Friesencold

Last night the strangest thing happened to me. I have been feeling bad for almost a week now and I thought it was just a cold, but then yesterday I had started to think maybe it’s a sinus infection from how much pressure I was feeling on the right side of my head and how stuffy my right nostril had continued to be. TJ and I had just settled down to watch the first episode of the new season of LOST and I noticed my back was starting to hurt. I thought maybe it was because I was sitting in a different chair than usual, or just that I was turning my head to see the TV. I moved to my usual chair where I sit to read (that never makes me hurt!) and I even turned the chair to face the TV so I wouldn’t have to turn my head, but the pain just continued to get worse and worse.

Then around 9:45, I started feeling this awful ache in the left side of my body. It is hard to describe how it felt, but along with the achiness I also started shaking, sort of like a chill came over me and I couldn’t warm myself up. Fifteen minutes later, just as LOST was ending, I was in complete tears, feeling like there is something majorly wrong with me and why can’t I relax? What is going on that is making my back and left side hurt so much? Why can’t I stop shaking? My whole body felt tense and miserable and I was truly thinking I might end up in the hospital if things didn’t improve. I had no idea how I was ever going to get to sleep, and I knew that sleep was one of my greatest needs at this point as I had been up since 3 am due to not being able to sleep the night before from all the congestion in my head. I even wondered if this whole episode was my body’s reaction to not getting enough rest this last week, even though I’ve tried! I never knew that breathing through my nose had so much to do with me sleeping, but it obviously does.

Well, I decided I should try to make it to the bed and see if that would ease any of the pain, so TJ helped me get up off the couch and begin moving. I was like a zombie, walking with my eyes closed. I felt like this must be how a person with a migraine just goes into a dark room to just be in there until things pass and they can get on with life. Once I got situated on the bed on my right side (the non-hurting side), TJ got warm covers for me. Then I asked TJ to just put his arm around me and put pressure against my body. That was the only thing that helped at all, just having the pressure to keep me from shaking as badly.

I was just laying there, all stuffy, crying, shaking, aching, not knowing what is going on, what is taking over my body. And then TJ started praying for me. When he was done and we were silent for a few minutes, TJ began saying that this could be our enemy the devil’s attempt to stop the good things God has been doing in my life. I truly have been blessed again and again lately with things I feel like God is allowing me to see about life, and the real reality, through the book I am reading called Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr. That would be a whole other story to tell, and I will in time. But the main thing that’s happening to me is that I’m getting free! I am letting go! I am becoming less and more all at the same time! TJ began praying again, this time against what the devil would possibly be up to in my life. He spoke the name of Jesus which is always the most powerful name to speak. As TJ prayed this second prayer, I felt the strangest most peaceful calm come over my body. The pain in my back subsided and the shaking stopped. Stopped! I was able to lay there calmly and begin to rest. I also began to see firsthand that what is, is the great teacher (that’s from Rohr’s book).

Once God answered like that, I felt such a desire to praise him. So I prayed for a bit, and after that, TJ and I began to talk. We just lay there on the bed, talking, and it was as if time had stopped. It didn’t matter to me at that point if it was 10:30 or midnight. All that mattered was that TJ was there for me and I was going to be okay.

TJ was there for me. He was really truly there. And that counted for so much. As I lay there thinking, I imagined me in the place of TJ, and Bauer in the place of me. I imagined myself thinking about all the things I’d rather be doing than just being here with Bauer. I imagined how I would feel like I was being hindered from accomplishing tasks. Then I thought of myself and TJ in the current situation, and how it so strongly felt like what TJ was doing by being there with me, just resting with me and staying with me, was something huge. It counted so much and I don’t know how to say it differently than that. I feel like I was able to see how Bauer’s needing me to be with him, in times of sickness or sadness or childness (which would just mean daily), is a need that counts just as much as any task I could do. It is huge and thank God, some scales finally came off my eyes to let me see that.

God taught me so much through that hour and a half long experience last night. There’s a line in Rohr’s book that says, Have you been loved well by someone? I know last night that I was loved well by TJ. I let him love me and it felt good to be so needy that that is all you can do, just let yourself be loved. I do not have much experience with this in life because I have lived with the belief that as long as I feel good about myself, it doesn’t matter what others think of me, whether they like me or not (and like could just as easily be called love in this sense). Well, I am beginning to see that it does matter about others because letting them love me is a very good start to letting God love me.

Did you notice the second meaning in that question about being loved well? It’s as if God love for me and TJ’s love for me are what made me well last night. Well in body and a lot more well in soul and spirit than I’ve been in a long time.

This evening I am doing a lot better. I got some Afrin nasal spray and my, oh, my – how did I not know about this stuff sooner! I recently mentioned to TJ that I was thinking maybe I should take a week off from working out, but little did I know that was practically going to happen by default. Only this afternoon did I start thinking how nice it sounded to go outside and take the boys for a walk in the stroller. I told Bauer we could walk over to the train station after Cash’s nap, but I didn’t know Cash was going to sleep till 4:45 – a solid 3 hours! We ended up not being able to go, but I think I might be up for a walk tomorrow morning.

While Cash was sleeping, Bauer and I did some things in the kitchen. First I cut up veggies to go in our chili tonight while Bauer pretended to cook his playdough pancakes in a pot on the stove. Then we washed grapes. Bauer did a good deal of the separating of the grapes from the stems and all of the hands-in-the-water washing.

Yes, I resorted to the "don't smile" technique and it worked!

While Bauer was busy with the grapes, I decided to make the chocolate pudding recipe my friend Hannah shared with me a while back. It’s not your typical pudding – it’s made with avocados! – but I really thought it would be good since I used similar ingredients for the eggless chocolate cupcakes I made for the boys’ birthday party last fall. If nothing else, I figured I could tell Bauer it was yogurt and that is a kid that loves yogurt. I have had to explain to him recently why we don’t buy yogurt. He knows some of his friends get yogurt and he often asks for yogurt if he sees it at the store. My explanation was something to the effect that some people use cow’s milk and some people don’t. I did promise him, though, that we’d look into yogurt made from soy, almond, rice or coconut milk at Whole Foods. So many options!

So, back to my pudding…It was just 3 ingredients: 2 avocados, 1 cup dates, and 1/2 cup cocoa powder. Put everything in the food processor and let it do the work!

My food processor is usually the bomb, but on this I just couldn’t seem to get the pudding smooth enough. I’m not sure if it was because the dates I used were a little on the hard side or what. I kept blending and blending but finally decided enough was enough. Bauer wanted a taste (and then another) and I kept asking him if it was chewy. He seemed to like it, but we’ll see if that’s still the case tomorrow when he can actually taste things (I don’t know why I didn’t think of the fact that neither of us would even know if we liked it with our stuffy noses, but oh well….) When TJ got home tonight, Bauer was excited to show him our creation, which he kept calling “chocolate stuffing.” I guess that’s a little more accurate with our noses anyway.