I owe you all a blog post. Sorry it's been so long. Long story short: My health has taken a dramatic turn for the BETTER! My health care person put me on Armour Thyroid and it has made a huge positive difference in my health and energy levels. She also determined that I have all the symptoms of gluten intolerance and let me say this: When I went off gluten, my muscle pain was GONE within 24 hours. So now I am living the gluten and casein free lifestyle and am on thyroid meds.
Glory to God! Glory to God! Glory to God!
And I'm learning this: Chronic illness gave me the gift of prayer. Now that I'm well, it is MUCH, much, much more difficult to pray. When my brain was mush with fatigue, at least I could still breathe out the Jesus prayer. Now, my brain is active, a mile a minute and I feel like I'm starting from scratch with the "pray without ceasing" thing. Lord have mercy on me a sinner.
But I want to learn to pray as a well person, rather than go back to being a sick person.
As God wills!
I still struggle with all the same crap inside my head and heart. I am still permanently sad about my daughter and I am still really fat. I still have the same insecure personality.... But I have energy. Glory to God!
So I've been able to take up lifting weights again, which was my favorite form of exercise e.ver. back in the day before my health went kaplewy about nine years ago...and you know what they say about "muscle memory"?...that your muscles can regain strength pretty quickly if you've trained them before....well it is true! My dumbbells have been collecting dust since 2004 and already I'm using the #15 ones for upper body and the 20# ones for lower. I'm not an olympic athlete, but for a "beginner" that's pretty good and rapid strength build up. And I'm doing cardio. Plenty of it.
With the family we have been doing a Jesse Tree this Nativity Fast, and it's been nice. I've made most of the ornaments out of sculpey clay. I really enjoy the nightly Scripture readings. Need to post some pictures soon of our Jesse tree...it's a branch.
And I've been learning how to bake gluten free/casein free stuff, which is not that hard. Gluten free is a permanent change for me. I hope to re-introduce milk at some point after some gut healing takes place....after my next appointment, I'm sure there will be more to tell...about hormones and such.
All of it: Better than I deserve....
