laura 

Change is hard. Adapting is hard. Accepting that you can’t do something you once could do is hard. Feeling inadequate is heartbreaking. These are the harsh realities I’ve had to face recently. I never imagined the emotional side of losing physical parts of you, would hurt so much.  
Being nurse is so physical. We rely on fine motor skills every single day, multiple times throughout the day. Losing that part of me, and trying to adjust to feeling constant numbness and like my once flawless hands have been traded in for a pair of Mickey Mouse glove hands is annoying to say the least. Pair that with the new onset vision loss in my left eye and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a hot mess express breakdown. I never understood how something so seemingly small could wreck such havoc on my self worth and overall attitude toward a job I once adored until it happened to me. Luckily I work with and for some of the most patient, supportive and just awesome people around. Seriously. They know when I’m struggling, whether it’s physically or mentally. They know when to leave me alone and let me be mad at myself, and when to remind me that I’m more than my limitations. They know the perfect words to say, when I’m embarrassed, heartbroken and ashamed to have to ask for help just to start an IV, which for the record is something that breaks my heart every single time I have to do it. They remind me of the positive things I bring to the workplace, the difference I make in people’s lives and that I’m more than my shortcomings and failures. When I think that I can’t do this anymore, that I no longer serve a purpose in my work, they come in and remind me that I’m wrong, and give me the strength and reassurance to keep going. I could not walk this journey without them. 
The sad reality is the days of feeling inadequate are only beginning. Not being able to do something you could once quite possibly do with your eye closed while standing on your head is just a part of this cruel disease process. It’s something I’m going to have to learn to live with. Sooner rather than later. While I paint a pretty picture of being someone who doesn’t throw in the towel easily, that could not be further from the truth. I have plenty of moments when I want to quit, give up, run away to Mexico and live off of tequila, tacos and cabana boys for the rest of eternity. But this is the part of the journey when you find out what you’re made of. When the definition of strength is personalized and you learn how hard you’re willing to fight. Giving up permanently is not an option. Everyone has their flaws. Everyone has their struggles. And we all have our ways of dealing with them. Regardless of what that struggle, that journey, or that challenge involves the important thing is to keep going, keep adapting, and keep fighting for more glitterful days, especially on the dark days. 💖

-Laura. 

Disclaimer: The following post gets  really real. The transparency and honesty that this was written in is raw and it’s hard for me to share. If I could go back and do anything about this journey differently I would have kept my diagnosis a secret. Social media would have never known about it. However, that wasn’t how I handled things during and after my initial diagnosis 2 years ago. Part of this is due to being 23 when everything started, another factor is because I never imagined things playing out like this,  I never imagined the next 2 years would have contained all that they have. However I did share it, and because of that I think now I have an opportunity to to share my story, my experiences, the good times and the bad in hopes that someone can relate, and in hopes that someone who is walking the same or similar journey can find reassurance, inspiration and know that the feelings, highs, and lows are part of it and it’s okay. I wrote this at 1 am on a Friday morning, after a long day of Doctor’s appointments while trying to find the strength to pull it together, pick myself up off the bathroom floor and go out and make the day happen. I feel compiled to share it and be honest because I do believe that in that  there is healing, there is reality and somehow getting everything in black and white text makes it a little easier to breathe, and if just one person going through a difficult season can relate and know that what they’re feeling is okay and not abnormal, then it was all worth it. 

Some days reality gets so real it feels like there’s no possible way I can do this another day. Some days it literally hurts to breathe, it hurts to think and I feel an unimaginable sense of hopelessness. Unfortunately these days occur way more than I’ll ever admit and the amount of shame that I feel, is enough to swallow me whole.  I’m ashamed that this is my life, that my friends and family fall subject to walking this journey with me. To the worry I cause them. To the stress that comes with loving me. I feel guilty that I’ll never be the coworker, teammate or person I was before everything happened. I feel ashamed  that I have a medical history and medication list that most 25 year olds don’t have for another 50 years. I feel ashamed, of the sadness, hopelessness and struggle. Some days I grieve for the old me, and the future me of what could have been.

Some days I struggle to believe that everything will be okay. I want to scream that life is not fair, and that this shouldn’t be my life. That it’s not fair. I don’t deserve this. My family doesn’t deserve this. My friends don’t deserve this. Some days I can’t see past today, because my heart is so broken.

This journey, this life, it isn’t easy. Some days, I swear I can hear my own heart break. I question how I’ll be able to continue to hold on. My greatest fear is that these ” some days” will become everyday. That the hoplessness will become constant. That one day, I won’t be able to hold on. That one day, it will all become to much for the people around me, and they’ll leave.  That one day I won’t be able to pick myself up, pull myself together and go out and carry on.

But thankfully today is not that day, and this bad day will resolve. In 1.5 hours when my morning alarm goes off, I  will pick myself up, take a shower, throw on those royal blues and go get things done. I’ll place my faith in Him and continue to praise him, and the world will continue to turn just as it should.

And life of course, will continue to be glitterful as ever.

-Laura.

The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud — the obstacles of life and its suffering. The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one.

For the record, spilt wine and Starbucks is Ugly. Face. Cry. Worthy.

So I’m going to go ahead and apologize now. I feel like I only ever write on this thing when I’m feeling down. Like really down, like when it’s the bottom of the fifth and you pitch a home run for the opposing team and lose the game level of down…Woahhh can we pause and reevaluate for a second? Did I really just use baseball as a metaphor? I mean, the last (and only) baseball game I went to I asked my best friend’s husband how many quarters there were and where the cheerleaders were. (Seriously you can’t make this stuff up.) Anyways, It seems like I only ever pull out the laptop and open up the blog when I don’t know what else to do and there’s no other choice than to put everything into words, and attempt to make sense of the hott mess that is my life. So for that I apologize, I promise I really am a semi-normal, overly sassy and sarcastic girl , not some gray, Eeyore type individual that walks around with a storm cloud over her head.

Okay, back to ugly crying and sad puddles of wasted Cupcake Moscato. The last few weeks have been pretty insane in the world of Laura. By insane I mean finding out that my current job will be changing soon, experiencing some heartbreaking days that come with being a Hem/Onc nurse, ending up in the bathroom floor of the med room with a gash in my lip, a fabulous bruise and some broken teeth, some unforeseen health concerns that I was in no way shape or form expecting, and of course the usual stress that is everyone’s lives, like the first return episode of Grey’s being a total bummer. So, all of this of course, complicates things. When God handed me the MS crown he couldn’t have given me something that high stress levels improve or lesson, no, he had to give me a disease that is exacerbated by stress and fatigue. Thanks God. ( For those of you reading way into that sentence, chill it’s called humor, this is where you find the humor people.)  One of the new lovely symptoms that has graced me with it’s presence is arm weakness, and numbness that is intermittent in nature and occurs at the worst possible times (As if I wasn’t clumsy enough, once again, God has an incredible sense of humor y’all.) So this has made life around my house and job pretty interesting. Not as interesting as 2 failed shopping trips though.

Sunday night when I got off work I knew I needed to walk around for a little while before making the drive home. Sounds crazy I know, but spasticity is a strange, strange thing. So I went to every girl’s favorite vice.Target. With a venti white chocolate mocha in hand, a red target shopping basket, ear buds blasting my favorite Pandora station, and that handy always in fashion Target red card I set out for some retail therapy. About an hour in, I pick up my coffee and boom, the electric shock effect followed by numbness and severe weakness hit my left hand/arm and like a bad music video I turn the cup completely upside down in what felt like slow motion onto my phone, keys, self, and shopping basket. Just in case you were wondering what liquid sounds like when it falls through a plastic shopping basket, it sounds a lot like those huge buckets that fill with water at a water park and then dump every 3 mins or so. Seriously, it’s quite dramatic. So,  needless to say I left my favorite Target sticky and smelling like old milk,  in tears of humiliation, defeat, and anger, and fearful that I could never show my face in my favorite Target store ever again. Fast forward to Monday afternoon, I’m in Walmart this time because I’m still too embarrassed to enter a Target store just yet,  when I decide  that I need a bottle of my favorite wine to commemorate the fact that even though I have been  feeling absolutely horrible and struggling I’m still standing, still working and now I’m even grocery shopping through it all like a real functioning adult  when boom it all happens again,  except this time it’s more dramatic than ever. There’s something about glass shattering on icky Walmart tile that makes everyone stop mid sentence and stride to turn and look to see what has happened. Seriously even babies stopped crying to turn and stare.

First thought through my mind : Seriously. Why. Is. This. My. Life.

Second thought: Shit, do I still have to pay for this even though its obviously wasted? Also is it too soon and frowned upon to step over the broken glass and grabbed another bottle orrrrrr? 

Third thought: Perfect, first Target, now Walmart. Guess I’m just going to have to be one of those antisocial hermits that have everything delivered to their doors, never leave their houses and are scared of life outside of their bubble… Yeah I’m never shy on the dramatics.

In the end,the entire fiasco was nothing that a 3 min cry session in my car and a phone call to my mother couldn’t fix. I mean, let’s face it, sometimes some humility and embarrassment is good for the soul right?

What this all equals to is that no matter how much we choose to ignore things, no matter how many cable wired fences, steel walls, or trained attack dogs we put outside of our pretty glittered filled perfect pink bubbles that we try and live our lives in,  the bad things still happen. The reality still finds us. The hard things, are still hard. The bad days, are still going to occur or as in my case the lab results, imaging, symptoms , embarrassing trips to the ER in bloody scrubs and C-collars, and sticky, coffee and wine messes in major department stores will still happen. Because no amount of denial, perseverance, bargaining, or sarcasm can  make reality any less real. So people, whatever your equivalent to spilt wine is, embrace it. Cry over it, laugh over it, make fun of yourself over it and be thankful for it. Because you were chosen for this life. The good times, the hard times and the glitterful moments were hand picked for you. There’s only one you, and the world needs your best moments and your worst moments. This life is an absolute hot mess of ridiculous chaos, but it sure is glitterful.

With love,

Laura ❤  

This morning I had my long dreaded hospital follow up with Cardiology. (And by dreaded I mean I thought about canceling it no less than 936 times even while in the parking lot) Sitting in the waiting room looking at the other 29 people who were waiting to be seen I began to feel sorry for myself. It was obvious I was the youngest there by far, by no less than 30 years easily. I shouldn’t be here, I should be at work, complaining about being stuck at work, or knocking off the 19 things on my to do list, or out getting a pedicure with a glass of wine in my right hand and Facebook creeping my exes with my left one. Wherever I should be it shouldn’t be here in a cardiology waiting room triaging the other patients waiting in my head and guessing their probable diagnosis’s. But this is where I sit. It’s where life has brought me. It’s where God has brought me. Whether I like it or not.

I recently read a book written by one of my favorite Christian musicians, Laura Story called When God Doesn’t Fix It. Fitting right? In the book Laura recalls when her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the complications that followed and how much her faith was tested. She is completely honest and transparent and admits to every time she doubted her faith and even God. That hit deep. Why? Because I like to ignore those feelings when they arise. I shove them deep down inside because who am I to question God? How dare I question my faith? It wasn’t until I was reading this book that I realized that that just might be my very problem. (Spoiler alert it’s not a might, it’s a YES That’s my problem exactly!!!) I’m afraid to admit to myself, to God and especially to other that I have my days of doubt. Instead of letting those feelings surface, I completely shut down. You can’t doubt your faith if you just choose to not acknowledge it at all right? Wrong.

The truth is I’ve never been more weak in my faith than I am right now. I’ve never felt more personally victimized by God than I do in this moment. I’ve trusted him from the beginning. Sitting in the ER almost a year a half ago listening to my physician tell me that there were abnormalities on my MRI and I needed to be admitted immediately to rule out MS, I trusted Him. I remained faithful, I praised Him, I trusted the journey. Later that same year, hearing that same physician say he was uncertain that I would ever walk again, I continued to trust Him, I continued to praise Him, I trusted that He wasn’t finished yet and that the journey was only beginning.Then when life started changing, and miracle after miracle begin to pour in and happen right before my very eyes, I trusted Him and praised Him and knew the journey would only be beautiful from here on out.The darkness was over. Which is why when I was lead to a new team of neurologist with a new treatment plan I knew it was good and things were only going to continue to get better and better. Which is why as time went on and life started returning to normal and by normal I mean really normal, like better than before normal, work was amazing, I felt better than I had in literally forever and it finally seemed like something was working and the future was full of endless possibilities I knew it was by his grace and that this was the “good” He promises us.

Until everything fell apart. Until I ended up back in an OR, then a week later back in the hospital, then a week later back in the hospital again and finally with the scary news that I now had some serious heart issues due to the miracle treatment that I just knew was going to fix everything. I don’t think I had ever felt my heart truly break until that moment.

You learn in nursing school the Kubler-Ross 5 stages of grief, you are taught how to empathize with those experiencing them and how the stages don’t all happen separately or individually, but what you don’t learn is what it truly feels like to experience 4/5 at the same time, in the same moment. I was heartbroken, pissed off, helpless, in denial and in utter shock at how cruel God could be. How could this God who promises only good allow me to become so happy and whole again only to absolutely demolish it in a matter of weeks? I had been faithful, I had been patient, I had trusted and found beauty in the freaking journey so why can’t I have my good? Why can’t I have a freaking moment to be okay?

The answer is simple. Especially in my life of constant medical jargon, 6 syllable words and vast uncertainties. The answer is because the journey isn’t over. The good that He promises still awaits, and the journey although broken, and twisted and dark is still beautiful and it’s only just begun. The truth is I may never be “fixed”, I may never be the “normal”I once was, I may never live out the pretty picture of a life I’ve dreamed about my enitire life. But I’ve been trusted and given this life for a greater purpose, that is yet to be discovered but does exist. Whether it’s to show others facing similar struggles that they can be faced or to be used as an example of how not to do it is yet to be determined. (;

Romans 8:28

-And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

-Laura ❤️