An Anniversary of Sorts

Two years ago today

I had my hysterectomy.

The pain and fear that led up to it

isn’t anything I ever want to repeat.

They removed my uterus

and a fibroid the size of  a football.

LONG story.

Two years in the making.

Since I’m still having health problems related to it,

One would think that I’d have regrets

or that I’m angry.

Two surgeries later

with few  positive results

I have no regrets.

None.

I haven’t had any significant depression

or any suicidal episodes

since my hysterectomy.

My entire adult life was plagued by mental illness

and somehow the surgery set me free

I give ALL glory and honor

for that to

GOD.

Lately, I’ve been displaying some signs

of possible mania

so we’ve upped my meds…

but I’ll take mania over depression

any day.

God changed my life for the better

two years ago today

And he’s going to keep changing it.

I probably would’ve let today pass

without a word…

but I got an email from

the site God led me to

that helped me get through the whole ordeal.

Hystersisters.com, reminded

me of the anniversary

and asked if I had some warm fuzzy

story to share.

I would LOVE it if I had such a story to share

of total healing and restoration...

But my physical pain is still rather  chronic

And limiting.

Sure, some days I’m whiny and mad about it,

but it is what is.

That email, however, reminded me

of just how far God has brought me…

so I’m taking some time to write this down,

Because, who knows...

maybe this time next year…

I might have even more to rejoice about….

 

 

The World According to Bipolar Girl: In Response to a Friend

Since I started blogging back in 2004 God has lead many other people who have struggled with Bipolar Polar across my path. I had not expected this. I’d originally started blogging as free therapy because I felt so isolated and alone. I didn’t have anybody to really talk to about my disorder and I was very much ashamed. Add my embarrassment about my incest issues and the sexual dysfunctions related to it… and you had a very wounded woman with nowhere to go.

Becoming a Christian did not eliminate my woundedness. In some ways it made it worse because I’d look at people in church and in my bible studies and wonder why God would surround me with people who appeared to be  so healthy and so whole. I didn’t always have Bipolar Disorder, but even before it manifested my basic personality leaned towards being very intense and very melancholy, but I was also really intelligent and I was told that I had tremendous potential. Watching Bipolar chew up and spit out that potential was a nightmare that nobody else seemed to understand… except the people I met when I started blogging. They knew and understood because they’d lived it.

Blogging opened up a world of support for me that I could never have expected. Along the way I have made many cyber friends who shared their stories with me as I shared mine. My initial blog was on a Christian website, so the support I received was always coming from another believer and even the people who were not struggling with Bipolar Disorder generally had something comforting to share.

People can be so ignorant when it comes to mental illness. Well-meaning Christian people can say some really stupid, religiousy stuff that does more harm than good, so I found it helpful to unburden myself in my blog because keeping that stuff locked in my head was like holding a loaded gun to it. Right now Bipolar Girl is not doing too well. I could sit and wallow which would be a sure fire way to end up in a depression OR I can try to look beyond my own circumstances.

One cyberfriend that I’ve made here is struggling with Bipolar Disorder and a hysterectomy. Since I’ve walked the same path I have some idea what she must be going through although it sounds like her road has been much harder than my own. My heart grieves for her and there’ve been a couple of times when I almost reached out to her via email, but stopped myself. I mean who am I to be offering advice? I’ve you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you KNOW that I do not have my act together. I would not say that I am walking in “victory” with God… but I will say that I am walking.

I’m persistent. I have a hope that no matter how defeated I might often feel — God is God. He sees me and my life and nothing about it surprises him even though it might often be uncomfortable for me. That’s when I’m reminded that this is not a “How to Blog” or a “Bipolar for Dummies” blog. I’m no an expert. I don’t pretend to be. I have not “mastered” this illness, but I am living with it. All I seek to do is provide comfort from my own experiences with Jesus Christ. My friend posted some questions in a comment after one of my recent posts. I thought it would be best if I answered her in a post. I’m pretty long-winded most times and that response was going to take a while. But she asked me and I care enough to try to answer. Here is my response to her first question.  She asked about wanting to go away and leave all the people who know she had Bipolar behind her and start over. I hope she’s reading this:

1. Do u feel bipolar is a part of u? Not that u let it define u, but that it comes with u?

I do believe that Bipolar is a part of me just like if I had diabetes or some other illness. It’s part of my brain chemistry and it has impacted my life in major ways for more than 2 decades. I do not, however, let it define me. Even though I’ve called myself “Bipolar Girl” for over 18 years, that’s more for other people’s benefit than my own. When I let the disorder define me, it owned me. It was very nearly the death of me. When I treated it like a “dirty little secret” it owned me. I had no support and nowhere to go with my thoughts. Blogging helped change that because I now had a place to vent the thoughts that should not ever stay cooped up in my mind because those thoughts were dangerous.

When I tried to go to new places and “reinvent myself.” My disorder would always manifest. It wasn’t a question of going someplace where nobody knew me and starting over. It was a question of learning to share with people who could handle it. It was a question of learning to share appropriately. Most people cannot handle mental illness in all it’s flamboyant colors. They might think they can, but I’ve learned from experience not to overwhelm people. This is a sure way to lose friends and ruin relationships.

That’s one reason I blog. I can say a lot of stuff in a blog that I don’t share with most people. There’s even stuff that I don’t share in this blog because I know my friends read it. I have another blog where I don’t  use my name and nobody knows me. I also have that site where I journal the details of my sexual addiction. This is not the forum to air that  laundry, but I can’t leave it hanging around in my mind flapping in the breeze like piles of dirty laundry that refuses to come clean.

I have lost a lot of relationships because of my disorder… but for all the people who could not accept me or my illness…. God has blessed me with a whole slew of people who know me and accept me for  me. The trick is not to give up on people in general which is hard for me. But just because the people in your life cannot handle the reality that is Bipolar, does not mean that God intends for you to be alone or to keep running. Some people you will have to let go of (it might even be family)… but God doesn’t leave voids. He has given me friends and family on two continents and a couple of different states. I believe that he will do the same for you in his timing. Do not give up. I say this to myself as much as to you.

You might end up moving and if that’s the case, you have a chance for a new start, but you will also find that Bipolar will go with you. I found out the hard way when I moved back to Maui in 2005 after being gone for seven years. I tried to keep my Bipolar a secret and things imploded. It has only come through self- acceptance that I have found some measure of peace and that is my prayer for you.

There was more to her questions… but I think this is enough for now. I will respond to the rest of her questions in my next post. My prayer for her is that she persevere through the strength of Jesus and that he would give her comfort. I pray that he sends her people who are safe and who will stick around even if they do not fully understand her. I pray for an outlet for my friend and appropriate places where she can just be herself. And I pray for mental wellness — for her and for me. I never thought the dark place would ever recede and it was hard to have hope that it would… there was no way that I could envision my life now back then.

I had to wait on God and trust him and I know my friend knows this, but it bears repeating: I had to believe that Jesus loved me no matter how I felt and that even if my own mother abandoned me and all my “friends” left me… Jesus would never leave or forsake me. And he will not leave or forsake her either.

 

Mourning with Those Who Mourn on Mother’s Day (reblogged)

Mother’s Day is loaded with issues for me. My bio-mom hates me and hasn’t spoken to me in years. I am also estranged from the rest of my family because of the incest issues and general family dysfunction. Plus,  I always thought that my genes were better left out of the gene pool because of my struggles with Bipolar Disorder. And then the hysterectomy of 2010 pretty much took motherhood off the table for me. Yes, God has given me wonderful women who have acted as mothers to me… but today they are with their own real families. Somebody mentioned adopting to me… but after the life I’ve lived WHY would I want to do that to some kid?? Seeing all the posts of my friends’ facebook updates about how great their moms are is hard. I do rejoice that they have had wonderful experiences with their moms but is a giant slap in the face to me because of the mom I lost and the kids I’m never going to have. I feel like a grinch, but Mother’s Day is painful for me.

 I boycotted church this morning. They’re having a Mother’s Day Brunch. Church stresses me out on regular days. Subjecting myself to that today would be just plain stupid.  I don’t know what led me to this Christianity Today blog since I’ve never read it before, but when I found it and read it, I felt a little less alone in the universe. I’d like to share it in its entirety followed by a link to the actual post:

Her.meneutics: Mourning with Those Who Mourn on Mother’s Day

Like a lot of doting children, I loved Mother’s Day growing up. The holiday usually involved eating out at a fancy restaurant (not the norm for our family), where we gave my mom carefully composed cards and handpicked gifts. Even into adulthood, Mother’s Day never caused problems for me.

 

 

And then I miscarried. Last Mother’s Day was the first one where I felt deep down that I was supposed to be celebrating that day, yet my arms were empty. I should have had a one month old, not a spare bedroom filled with books and supplies we never used. Like many women, I dreaded the day, wishing I could sleep through it and wake up on Monday. And here I am, one year later, arms still empty due to infertility, still trying to make sense of this holiday. As Wendy Horger Alsup so helpfully said at Her.meneutics last year, Mother’s Day can be a painful holiday for many women.

Maybe you are facing the first Mother’s Day without your own mom. Maybe you are longing for a child, but financially cannot afford an extra mouth to feed right now. Maybe you have a wayward child, and all you want is for him to call you this Mother’s Day and say “Mom, I’m saved.” Or maybe you are like me, and are facing another Mother’s Day plagued by infertility. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the commercials for cards and flowers and myriad of morning-show segments all dedicated to the one thing you want most. And then you throw in the Sunday morning church service, with its peppy messages to “all the moms out there,” and you are now one conversation away from a meltdown.

It’s interesting that even some outside of the Christian community want to combat the endless commercialization of the day by highlighting other important aspects of motherhood, like the fact that many women in underdeveloped countries die in childbirth. Others, like writer Anne Lamott, refuse to even celebrate the day because of what it can do to all the non-mothers out there. What is the Christian’s response to all of this? Surely the answer cannot be to completely throw the proverbial Mother’s Day baby out with the muddy, consumer-driven bathwater. Instead, Paul’s simple exhortation to the Romans is a helpful framework for thinking through our response.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15).

How do you obey the biblical command to “rejoice with those who rejoice,” when rejoicing feels like a knife stabbing you in the heart?

The truth is sometimes it is just plain hard. Good news does not always come at convenient times. In fact, sometimes the news of a friend’s pregnancy comes right after you have spent the morning weeping over your own inability to conceive. Sometimes the mother/daughter tea at church comes right after a low day of missing your own mom. This life is messy and sorrowful, something Paul understood when he wrote these words. Sometimes rejoicing with someone else means expressing genuine joy over their good blessing, while you wait bereaved and barren. This never negates the reality of our suffering, but it does help us to give honor where honor is due, especially on a day like Mother’s Day. Motherhood is a high and glorious calling. In a culture where motherhood is increasingly under attack, we should be the first to embrace and honor the gift of motherhood, even if it is a gift we have yet to receive.

 

But as Christians, we must remember that there is a second part to that command. As hard as it is to rejoice with someone who has something you don’t, it is equally if not more difficult to weep with those who weep, especially when their tragedy seems foreign to you. How do you weep alongside the weeping woman while you have a happy, healthy baby bouncing on your hip? The reality is that if your life is fairly blessed and carefree on Mother’s Day, it is a lot easier to obey the first part of Romans 12:15. Yet we should be the first to enter into the pain that this day so often brings to so many women. From sharing a Scripture with a grieving friend to giving a card to a woman who is struggling with infertility, simply acknowledging the ache that many face is obeying the command to “weep with those who weep.”

Motherhood is a great gift and calling, but it also bears the stamp of this fallen world. With the name “mother of all living” came the curse that the very thing we were created for would now be marred by death, pain, and loss. The answer is not to call for a moratorium on all celebrations. But nor is the answer to pretend like nothing is wrong.

Regardless of your situation this Mother’s Day, Romans 12:15 is true for you. It does not take away the pain you might feel. Nor does it diminish the joy you might feel. And if we were truly honest with ourselves, we would say that obeying this command in the thick of your pain or joy is virtually impossible. We need Christ’s help to enable us to serve one another well in every season of life. Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything, and Mother’s Day is no exception. May our churches be a place where the glory of motherhood is upheld and honored, but the pain and sorrow of those who long for what they do not have is honored as well.

 

 

Her.meneutics: Mourning with Those Who Mourn on Mother’s Day.

God Can, but Will He??

People keep asking me how I’m doing. Makes sense considering that this is my second surgery in a month. The problem is how do I answer them and still be telling the truth? Because I’m up, walking around, smiling and even driving… people want to assume that I’m feeling great. I generally let them assume that. I’d decided I wasn’t going to really answer with the truth unless the people who asked really needed to know the answer. I realized this morning that I’ve done the very thing that I’ve complained about for years!

I put on a mask.

Y’know… the “I’m ok. Everything’s ok” mask that people want you to don so that they don’t have to feel bad.  Only thing is, nobody has been forcing me to do that, I chose to do it myself. I’ve blogged about “the mask” many times in the past.  I had to wear the mask growing up. I had to fake like nothing was wrong. When my mental illness started to leak out like a toxic spill, I had to put on a mask just to get through the day. Zany college girls are cool. Crazy ones are not.

I guess I didn’t really start getting angry about the mask until I became a Christian. There I was — the manically depressed girl who sucked into the happy-happy joy-joy religion. I always felt like I had to keep my mouth shut because I’d been told that Christians weren’t supposed to grumble and complain… that we were supposed to “rejoice in every situation.” Since I had absolutely no idea how to do that and live at the same time, it just seemed easier to bottle everything up, put on the mask, and fake like I was ok. And when I’d see happy-happy joy-joy people actually rejoicing in their trials I’d feel guilty just before I got bitter.

As you can tell, I’ve yet to find the secret recipe for happy-happy joy-joy. The kind that comes out of a bottle doesn’t count. But I have finally realized that God does not really expect me to fake like I’m ok when I’m not. Don’t believe me?? Read Psalms. God never asked me to wear a mask. Sure, there are people who can get their arm chewed off by sharks and move on without missing a beat. I am not one of those people. I’m prone to whining, self-pity, and depression. It’s a daily temptation to give in to those things.

So this morning when I woke up at 3am, it didn’t surprise me that I could feel the mask tugging at my face. Yesterday was a pretty good day, but it ended with me sitting at home feeling self-pity. I’d blogged about the good stuff because I have learned that focusing on the good can chase away whatever imps trying to stifle all that happy-happy joy juice from flowing. I would much rather think about all the ways that God has blessed me and all the ways my life has changed because, if you think about it, what good does focusing on the bad ever really do?? Yet, I’ve  also learned that I can’t put on mauve colored sunglasses and completely ignore the bad. Denial is just as unhealthy as wallowing. If we did ignore all the bad… we could end up saying that after having a light snack with some friends, Jesus went out for a time of meditation in a garden and then spent his last day in town hanging out on a hillside! Bad stuff happens.

Stating the facts is not dwelling on the bad. It’s speaking the truth. It’s also letting people know how they can pray for you. Yesterday and for the last several days I’ve been wondering if the surgery did any good. I’m still in pain. Not the “I just had surgery” pain that required me to take Oxycodone four times a day. I’m having the constant/chronic nagging pain that had completely limited my life before the surgery. I know without doubt that the doctor removed all of the adhesions. I advocated for myself so that he used this stuff called an “adhesion barrier” that can reduce the likelihood of new adhesions forming so that I have a 56% less chance of them forming again. So why does it  feel like they are still there? I used to try to express to my doctor that it felt like my innards were sticking together… now I know that they were. It wasn’t all in my head. Bipolar Girl was not just imagining things. A year and a half of my life since my hysterectomy…which had been preceded by nearly two years of pain… and this surgery was supposed to end it.

The fact that I still feel it has had me questioning whether or not God has total healing for me. I’ve been afraid that every little thing I do or don’t do is going to contribute to the formation of new adhesions even thought I know that that’s not how they are formed. If they’re related to surgery, they generally form within the first 7 days. I was in the hospital for the first six. There is nothing I could have done to create new ones. But I had adhesions before my first surgery. I fall into a small percentage of people who can form adhesions spontaneously.

TMI ALERT: (Too much information)

Before my hysterectomy, my bowels had fused (adhered) to my uterus and the only way they could perform my hysterectomy was to cut out three inches of my intestines. Evidently, I’ve got sticky innards and my body is just wired to stick to itself. The surgeon said that if I continued to have problems that my OB/GYN should consider removing my ovaries. I am so tired of being cut open and having people take pieces out of me. I feel like that guy from the game “Operation.” I am so done having people cut me open.

On top of the chronic pain, my left leg now hurts  as a result of the epidural that they used. Again, not the 10/10 level pain, but it’s pain and discomfort that I didn’t feel before the surgery and I don’t know how to talk about it without seeming like I’m grumbling and complaining… so I generally say nothing. I don’t want people trying to tell me that I should be thankful that I can walk or that I should feel any number of things that I’m not feeling. I am thankful that I can walk. I am thankful that I had the surgery but I’m not thankful for the continued pain, numb leg, or my inability to sleep on my side without hurting myself. Sleeping sitting up sucks.

Yet I  decided this morning at 3am that I believe, by faith, that God could heal me. He can. I do not doubt that. I also know that healing might not be his plan for me. Hence the fact that some people do get their arms chewed off by sharks or have to cut their arms off with pocket knives. Stuff happens and it would be really naive of me to think that I’m exempt from suffering. Years of battling a mental illness tell me that I’m not. I’ve actually been pondering whether I’d trade this physical “illness” for my mental illness… and I wouldn’t. Mental illness can feel like a life sentence. I can and will persevere through this. Which made me think of those three guys in scripture(Hananiah (חֲנַנְיָה), Mishael (מִישָׁאֵל) and Azariah (עֲזַרְיָה) ) just before they were thrown in the fiery furnace:

O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods…   ~Daniel 3:16-20

My 3am revelation? If the God, whom I love and serve, does not choose to heal me, he will give me the grace sufficient enough to live my life fully without all the whining and self-pity. No matter what the next few months hold for me or how this turns out, I will continue to love and serve the Lord to the very best of my ability. I’m blogging this now because I’m tired of forcing myself to wear a mask. People are going to keep asking me how I’m feeling and I’m tired of half-truths. I can speak the truth; trust the Lord; and let people know how to pray for me — so if and when we see the answers, we can praise the God who heals all the more. Now if this is you, in pain…wearing a mask because you don’t want to let people know how you feel… stop.

What good has wearing a mask ever done for you? Take off the mask, trust the Lord, and let people in. That way, even if healing never comes… you’re closer to other people and you’re closer to God. I count that as a win.

Adventure with the Divine Physician

In about 15 minutes I leave for the hospital.
Second surgery in two years.
What a difference a year has made.
What a difference JESUS has made.

I am not afraid this morning.
Oddly, I am excited.
Last year during my surgery I met the Divine
Physician
And I am eager to meet him again.

Perseverance.
Hope.
Courage.
Faith.
Friends.

Jesus has used all of these things
To heal me.
He’s using them now to
Help me heal.

Patience.
Forgiveness.
Humility.
Repentance.

Are all a part of healing
And cannot be ignored.

Love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, gentleness,
faithfulness, and self-control
characterize my life now.

The Divine Physician
in his wisdom has been challenging me
all these years
in these things
and now I am ready.
I am still.

Spiritual Adhesions

So often in my life God uses the events in my life to highlight some lesson he is trying to teach me. Lately I’ve been hearing “spiritual scars.” Kinda hard not to make that leap considering my surgery on Tuesday is solely to seek out and destroy any scar tissue that has formed in my abdominal cavity since I had my hysterectomy last year.

Internal scars.

They are going to shoot a camera through my belly button to look for scars that you cannot see from the outside. I reread a private journal entry that I’d written last year yesterday. I’d written that I was in a lot of pain and I was going to go see a specialist. I was hoping that he’d find what was wrong and they’d schedule the surgery to take care of the stuff that my doctor had already diagnosed and whatever else the specialist might find. A year. I wrote that journal entry a year ago and I am only just now having surgery because nobody wanted to acknowledge that my problem might be internal scars.

My hysterectomy had been picture perfect. From every account, it went smoothly and my surgeon was one of the best in the business. I should not still be in pain. But from what I’ve read, adhesions (the scar tissue) are pretty common when you’ve had trauma in the abdominal area. So adhesions might be the reason for my pain, but they can’t prove it. Scars that you can’t see.

I am not a stranger to trauma. Strolling back over my life reveals traumas from an early age. My family would try to have me think that I had a normal upbringing, but I did not. And being the quiet, non-confrontational mouse that I was… I never said anything about the traumas. I just kept living. It wasn’t until I was away from my family and could start to objectively look at my life in the real world that I started to see that my life had an appearance of normalcy, but beneath my surface there were a lot of festering scars. I thought becoming a Christian would make those scars go away. It was a huge shock when they didn’t. It was an even greater shock when I received my first wound from another Christian. I didn’t thought we were on the same team. I didn’t even know you could be hurt by another Christian. Not knowing what to do, I reverted to type. I said nothing and continued living, not knowing that spiritual scars were forming.

Adhesions look disgusting. It crossed my mind for a hot second to include a picture of adhesions so people reading could see just how invasive they are, but the pictures are just plain disgusting. Once they stick to something it’s almost like a Spiderman thang going on inside your gut. Organs that shouldn’t be stuck together are and movement becomes difficult because of it. I know the pain that physical adhesions can cause. That is… if they actually go in and find some. I can’t believe I’m praying that they find adhesions! If that’s what’s wrong with me there is hope that they can fix it if they aren’t too dense. If they don’t find any or they are too thick, I’m pretty screwed.

So what about emotional adhesions? Thick emotional scars that remain in place over years because of wounds caused by people? I think the prayer counseling took care of a lot of those kinds of scars, but they were so thick I need more work. There’s stuff still there that God needs to take care of and the only way he chose to deal with it is surgery. My physical and spiritual surgery was planned by the Divine Physician.

He’s also reminding me of what I learned in the prayer counseling: in order for spiritual healing and transformation to come, I have to be willing to pray prayers of forgiveness for the people who hurt me. Forgiveness is vital. It’s also an event and a process. As often as I feel pain in relation to a particular scar I need to pray to forgive that person. It’s not that I didn’t forgive them the first time. I did, but there is still pain and scaring which can neither be denied nor ignored. Then, once I’ve forgiven that person again (even if it’s for the 770th time times 770) I need to end by asking God to forgive me. Yeah. That’s still a tough fur ball to swallow. They hurt me. Why do I have to repent of anything?

Because for every action there is a reaction. They hurt me. I got mad, made some kind of negative judgment, and on some level blamed God for not stopping it. I’m just talking about me. I’m not making any kind of blanket statements. I just know that no matter what somebody else does to me, I’m not responsible for their actions. I’m only responsible for mine. And if my response is sinful, sin is sin. I add to my scars by letting my own sinful responses fester. It’s better to sweep the house clean than to wallow in the slime of negative emotions. I have learned that lesson the hard way. Now I want to do all that I can to prevent spiritual and physical scars from forming.

I want God to deal with the scars in my life whether they are spiritual or physical. I’m also hoping that this time next year when I pull up this post to see how far I’ve come that I will be scar free and pain free. I want to look back and see how far God has brought me because I sometimes forget all that during the journey. I want my life to be characterized by love for Jesus and love for others. And if anything in my life is stuck to something else… I want it to be me — wildly and totally stuck on God.

The Road Less Traveled

At the age of 42 I did not expect to have a total hysterectomy. Don’t get me wrong. I am thankful for the surgery. The giant fibroid that I was lugging around had made my uterus balloon to the size of a football and the pain was deep, constant, and scary. I was under-employed and I had no insurance. My greatest fear was that I would have the surgery, fall into a deep depression, and because of my tendency to isolate myself from people, my way to self-medicate against the darkness would be to overdose on all of the pain meds that I had for post-op pain.

That sounds so dramatic... but when you’ve lived with suicidal ideation for as long as I have it’s not so far fetched. My previous suicide attempts in the past had been half-hearted, but the surgery had me freaked out. Pain, depression, isolation… pain killers? Not good. I expected the worst and nobody seemed to understand. What I did not expect was for God to show up in such a tangible way. I also did not expect for him to change my life. What the years of medication and therapy had failed to do, God allowed to happen through a hysterectomy. I’ve blogged more than once about how I have not had any significant manifestations of my disorder since my hysterectomy a year and a half ago. I figure a uterus is a small price to pay for mental wellness, especially since I don’t want kids anyway. The hysterectomy wasn’t a road I expected to travel, but I praise God that he was with me as I traveled down it.

At the age of 43 I did not expect to be on another road less traveled. For some reason I haven’t healed properly from my surgery. I mean it looks like I have and they’ve run all sorts of tests… but they can’t find anything to explain the pain that I am in. The last possible explanation is adhesions. I had my pre-op appointment today with the OB/GYN who is going to perform my surgery on Tuesday. When I had my last pre-op appointment they had to fly me to Oahu because my surgery was too complicated to perform on my island. When I flew over for my pre-op appointment I was a nervous wreck. I hate flying, so I was tense on the plane ride over. I was trying really hard to keep from morphing into my altered-ego (Bipolar Girl) until God showed up in a rather tangible way. The pre-op visit went well and I asked all the questions I knew to ask. They performed my surgery and it was text-book perfect. I should be totally healed. I should’ve been totally healed months ago and not having to do another pre-op visit. At least today’s visit wasn’t like the last one.

Today was different. I was anxious, so I texted some friends and asked them to pray. Then I sat in my car and prayed. Then I pulled out the two pages of questions I’d typed up during  my extensive online research. I didn’t know this before… so I know you don’t, but adhesions are really rather common. Some stats:

• Adhesions have been shown to develop in up to 93% of surgical patients.
• It has been shown that between 60 to 90 % of women suffer post operative adhesions following major gynaecological surgery.

What are adhesions? Scar tissue. It means my innards are stickin’ to each other. The only way to diagnose adhesions is to go in and look. On Tuesday they are going to make a small incision in my bellybutton and insert a camera. The danger in this is if my adhesions are stuck to my bellybutton they could puncture my stomach or some other important innard without realizing it because the first incision is blind. Once the camera is in there then they make two other incisions on either side. Then if they find adhesions they can snip snip and take them out. They can actually perform an entire hysterectomy this way which is SO weird to me. They can slice and dice a large organ and take it out through really small slits.

As much as I don’t want to be doing this… I felt prepared once I was in the doctor’s office which isn’t easy to do when you’re sitting in a paper blouse opened at the front and a paper drape isn’t quite covering your backside. The difference?  I was not the scared little girl that flew over to Oahu last year. I wasn’t even the mentally ill woman who couldn’t handle too much stress. I was me. The woman who likes to know what’s going on so much so she that researches everything to the nth degree. That woman had a two page list of questions and was prepared to ask them. The woman who  also  learned how to advocate for herself last year and wasn’t afraid to ask even the most stupid questions. The woman who learned on Oahu the importance of learning the names of the medical staff and remembered to give the nurses today sincere thank you’s.

But most importantly, today I was the woman who remembered to thank God. I don’t want to be traveling this road, but I now  I fully understand the risks and I know that I am not alone. God walked me through a major surgery last year. He will be there with me now. I am going to do all that I can do to prepare for this surgery and then I am going to be still. Last year it was just me and God over on Oahu. He was gracious enough to put tons of Christians on the medical staff to encourage me along the way.

This time around I’m going to go home the same day of the surgery and then I’m going to show my trust in God by letting his kids come near. A road less traveled? So much mental healing came out of last year’s surgery. I wonder what God is going to do now. I’ve been asking him to take me to a different level of faith and trust in him and in his church. Interesting that this is how he chose to answer me. In order to go new places with God, I must be willing to travel new roads.

Bipolar Girl vs. Hysterectomy (Under the Knife Again)

The nurse called me to schedule my laproscopy today and I almost cried.

A weird sense of panic stole over me. It didn’t help that I’d accidentally left my cell phone on and she called while there were students in the classroom. I didn’t have time to think or compose myself. My phone is always off because I prefer to return messages rather than take live calls. When I am returning messages I’ve had a chance to think about what I’m going to say. If it’s doctor related I have a chance to get my calendar out and I’m usually sitting down and calm. Today I was scrambling over my desk to find my calendar which had been blown away by the gale force wind that blows through my classroom. My calendar was nowhere in sight. Then I had to scrounge for a workable pen and had to settle on a half-working pen. The students that were in the room kept trying to get my attention and I was feeling myself stress out by slow degrees.

I’ve been having second thoughts about this surgery. There is no way to diagnose adhesions. They are scar tissue that form after surgeries. I researched and found out that something like 93% of post op patients form them. And somewhere between 51%-100% of women who have had hysterectomies develop them. They begin to form days after the surgery but pain may not surface for months or years afterwards. Doctors can only suspect them because of the problems and symptoms they cause. And like in my case, they try to rule everything out. That’s why I’ve had to undergo all of these tests. It is the not knowing and the tests that work my nerves the most. On most days if I severely limit my activities I’m ok. I can forger the pain. Sitting down I feel almost no pain. It is when I try to live my life like a normal 43 year old that the pain becomes an issue and it’s at the end of those days when I’ve tried to live normally that I end up in almost unbearable pain.

I have a friend in a wheelchair. She manages to do more in one day than most people can do in a week. A few years back she competed in Beijing in the Paralympics. She does not let anything stop her and she is the most capable person I know. And I am nothing like her. I used to feel like such a loser compared to her when I was struggling with my bipolar. I have let mental illness grind my mind down so much that my life had to grind to a halt. When I was like that even the simplest of physical actions like getting out of bed was more than I could actually do. And where her accident caused her to turn towards God… I’ve always feared that catastrophic physical illness or injury would cause me to turn away from God. I love Jesus… but my faith has always been so puny. I put up with stuff… I grit my teeth and press on… I struggle to wrestle with the Lord. Never do I just gracefully accept the pain he sends and I have always feared the pain he might send.

What if this is as good as it gets for me? What if they open me up and they don’t find any adhesions and I’m stuck like this? I honestly don’t know how I’m going to cope with that. I know I will eventually... but this is the “end of the line” surgery. They don’t know what else to try. As I talked to the nurse I started to panic. The doctor told me he’d operate in October. Over the past few days I started to feel like that was much too soon. I kept asking God should I do it or not. When the nurse scheduled me today she said the doctors need to talk to them before mentioning dates. She couldn’t schedule me until November 1st. As much as I hate change, I welcomed the time to just be still and breathe. The last surgery was such a monumental deal. I need to be still, breathe, and remember what Jesus did.

Tonight I was researching adhesions because my understanding of them is minimal. There is a such thing as too much information. I found sites where women where sharing their adhesions stories and some of them were enough to make me start freaking out. I don’t know what’s worse… that they go in and find nothing or go in and find that my abdominal and pelvic cavities are riddled with adhesions. I’m scared Lord. I don’t understand the why of all of this. Of course, statistically speaking, on a planet with however many billions of people on it, something had to happen to me. And as far as surgeries go, this could be a lot worse. I could have terminal cancer. My friend’s dad just died of throat/mouth cancer. I’d never even heard of that and now he’s dead.  I could have something life threatening (praise God I don’t) and I already know that I would NOT handle that well.

If you perform surgery to remove adhesions you create conditions for even more  adhesions and even more surgeries. This might become my lot in life — every few years I have to undergo surgeries to remove adhesions. This is where people start to chime in and tell me not to be so negative and to just pray and trust God. This is where I tell those people to shut up in the most polite way that I know. Right now I’m venting. I’m coming off the free fall of reading too much information and seeing too many pictures. I know that I can be honest with Jesus about my concerns and that he will not “poo-poo” them. He will accept that I have them and not judge me for them. When I had my hysterectomy I had so many worries and fears that I needed addressed. I wrote them all down in a notebook that I kept at that time. I even made charts and diagrams. And Jesus was faithful to address every single concern that I listed. And once he’d calmed all of  my fears he had that same friend in a wheelchair accompany me to the off-island hospital to watch over me the day of my surgery.

I was not alone one step of the way. Jesus put so many loving and caring Christians on my path at that hospital. I saw prayer upon prayer answered. And he taught me how to give thanks in what was the most physically trying period of my entire life. I don’t think I have ever felt closer to the Lord and more comforted by him. And it will be like that again. Only thing is… I won’t have to fly off island away from my church and my friends. I will not have to stay six days in a hospital. They will not be doing a total abdominal surgery where they open me up from one side to the other, so I will not be in so much pain.  And my recovery will not take a month and a half. I get to go home the same day and I’ll only be off work for a week. The hard part is well and truly over.

They are going to send a small camera in through my belly button and make three incisions. If they see adhesions they will go in and remove them. In my research I found that there are things called adhesion barriers now that are supposed to drastically inhibit the growth and recurrence of adhesions, so even if my research did freak me out… I learned something I needed to know. And blogging this has calmed me down. I was full on crying when I started. And if they don’t find any adhesions? I will pray about that bridge when the anesthesia clears.

This morning when I woke up there were maggots spread out of my kitchen and bathroom floor. Since I keep a CLEAN house I can only assume that the plague of flies that I had for the past 2 days were the cause. Actually… it’s probably one of the dead rats that died in the wall after eating the lovely rat poison I had my student put in the attic. As I drove to work the “Service Engine” light came on and, while I drove a little bit faster so as to make it to work before my car could die, I did not panic. My car also didn’t die, but the flashing of the idiot light means I’m going to try to get a Saturday morning appointment. And then the nurse called. Any one of those events would have had the power to mash my buttons and make me depressed a year ago. Today, I dealt with all three situations with acceptance. I AM a stronger person because of what I’ve experienced and I will be a stronger person as Jesus walks me through this surgery. Personally, I’d like to just be the stronger person now… but I’m not.

Tomorrow is the last day of my prayer counseling. Soul surgery. A spiritual root canal. God’s way of rooting out the maggots that infest my spiritual life… call it what you will…. but I didn’t want to do that either and look at all that God has done through it. Last night I told Jesus if he never fixed my faith; if I always had to continue to struggle with the sexually addictive behaviors; if my family relationships were never reconciled; and if I spent the rest of my life fat and alone I would still love and follow him. I used to put the emphasis on “follow” because obedience was such a huge thing for me… but now my emphasis is on love. Of course, I’m going to pray that Jesus blesses me and the last half of my life would be better than the first half… but if it isn’t… I don’t care. All of this… everything that I’ve done this year was supposed to draw me into a deep love relationship with Jesus and while it pains me more than I can ever express that I do not have that kind of all consuming love for Jesus… the love that I do have is real and it’s growing.

And as I close this post something keeps repeating over and over in my mind:

But the greatest of these is love.

More Than I Meant to Say

Having my hysterectomy was the best thing I’ve ever did. Ok. Maybe not. Accepting the Lord was the best thing I’ve ever done, closely followed by backpacking through Europe when I was in college, going to Disney World for spring break in 2003, and moving back to Maui in 2005. But as far as my health goes… the hysterectomy was right up there near the top of the list. The landscape of my mental health completely changed because of that surgery. Where there used to be really low trenches surrounded by plains dotted with volcanoes, there is now one long field of green. Even though I’m in an ambiguous emotional place right now, the stressors in my life are not causing any major fluctuations in my mental terrain.

That being said, I have to go get a CT scan today because I am still in daily physical pain. Feels like all of my guts are going to just fall out and that is not normal. My surgery was nearly a year ago and some days I’m in so much pain I hobble around like a woman twice my age. 42 should not be the new 84.

This is not how I see my life for the rest of my life.

This is, however, one of the reasons I’ve isolated myself recently. It’s hard for me to physically keep up with people. And since I was never very active to begin with, there’s no reason why I’d start trying to do the things my friends like doing (hike, camp, dance) now, when I never did those things before. And since just about everybody I know has children, the whole hysterectomy thing is lost on them. I’m not particularly maternal and I stopped wanting children a long time ago… but being surrounded by happy little families can be hard for me. Makes my glaring singleness that much more glaring. It makes me feel that much more alone.

Ok. That was more than I’d intended to share this morning. I could delete it and continue the isolation… but I think I’m going to leave it and see what God does next. One mistaken belief I used to have was that Christians weren’t supposed to have problems. I actually believed that when I first met Jesus. I thought he’d do a mojo and make all my problems go away. It’s taken me years to understand and accept that he, not only doesn’t make all my problems go away, he sometimes allows really even more problems to come my way to show me what my faith is made of.  He knows what my faith is like and what I can handle. There are no surprises for him. If , however, I keep my eyes on him and stop trying to stuff things down or deny how I feel I might just be surprised.

Some people would have me think that my feelings are bad or wrong. I’m more inclined to think that they are like the idiot lights in your car. They are there to signal problems that you should have taken care of a before they actually became problems. The oil light only comes on when I have neglected to put oil in my car for too long.  And I only get caught up in feeling overwhelmed by my feelings when there is something I haven’t completely surrendered to God or when he’s told me what to do about it and I haven’t done it. There’s a lot of that in my life right now which is why I find myself back in THE BUBBLE. Mind you, the operative word used to be ” The BIPOLAR  Bubble” … and since the whole mental component is just not there, I have to concede that I’ve come a long (emotional) way since my surgery.

I’m changing. God has changed me. He has used challenges, trials, and problems as his tool of change. Maybe I’m not where I want to be… but if he wanted me in a different life dealing with different circumstances, he’d make it happen. Today I’ve got to drink a yummy medical “smoothie” so that they can look at my insides to see what’s wrong. Too bad you can’t do that on a spiritual level: Drink a “smoothie” and see what your heart looks like on the inside. Find out the true contents of your soul. Wait. That’s what the bible is for! That’s what going to church or meeting with other Christians is for. And maybe that’s part of my problem. Things got hot in a couple of areas and instead of drawing closer to the church and other believers I’ve pulled back. I voluntarily put on a mask and I swore I’d never do that anymore.

Y’know, the mask where you tell people that everything is ok even even when it’s not. Ok. Again, that’s more than I’d planned to say this morning. Some people would have me think that if  I have conflict with other people that it has to be all my fault. Something is wrong with my heart or my relationship with God. That I just have to “die to myself” and throw the big blanket of “forgiveness” over it and it won’t hurt anymore. I am more inclined to believe that the bible give lots of examples on how to handle conflict in a godly way for a reason.  And that just because I’ve been wounded by the thoughtless acts of other people doesn’t mean that I’m somehow less of a Christian for wanting to address the conflict openly instead of faking  like nothing happened.

My problem is that anger is a huge reservoir in my life and I rarely want to handle conflicts in godly ways initially. My anger erupts internally and I withdraw because I don’t want to spew a bunch of rage all over somebody no matter what they did…because then I would be in the wrong. So I wait and I pray. I keep asking God to give me the wisdom to know what to say… and while I wait I say nothing to anybody else and the isolation continues.

Clearly my problems are not going to be resolved this morning in this one post… but I figure it has to count for something that I’m not remaining silent anymore. People that actually know me are going to see this post and at least one brave soul is going to call me up and ask how I’m doing. This rambling excuse for a blog post is better than the cavernous silence I’ve been sitting in where my words just keep echoing in my own mind. I’m praying that God will do a CT scan on my heart and fix whatever is wrong.  Trying to resolve conflicts is essential within the body of Christ. Phony or forced forgiveness is bad. I believe that.

If I’d dealt with my fibroids when they started to become a noticeable problem, they wouldn’t have had to remove a mass the size of a football from my body last year. I am known for just ignoring problems. Much of what I’m dealing with now is rooted in me not wanting to say something to people who have hurt or offended me. Maybe God is allowing me to have so many internal conflicts over it now, so that I will stop sitting on my but and actually do something godly about the problems. Maybe I’m supposed to go to other people and get counsel on what to do. Not is a gossipy way… but in a “go ask a more mature believer what scripture says I should do” way.  Or maybe I need to actually make arrangements to go talk to the offending people. If I wait until it doesn’t hurt anymore or until I’m not mad or offended anymore or until I have the perfect words to say — I might still be waiting in isolation this time next year. Maybe God is saying I need to stop waiting for “perfect” conditions. They don’t exist. I’m not perfect. The people who hurt me aren’t perfect. But God is. I have to trust him on this. Without a CT scan he sees my heart and knows that I want to pursue peace and unity. And isolation isn’t peace or unity. It’s a bubble shielded by a mask.

Remember That

Written reminders are necessary. Especially if you’re like me and you have a tendency to whine and complain. Sometimes I have to remind myself that things will get better. It’s a good thing that I finally believe that… and even when they don’t actually get better, reminding myself of that helps my attitude and if my attitude gets better then half the battle is won. Remember that.

It helps to keep the attitude in check because, let’s face it… you don’t have to work hard to find things to complain about.

That co-worker that I had to confront last week? Today I went into her office and asked could I pray for her. Two weeks ago I was praying that God would fire her. What a difference an attitude adjustment can make. Communication is necessary for reconciliation. Remember that. This morning a student confronted me about a comment that I’d made on her progress report card. It’s not really a “report card,” per say, but it’s our equivalent. She told me that my comment was wrong. Her attitude wasn’t so cherry when she told me either. I could have gotten defensive. A month or so ago,  I would have. I would have pulled rank and made her feel mad and me feel guilty. As is, I told her we could talk about it when I wasn’t busy. I called her on the phone in her other class and she came over to talk to me.

Surprisingly, the first words out of her mouth were, “I’m sorry” which pretty much collided with the first words out of my mouth which were, “I was wrong. I’m sorry.” Talk about breaking the ice.  They key? Treating people how I’d like to be treated. Novel concept, I know. Being a peacemaker rather than a peacekeeper? Why has it taken me so long to get the point? Just a little bit of give on both sides and conflict was avoided. Remember that.

Life is 90% attitude and 10% reality. I remember that. I read it once years ago.  Someone reminded me of it on Friday. So much of what happens to me is transitory. Things will come, both good and bad and I probably can’t change much of it. The only constant is me. I’m still going to be me no matter what happens. God is also constant. God is still going to be God no matter what happens to me. My attitude about this colleague and this student were horrible. My thoughts about them were making me so anxious that I was losing sleep and feeling all tense. Clear and honest communication cleared the air. Remember that.

The only thing bothering me right now… in this instant is pain. I’ve been in steadily increasing physical pain all day. Post-hysterectomy pain. Joy bells. It’s been almost a year. Some days are better than others, but the pain is always there. Today the pain is so bad I’ve had to take something for it. Normally, I just tough it out. Since I’ve already decided I’m not doing any more tests, whining about it isn’t going to help. My doctors aren’t going to help much either. This is when I need the written reminder that I have no regrets. The surgery happened and it changed my life for the good in too many areas to count. It has also changed my life for the bad since the pain is constant. That’s where the 90% attitude thing comes in to play.

I’m glad I had the operation and wouldn’t have my old life back for all the money in the world. I know I’ve blogged that many times before. The pain is going to lessen. So far, it always has. A year. God has brought me so far in a year and I am happier and more functional now than I’ve ever been. Knowing that doesn’t make the pain go away… but it sure does help my attitude. And 90% attitude /10 % reality is WAY better than 10% attitude and 90% reality. Things could be a lot worse for me. I know. I’ve been there. God has been good to me.  Remember that.