Anniversary

A year ago today I got my official diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis. At the time I was ready to know what was wrong with me and start on the path towards getting better. I still feel like I am learning a lot about this thing and how it affects me and how to live with. But I am glad to have one year under my belt and hopefully the next year will be better in terms of less pain.
Anniversaries are celebrations or commemorations of an event in the past. I don't want this anniversary or the anniversaries in the future to feel like commemorations; for me to be only wanting what life was before this. I want there to be some form of celebration in it or me feeling thankful or maybe atleast not mournful over it all. I have grieved and mourned over this, don't get me wrong, and I know there is still more of that to come. But in general I want to be thankful. I know my heart will not always feel that way and that is okay, but that is my hope.
Today I am thankful that a year has passed. I am thankful for a doctor who is caring and aggressive with taking this on. I am thankful that I am not alone. I am thankful for the places I was brought through prior to this that had prepared me for this. I am thankful that they have come up with medicine that can hopefully get me feeling better. I am thankful for people in my life who are loving me and walking with me.
If you google RA images you get all these gnarly looking hands (ie very scary looking). I wish they would not put all of these up 1. because they are gross and terrifying 2. because not everyone's hands look that that who have RA. So in my celebration, here are my RA hands.

Beauty and Basketball

Basketball has been taking over my life lately. This years' tournament has been an especially exciting one because the underdogs keep winning. I don't know what it is inside me that loves seeing the underdog win. Maybe it's the beating the odds or doing what people don't think you can do or feeling like that can translate to my life. Whatever it is, all I know is it is fun. Just watched VCU beat the odds and beat Kansas; previously I did not care at all about VCU but I found myself cheering out loud for them to win.
Anyway...
We watched this documentary from Netflix last night called America the Beautiful (thanks Kitchen for the rec). It is a documentary basically about self image in the United States. They cover issues such as eating disorders, the media and advertising, airbrushing/non reality of what is actually in magazines and billboards, models, plastic surgery, cosmetics and what women put on their bodies to be" beautiful". Anyway, very interesting. One of the interesting things they talked about was a study done in Fiji, which is a society that values larger sized individuals because it is a sign of wealth. When television and access to media came to the island within three years they saw a shift in these beliefs in the younger generations..suddenly girls were concerned about their weight and how they looked. Girls were contemplating starving themselves to meet an image whereas before they never thought that way. It is sad that we live in a society that is constantly plaguing us with images of what beauty is instead of applauding individuality and the unique beauty that each person possesses.
Do you think you are beautiful? I know I struggle with this because I think beautiful is being thin or having perfect hair and perfect clothes and wearing make up. It is even hard to think beauty reaches to the inside and is not only what we see. It got me thinking a lot about my own ideas of beauty and how I spend a lot of time thinking about myself and others and these unrealistic values I place on appearance. I hope to shake some of my ingrained ideas about beauty and start believing in the beauty that is in others and myself.

No words

I don't really have many words today. Been in kinda a blah funk of dissatisfaction...not being excited about what is in my life or things that have been given to me and instead wanting different things. It is the weird place of knowing what the truth is but feeling my heart not be able to latch onto that but grasping onto lies instead. I don't like it when my head and my heart can't agree on how to feel. So here I sit, just reminding myself of what the truth is and hoping for the dissatisfaction to pass.
John 6:35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

Roots

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
   whose confidence is in him.  

They will be like a tree planted by the water
   that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
   its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
   and never fails to bear fruit

Jeremiah 17:7-8

Expectations

Aren't expectations the worst? This may be more of a thing girls struggle with, but maybe not. In my mind I play out most any scenario: a conversation, a day off, running into someone, what next month may look like, how someone else will respond to me...the list could go on and can be quite embarrassing. Expectations rob me of so much...they don't allow me to enjoy the present, they always leave me disappointed because in my head, every scenario ends perfectly (i.e.me getting my way). And I start to trust in the promise of what any of these things bring instead of the Lord. If I have an expectation that a friend needs to live up to, instead of enjoying them, I am waiting for them to fulfill all my needs. If I have an expectation that I will feel better by next week, then when next week comes and I still feel like junk, I am just sad and mad about it. I quit trusting that the Lord has promised to love me and provide and instead trust all these feelings and fake scenarios.
I think the movie 500 days of Summer played this out perfectly. Hopefully this link works. You probably don't have to watch the whole 3 minutes to get the idea. If you didn't see the movie (it was good) but he is in love with the girl in the clip (and she is not in love with him). He leaves let down by the situation because he had already played out the whole night in his head and, of course, it looks nothing like his expectations.
This is just something I have been aware of lately, especially as I am trying to take one day at a time and trust and live it for what may actually be there, not what I wish may be there.

The Madness

I know people get tired of hearing about March Madness this time of year, but I personally love it. We do a Bruce family bracket; winner gets $5 from each person and the loser gets to keep their $5. Originally when we started my aunt and cousins would keep all the brackets and go through and keep track of it all...now we have moved on to using technology to keep up with it all. Anyone can win, as has been proved by my younger cousins or the person in the family who knows the least about b-ball (yes, Mom, that is you). And that is why it is fun. It's fun to put some ridiculous upsets on my bracket and of course I always pick Vandy to go much further than they usually do.
The most fun comes in watching the games and seeing all the crazy ways a game can change in the course of a few seconds. I mean who picked Morehead St to beat Louisville today?
So happy march madness to you all!

This week in Song

Lyrics from a song we sing at church that this week has already been a great opening for me this week.

When You are Not Enough
When you are not enough, I seek the pleasures of the world
When you are not enough, My hope is lost
When you are not enough, Joy cannot be found
When you are not enough, Please Lord, break my heart
When you are not enough, I carry all my guilt and shame
When you are not enough, I can not bear it
When you are not enough, I'd like to think I've learned by now
When you are not enough, Please Lord, break my heart; Please Lord change my heart
When you are not enough, I trade your beauty for a lie
When you are not enough, Nothing satisfies
When you are not enough, Your joy is always out of reach
When you are not enough, Please Lord break my heart; Please Lord change my heart.

Spring is Coming!

I finally did some much needed weeding and getting the yard cleaned up for the start of spring. I found these lovely flowers out front and the start of other things blooming.

Can't wait to plant our veggie garden and spend more time out in the yard, using my hands, watching things grow. And I am ready for a lot more days that look like this. (But with green leaves on the tree)

The Other Side

Last night I had a sweet call from a dear friend. These types of calls, comments, hugs, words and looks are something that I am so thankful for in my life. I had shared with my friend who called my struggle of late with a lot of pain and the challenge this is to walk in day to day, the challenge to hear the Lord's love through the pain, etc. She called and said in her own way, "I wish I could take it away, I wish there was something I could do to make it better or even say to make it better. But I can't, and today when I was thinking about you I just cried." And this is not the first time I have heard this.
I know it is hard in its own right for my friends and family to walk through this with me, to see me in pain, know I am in pain, know some of what I am dealing with and deal with my crabbiness that results form it, know how to be with me in that. I know it is hard to know what to say. And I know there really isn't anything to say. But I am thankful that people want to walk with me and be with me in it. More thankful than you all know.

Whole Foods Recipe Box

Lately I have been getting great recipes from Whole Foods (thanks, Danielle and Tiffany for putting me onto this). They have a ton of recipes and dairy free and other specific diet tabs on their website. So far I have really liked everything I have tried. Their recipe are simple..not too many ingredients or too much prep time, which is the only way I cook. And you don't have to get the ingredients from their store.Tonight I enjoyed this Baked Southwestern Tilapia. Yummy.
I discovered tonight they have a feature called Recipe Box, so you can keep all the recipes you want to reference later...I have about 15 recipes I want to try now stored in there, including one for a dairy free raspberry mousse...looks delicious!

The Parent Trap

Today at work my friend Emily was singing the classic from the original Parent Trap "Let's Get Together." I, of course, remembered all of the lyrics and then continued to sing it the rest of the 12 hours. We grew up on Disney movies..not a lot of cable TB at our house. So we watched the original Parent Trap over and over. In case you have never had the pleasure, here is the you tube link.
I enlightened her on the fact that there was also a Parent Trap 2, Parent Trap 3 and 3 Hawaiian Honeymoon. Little known facts, I know, and classics that many of you all missed. So I googled it and discovered there is a facebook page for people for the Parent Trap 2. And, even better, over 24,000 people liked this facebook page.So I guess we weren't the only kids out there obsessed with anything Parent Trap related.

Groaning vs Complaining

Apologies in advance...I have a lot going through my head and heart so this is all in the process here.
The past couple months have been tough for me in terms of my RA. Then the past few weeks have been even rougher...just having pain most days, some days intense, others just nagging and present. I am in the process of waiting for a medicine to start working hopefully (fingers and toes crossed). (Side note...if anyone wants to invent and RA med that doesn't take atleast 6 weeks to start working I would love you forever). Walking through pain daily wears me out, physically and emotionally and I have been feeling the weight of it the last week. I don't know how to do this...how to walk down a road that is laid out for me when it is such a challenge. How do I keep my heart from becoming bitter? How do I live life without being focused on the pain or allowing the pain to define me?
One of my struggles is just feeling like I am complaining if I talk about it all the time. And there isn't a lot people can say to me when I talk about it other than, I am sorry, which is fine, just hard and in my mind makes it feel more pointless to talk about it. So I started thinking about what the difference is between groaning and complaining. I don't really know if I have an answer to this thought, so don't wait for some profound truth here. I think when I start complaining is when my heart starts to feel bitter because I feel like I am owed something or somehow I have been wronged in a situation..I put myself at the center and want it all to be going my way. On the other hand, groaning is an attempt to imitate the actual sound that expresses severe pain or distress, physical or mental. And I think that is all I know how to do right now, where I am today, and that is just perfect. I don't have to have all the answers to those questions. I can groan and know my heart and my pain are heard and are felt.
"My soul is greatly dismayed; but you, O Lord-how long? I am weary with my groaning, every night I make my bed swim..my eye has wasted away with grief...For the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication, The Lord receives my prayer." Psalm 6

Nashville Flea Market

This time last Saturday we were up early wandering the stalls of the Nashville Flea Market. Every month thousands of vendors come and set up for business. The array of items was pretty entertaining...everything from socks and fake flowers to really cool furniture, antiques, old dishes. And there were some classic Tennessee folk out, of course.
Leah was looking for some things for the wedding set up and I had a few things I had my eye out for. I would and definitely will go back...even just to wander and look at all the things out there. I don't really like to shop, but markets or places where you can just wander and observe have appeal to me.
Here are some of the things I picked up.

Flour sifter...useful and cute and these bottles are awesome. You can't see the words, but they are old medicine bottles. The blues ones were from before the 1920s...atleast that is what I was told. They used to put Magnesium in the glass to make it blue and they took it out in the 20s, so then I guess the other bottle is newer than the blue one.

Words

Words from church this Sunday:
  Will I declare what I am worth or receive what I am worth?
  The beauty of the gospel tells me that I am righteous in Christ so there is nothing for me to prove; that I am so 
   completely loved in Christ there is nothing for me to fear.