God: You've Misunderstood the Criteria for Getting In

It is that you dared to live.

How End Times Teachings Is Terrorism and Child Abuse

Link to part two--I don't know why it won't embed!

Big Lies I Believe

Fundamental beliefs (aka Big Lies) held in common by people who suffer from chronic illness:

1.     I have to be strong. (Strong enough to handle anything, regardless of whether the weight is unbearable by anyone.)

2.     It is not right for me to be angry. (I have no right to anger, my anger is not justified, or even that anger is a sin akin to murder.)

3.     If I’m angry, I will not be loveable. (Love and acceptance are earned by our character or our behaviors—which are inseparable.)

4.     I’m responsible for the whole world. (Leading to hyper-controlling behaviors, being the Fixer, a compulsion to “save the world.”)

5.     I can handle anything. (It is easier just to do it myself than get other people to do it, if you want it done “right” you have to do it yourself, needing to be perfectly competent in all areas of life—perfect mom, perfectly decorated and kept house, perfect garden, perfect on the job, in the bedroom, in the ministry—being good enough is never acceptable in anything.)

6.     I’m not wanted—I’m not lovable. (Regardless of others’ intentions, I perceive that I am unwanted/unloved.)

7.     I don’t exist unless I do something.  I must justify my existence.  (My only worth lies in my utility.  I cannot fathom being valuable simple for Being.)

8.     I have to be very ill to deserve being taken care of.  (I should be able to buck up, mind-over-matter, just get on with things, no matte what.)

A major contributor to the genesis of many diseases… is an overload of stress induced by unconscious beliefs.  If we would heal, it is essential to being the painfully incremental task of reversing the biology of belief we adopted very early in life.  Whatever external treatment is administered, the healing agent lies within.  The internal milieu must be changed.  To find health, and to know it fully, necessitates a quest, a journey to the center of our own biology of belief.  That means rethinking and recognizing—re-cognizing: literally, to “know again”—in our lives.

…The key to healing is the individual’s active, free and informed choice.  … Liberation from oppressive and stressful external circumstances is essential, but that is only possible if we first liberate ourselves from the tyranny of our ingrained biology of belief.

From When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate, MD (the parenthetical remarks are my own)

Forgiveness

Yesterday's procedure went as well as could be expected, I guess.  They didn't find anything immediately scary and the biopsy won't have results for two weeks.  I feel like a tiny little angry Mack truck ran up my insides and caromed wildly around in there.  So, another day of lying in bed, popping pain remedies. 

An interesting thing happened during the test.  I expected pain, and it hurt a lot, but I totally didn't expect to feel like some hidden emotional trauma had been triggered in the poking around in my body.  Maybe you know that emotional memories are held in every cell in our bodies: the more pathological the cell tissue, the more intense the emotional charge of the memory.  From the first moment the tools of the test entered my body, before the current physical pain even registered, I was bawling.  I was obviously (to me, anyway) being reminded of emotions that were hidden away in my body.  I was overwhelmed with a grievous rage.

A couple new cysts were found of a type that mind-body experts associate with constantly replaying old "movies" of hurts one can't let go of.  As if there were, say, some insults that I am hideously angry about, can't let go of, and can barely admit even to myself. Perhaps the deeply mired issues represented by the fact that none of my family responded with so much as an "I'm glad you're not dead" to my several messages about my health crises and my Halloween trip to the ER.   Both of my siblings and their spouses roundly ignored my emails but betook themselves to comment on some of my frivolous Facebook posts.  I wrote to them to ask why they bothered to FB with me if they were going to ignore the big scary stuff.  My brother hasn't answered; my sister said in response to my questioning whether she had even received the emails, "oh, yeah, I got those," without a single explanation of why she had ignored them.  I am so deeply offended, I can't even articulate it.

Clearly, I have some deep psycho-spiritual work to do--undoubtedly around this same as-yet-unforgivable collection of bitter and angry baggage about my family.  It is more than a little depressing to realize.  I have done sooo much work distentangling my psyche from my past yet my body is telling me I have so much more to do.  

Dear Anonymous

…what would it be like for myself or my immediate family to become sick or involved in an accident or something-- how would I approach it being that all the stuff I used to believe has changed and I no longer do all the stuff I use to do as a result of that. In the past, of course, I knew every scripture to quote and "stand on" and, of course, there would be church and all the pray lists of the saints and intercessors. But now what would I do especially since pretty much the only thing I can honestly say that I do believe at this point is that God is, sigh. I am interested to know how you are dealing with this from that stance.

Dear Anonymous,

My family and the churches we participated in had no overt theology on illness or misfortune—like, it was a test from God, or punishment, or caused by our own lack of faith.  Nor did we particularly have a theology of healing—like, "stand on the promises of God" (as the old hymn says) and you will be guaranteed health, wealth, healing.

Covertly, of course, I picked up a lot of those ideas—especially as we moved from denomination to denomination, and later as I wandered even farther afield in college (strong Calvinism from my college but "name it and claim it" from the church I attended).  But I never had a clearly articulated doctrine for myself.  We had a lot of health problems in my family and, though we prayed for restoration of health, we didn't seem too spiritually distraught when that didn't happen.  I mean, we grieved and were personally distressed by death and major illness but didn't feel we'd been cheated by God nor that we were guilty of something.

Actually, I developed a rather rigid doctrine of personal responsibility for health after I left religion and became a fundamentalist alternative healing nut.  I felt obligated to have a successful homebirth as a proof to the unbelievers—those who still went to hospitals for births.  Every cough or sniffle my kids got was a personal affront to me—that somehow I wasn't feeding them the proper nutrition and that if they didn't respond immediately to my dosing them that I'd be despised by my fellow-crunchy granoloids and the conventional medicos both.

As I have faced chronic illness these last four years, I have had to confront my beliefs that physical/mental health is indistinguishable from psychological/spiritual health AND that therefore I have control over it.  I still believe that health of body mind and soul are all of a piece but I am slowly coming to accept that much of it is outside our individual capacity to regulate.  Medical doctors and alternative therapists both have done a lot of victim-blaming toward me over the years, if not for the original dysfunction (assuming they didn’t imply I was conjuring it up to begin with) then for the lack of healing—that I didn’t have the proper strength of will to sustain the healing protocols prescribed, that I cheated on diets, or just plain “wanted to be sick” because it provided me more psychological benefit than not be ill.  In religion, I received this kind of condescension over attitudes and behaviors but never health issues.


If this post didn't address your question directly enough, please comment again and ask more questions, because I will be glad to write more specifically to your concerns.  

Day of the Dead

Partied down with the ER docs last night. I went as a middle-aged woman with dysfunctional bleeding. It was a heart-pounding, dizzying experience. My costume rocked! Risque cutaways at the bust and booty, super realistic-looking blood on everything. I got some drugs and spent a lot of time on my back with my feet in the air while men toyed with my ladyparts. I even got to bring home pictures. Best Halloween party I ever went to but this morning after kinda sucks!

Ha!  The backstory is that I’ve been spotting or bleeding for nearly six weeks.  While each burst of actual bleeding was accompanied by extreme anxiety, I knew that I wasn’t bleeding anything like a hemorrhage so I tried to breathe deeply. Compounding the panic was the memory of my mom’s odyssey with cancer that started with exactly the same symptoms at exactly my age.  She was dead two years later.

I tried some of my own healing arts but found that I couldn’t concentrate through the anxiety.  Not surprisingly, my efforts were ineffective.  Last week I started a round of visits to conventional medical professionals—I posted some of that story on my Facebook Page.  None of the medicos wanted responsibility for my long term care: the GP sent me to a gynecologist, after ordering a raft of blood tests and radiology; the gynecologist insisted that I needed to follow up with the GP, after ordering more tests, because they “only do vaginas and babies here” and clearly I had bigger issues going on. 

The ob-gyn did prescribe some Provera (synthetic progesterone, the hormone that down-regulates menstrual bleeding among other things) to shut of the faucet, as it were.  Being the crunchy granola, nuts and berries kinda gal I am, I asked for natural progesterone but she never studied the natural stuff and didn’t know what it would do.  I agreed to take the Provera after a two-day trial of over-the-counter progesterone, though I would rather have taken a prescription compound that was regulated for potency, if the progesterone didn’t do the trick.

It did seem to work fairly well—if I didn’t eat or ingest anything that inflamed the ongoing allergic cough I’ve had for weeks, or do too much (since hubby was out of town, as usual, it was hard not to overdo)—until Saturday, when it didn’t.  So I trotted off to the pharmacy only to discover that the script never arrived!  Argh!  I called the doc yesterday morning to have it called in again but couldn’t pick it up until evening.  I planned to start it this morning after the hormone cream I’d been using all day had worn off. 

Just before five in the afternoon, I heard from the GP’s office that my bloodwork, ultrasound, and x-ray had all come back normal; everything seemed fine (!?!) But about nine o’clock last night, the bleeding switch turned on overdrive and I started to bleed quite heavily.  By ten-thirty, I was checking into the Emergency Hospital.  They were so quick and efficient, I didn’t even have time to make the necessary Mom arrangements.  I ended up phoning and texting my daughter at her party, my husband in Indiana, and other moms to pick up my slack, all while lying on the gurney with my feet in stirrups or being briskly wheeled around the halls (wow, talk about dizzying!)

Of course, the ER ran their own blood workup and ultrasound but their results agreed with the GP.  Nothing obvious to be causing the bleed—which, while heavy, was becoming clear was not nearly the dangerous state I feared.  So they watched me take the Provera that the ob-gyn had prescribed and sent me home.  Within a couple hours, the drug did its thing and dried everything pretty much right up.

Now that major polyps, tumors, giant fibroids, etc, have all been ruled out, I have a couple more tests scheduled: still to come, endometrial biopsy for cancer and something long and painful for fibroids not otherwise visible on ultrasound. But it is looking like a hormonal disruption consistent with incipient menopause—also consistent with the autonomic nervous system dysfunction that I can’t get anyone to notice. 

Meanwhile, on this the Day of the Dead, I feel hung-over, exhausted, and used up.  I feel beat up on the inside, weak and helpless on the outside.  Getting out of bed to use the toilet seemed more effort than it was worth.  In the last couple hours, though, I have been able to scramble some eggs, shower off my Halloween party residue, and crash back into bed.  Had enough energy to write this post but I feel a nap coming on now!