Arthritis Awareness Month

May is Arthritis Awareness month, so be aware! There are over 100 types of arthritis out there. So even though yours truly has Rheumatoid Arthritis, there are so many other people with different variations suffering. This Show us Your Hands project (www.showusyourhands.org), whose photo is above, is a project that collected 1000 pictures of people's hands who have an inflammatory arthritis. I think it is pretty neat, though the up close photos of some of these hands are a little scary. Though I guess reality of life with a condition can be scary too but not something to be hidden. I like that they are boldly showing everyone what reality is.
Thanks to all in my life who have become aware of what life with RA looks like!

2 Year RA-eversary

I feel like I need to remember this day every year. Though I started having symptoms earlier, this was (or maybe it was yesterday) my official day of diagnosis. 2 years ago. And it has been a long 2 years. But 2 years that have challenged what I thought I could endure, challenged how I view what God's love means, challenged my struggle to let people into my life too much, and have left me on the other side. I have been off steroids and on only my two shots for 2 months which I haven't been able to do in over 2 years. Acupuncture, changing my diet, meds, prayer and who knows what else have helped me get to this point.
Ironic that yesterday I had the first flare up I have had since going to Kenya in November...not sure. But it has been my "best" flare up yet, as I was able to work and function fairly normally. I don't know if you can see it in these photos, but I thought I needed to try and document what a "good" flare up looks: like red and swollen. Yuck!

But it usually feels more like this:

Thanks, Charlie Brown for putting words to my pain :)
In the midst of even the flare up I can see how far I have come in 2 years in terms of the emotional burden of this disease. It used to take everything out of me, honestly, to make it day by day but especially when I had a flare up. Now, strangely this feels more like part of life. I can't say that I like it but I don't feel like every fiber of my being is fighting against what I have been given.
So I will raise my chocolate chip cookie (vegan of course) to my 2 year RA)-eversary.
Oh, and fun fact thanks to Evy: Lucille Ball had RA. And some other celebs who, shocker, I don't know who they are. 

National Arthritis Day

In honor of National Arthritis Day (which was yesterday)I decided I would talk about my newest endeavor in the world of RA....acupuncture. I have been thinking about trying it for awhile and finally decided to bite the bullet when a friend gave me a recommendation. I don't fully understand how acupuncture works but this is my understanding as of yet. It is an ancient Chinese tradition that works with the body's energy, or Qi (yes, the infamous scrabble word we all use at some point). It doesn't claim to cure disease but relieve symptoms and help put the body back to a balanced state of health so hopefully the symptoms don't reoccur. It is used for all sorts of symptoms.
I went with really no expectations. The first treatment I was a little freaked out but since then I have found it to be the most relaxing thing I have ever experienced. Yes, sounds insane that laying somewhere with a bunch of tiny needles can be relaxing but it is. And no it doesn't hurt...every once in awhile when he puts one in it pinches a little but you really don't notice them.
One of the most annoying symptoms of RA for me has been fatigue...I walk around feeling like I got 4 hours of sleep even though I have had 9. But since starting the acupuncture my energy has increased and I feel, most days, way more like normal. And I have been able to come down on my steroids. So they may have made a believer out of me.
Happy Arthritis Day!

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.

Flare

I know my last post was about RA, and yet another. But I am still learning what the reality of this disease is. Last night I think I experienced my first flare and was brought back to January and the pain of when this all started happening. I also realized the different types of pain I experience with this. Now some mornings I wake up with just an achy stiff feeling in my fingers, but this goes away after a few hours and I am lucky to only rarely experience it. I also have days where I am exhausted. This flare feeling is way worse. It starts and I can feel the joint (yesterday's case was my ring finger on my left hand) feels like I need to crack my knuckle but then that feeling intensifies to where it almost feels like a broken finger. Keeping it straight hurts as much as bending it...there is no place where I am not aware of the pain and of my body's attack on me. Luckily I was exhausted from two days of work so I still slept last night, though fitfully because it kept bothering me. It is already feeling a little better...I can use my finger to type but I do still notice it in most activities.Hopefully it will be fully functional by the time I work tomorrow... it should continue to die down. When my RA started this was the sensation I had essentially every day but it would move from joint to joint, immobilizing them. The hard part is I feel it coming on but there is really nothing to do but anticipate what is about to happen, anticipate not getting any sleep, anticipate what I needed to do the next day that might have to wait.
It is easy to feel like just giving up and staying on the couch all day, but I want to live...I want to be a part of my life and not wallow in my sadness and feel that I am alone. That is my biggest struggle with this right now, is feeling alone in it. And I have been blessed by friends standing alongside of me through all of this wanting to be a part of it. My pastor says that Satan longs to isolate us because in that isolated place we do start down that path of nobody loves me, the Lord doesn't know what I need, nobody understands me, etc...we give up hope. But I am learning to not allow myself to be isolated, but to speak what I am feeling and struggling with, what lies I am hearing. So I guess this long ramble to say today I thank the Lord for community and for his love that is unfailing. This morning we sang Great is Thy Faithfulness, so I will leave with the words from the chorus which I can sing and believe fully even in the midst of my pain:
  ...All I have needed, Thy hand hath provided
    Great is Thy Faithfulness, Lord unto Thee.

6 month anniversary

It actually happened last week but I stopped today to think about it and realized that in technical terms, 6 months ago I found out I have Rheumatoid Arthritis. RA is an autoimmune disease that causes swelling of the areas around the joints. My brother pointed me recently to a NY Times article on living with RA and a woman they interviewed writes a blog about living with RA. I liked her definition of RA, so I am going to borrow it (and credit her of course) She talks about the immune system being an overachiever and because there is too much of certain inflammatory factors they are working overtime and attacking my own joints. They don't know what causes it or how to cure it. So it has become a part of life (oh yea, here is the link to the RA gal's blog).
I am sure I will talk about it from time to time as it has been a big part of the year 2010.
The first few months of adapting to RA I never thought I would say I would be thankful for it, but the Lord has been doing some slow work on my heart to where I can say I know that even this and how it affects my life is not too big for Him to handle. "As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things." (Eccl 11:5).
Here is to 6 months and who knows how many more years of RA and being surprised and amazed at the many ways the Lord works. (I think for this one we need to clink glasses of wine together...pumpkin spice lattes aren't enough)

Here we go...

I have been thinking about starting a blog for awhile now. So here it it goes. Not sure what this will look like, but I do think there has been a lot going on in my head, in my heart, in my life...many places that I am learning and growing and seeing the Lord at work. I process a lot as I write and have always been a journal-er, so this seems like a logical extension of that.
Why the title of the blog? In a nutshell, these are some lyrics in an Andrew Peterson song that has been speaking to me for several months. The larger details will be posted later, but this year the Lord has brought challenges that led me down a path that was more ridden than sadness than most of the paths I have walked down. For now atleast, the overwhelming sadness has passed...somehow I ended up on the other side being thankful for where I am and where I was brought through. There are many different lines in the song and ways in which I have heard different things, but the resounding message has been the great love that has rescued me and will continue to rescue me and calls me to calmer places. Below are some of the lyrics, but I say go to the source to hear it.

And my heart is black as coal. 
It's been mined and there ain't no gold
It's so dark in there 
and I don't care.
I will lay down in this empty hole
Where my heart is black as coal.

And oh, there is nowhere left to go from here
I have fallen past the last frontier
But at the bottom of this well I hear you breathing

Love below me
Love around me
Love above me
Love has found me
Love has found me here

So lay me down, oh lay me down in a field of golden
...Oh lay me down in a field of gold and green