~~My Lament~~

Perhaps right now the light at the end of the tunnel is disconnected, but some day it will be fixed and I’ll see the light again. Jesus is my light, my power source, and I need Him to guide me down these troubled and pained paths. God is trying to teach me something with these new trials though I have no idea what it is. I need Him to guide me through this life until I’m with Him for all eternity. What a glorious day that will be! Psalm 73:26~”My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” 

The months of October, November, December and January are gone. I wrote several poems during the month of December; though they were filled with angst, it helped me to write. Those four months slowly and painfully have disappeared and it looks as if February is going to be a repeat performance. In my mind those aforementioned four months are equal to four years. Time has been dragging. Every day.....

Odd how priorities and dreams can change over the course of a few months, and how they can distort the person that you have become—can mold you into a completely different person that has dissimilar thoughts and no more dreams. Three years ago all I could think about was getting the house in order to put on the market to sell, getting out of Illinois and living in our beloved Tennessee. Both of us prayed earnestly to God to lead and guide us, to do His will in all things, and told Him of our desire to move to Tennessee. My husband and I were down there vacationing during the months of April, July and October and checking out areas we’d like to live. We had made friends. We were listening to online sermons to find a church home. Our heads were in the clouds all that time and then we painfully fell to the ground and crashed in early November—along with the crashing of our dreams. I was living under the influence of stress hormones. Then when it all went to hell in a hand basket, I crashed. I went through a five month period of deep depression. It seems God closed that door. 

I’ve been having severe physical issues since around the middle of December 2021 and have been trying to get a proper diagnosis and get them resolved. I was very anxious and bummed out more than usual over the recent holidays—outwards seeming calm but an inward jitteriness that was constant—waking up in the night with painful butterflies in my stomach.

At the present time I feel a lot like I did back in the day when trying to get a proper diagnosis for all my weird and crazy symptoms, then repeatedly getting misdiagnosed until finally getting the proper diagnosis of chronic late-stage Lyme disease back in September 2016. I feel so horribly lost and I feel awful—not all from the familiar ‘Lyme disease awful’, but an ‘unknown awful’ that haunts me and lurks in the back of my mind, at times giving me nightmares. The unknown. I’m mad and I loathe that feeling. Upset is too mild of a word. So mad it is. 

As I’m sitting here eating breakfast I’m thinking back a little over two years ago when I was preparing for my total hip replacement surgery. I thought then ‘I’ll get this over with and things will be fine’. But ‘fine’ is not in my vocabulary. ‘Fine’ is stored somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain, right alongside the word ‘energy’. Yes, I know I’m blessed and I’m thankful. 

I suffered and survived an extremely abusive marriage back in the 1970’s and 1980’s; have lost both my parents; have had cancer; have several chronic illnesses, co-infections, viruses and syndromes; and was unable to have children. I’ve been bullied, isolated and lonely. I know what it’s like to be completely alone. Yes, I know I’m blessed and I am thankful. 

I’ve been more quiet than I have ever been. More reclusive than usual. And that’s saying a heck of a lot since that’s basically my normal lifestyle. As I’m writing these thoughts, I have no idea where the words will lead. Maybe to a dead-end street. I’m out of words and my thoughts have become muddled. I will never be the same person again. Does God hear my earnest cries? 

At night I lie in bed and attempt to pray. Sometimes I just say ‘Help me’ and I know God hears it though I don’t feel it. Does God answer our prayer requests? I know He does. I’ve witnessed some of my prayers being answered quickly and some seem like they never get answered. But I know they are, maybe not in the way we asked, but they’re answered. Remember—God is all-knowing and He knows best. Sometimes I tend to forget this.

Romans 8:38-39~”For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”