1-1-17 365 days

Everyone is wishing you a Happy New Year, reporting their accomplishments from last year, their wishes and goals for this year and I’m over here like system overload. Here is what I have to say about 2016 – 365 days of chronic pain, 365 days of waking up in the morning wondering how much pain my body will be shoving at me today, 365 days of wondering what I am going to be missing out on, 365 days of embarrassing moments of not remembering the word I wanted to say, feeling so stupid when it really is the simplest word in the English language, 365 days of not being able to eat or do what I really want to do, 365 days of exhausting my body to keep it moving so I don’t just lay in bed all days, 365 days of convincing myself that I need to make it until tomorrow because hell it is another day. So as you celebrate your New Year, your New Goals, Wishes, Aspirations remember not everyone has the same feeling about the New Year. To me it’s just day 1 of 365 days with a new number on it.

1-1-15 Renewing a Spirit

The beginning of a New Year always brings hope and determination  of new starts or resolutions as some call them.  Most are broken within minutes, hours or days but in my case, I no longer have a choice if life is a choice and my determination has to show through and the resolutions have to win because you see the resolution is actually the inner voice of me trying to break free from the mind demons and garbage that disrupts and pushes it deeper inside.  This inner voice needs to speak and come forward again, it needs to be me, break free of the chains.  This is going to be a tough year trying to do this and I know I am going to fail but I can only hope on this day that those fails don’t win, that the soft spoken voice continues to speak and gets stronger.  For me right now I can only do this with the help of my God.  Over 10 years ago when my life changed in a blink of an eye and I was challenged with my invisible illness, a great loss that I suffered was that of being able to attend church.  For me church had too many triggers, the incense, the volume of the organ, the crowds, etc.  I tried and tried again but after awhile I had to let it go but I never let God go from my heart.  Even though I questioned him and why I have to suffer so, I never gave up my belief.  To this day when I pass my church, I feel a longing inside, I can hear the music, the hymns, feel the blessings and love of the service but I have learned you don’t need church to be faithful or to have God in your life.  You can have God in your heart whenever you want.  So this year to help renew my spirit I have turned to a daily devotional book, “Jesus Calling” by Sarah Young.  When I purchased the book, I told the cashier that I heard good things about this book and she told me she was told “this book speaks to you”.  This clicked in my heart and gave me a boost of determination that I needed and I looked forward to today to start.  The first line of today’s read told me all I needed to know that God just wants me to reach out to him with an open heart and he will help to guide me, that I shouldn’t be afraid.  So starting today, I will be listening more to the softer voices inside, the ones with the better reasoning and I will not be afraid to move forward.  How about you?

12-31-14 New Year’s Eve 2014

As I reflect on the year I had, I realize I could be bitter and stoic about it or I could take the year by its “balls” and learn many lessons from it.  This has been the toughest year I can remember in my life.  It was filled with negativity, degrading sly comments and outright comments that cut to the core of my soul.  I felt my soul leave my body and I wondered if I would ever get it back.  I withdrew from society, running to my bedroom with a major migraine, being alone was all I wanted.  I withdrew from friends and even immediate family.  The voices in my head replayed all the negativity and made me feel even smaller that I ever thought.  I basically left the house for work and wanted to do no more than that.  As this year comes to a close, I hear that tiny voice in the back of my head call out to me.  It is the voice of me.  It wants to be heard and noticed.  It wants to grow stronger and flourish.  It wants to be the voice of me again.  I claws and pushes at the mind demons.  I need to feel again.  This numbness helps no one and will eventually ruin my life.   So as I sit here counting the hours until 2015 I honor the voice of me.  I think about all the bad situations and experiences I had and I tell myself I will no longer allow those things to happen to me.  I will only allow them to replay, if I can learn from it.   I challenge you to do the same, if you are in the same boat as me.  Take the challenge.  I know I will probably falter and fail at times but I am not going to let that discourage me and make me withdraw again.  I will have a moment but I will challenge myself to learn from it.  So here’s to 2015 may it be a year of change in the right direction.