On Being a Weeble

Hey there! It's been over a month since I last posted. I haven't done much as far as working on my goals. The only one I'm even still working on is exercise, and I'm still falling way short of my five day a week goal. More like once or twice a week. But I'm not giving up. Something is still better than nothing.

This past month has been hard. I haven't felt well. Nothing serious, but I did have a cold and since then have been intermittently dealing with a lot of fatigue and some depression and just kind of feeling under the weather off and on. My kids have also been sick, and I've been bogged down by some of the details and challenges of making arrangements for my 17 year old daughter and me to go to the Mayo Clinic program for teens with chronic pain. Kind of a big deal since it means twenty three days away from home. But this is something she really needs to do so she can get her life back after dealing with pain,nausea, and ever increasing dysfunction for almost two years. She has what some would call fibromyalgia, though her official diagnosis is idiopathic dysautonomia. That's a fancy way of saying that for unknown reasons parts of her autonomic system don't work as well as they should, which cause issues with digestion, energy levels, sleep, and mood, as well as causing problems with sensory issues such as pain, sound, light, and temperature. Basically, what would be "normal" to us is way "too much" for her.

As if the everyday onslaught of anxiety, headaches, stomach pain, nausea, joint pain, and fatigue weren't challenging enough, Kelley also caught strep, which just sent her stomach issues through the roof. She doesn't usually get a sore throat with strep. Just horrible abdominal and back pain, worse nausea, and throwing up. And with strep comes antibiotics, which aren't particularly tummy friendly even to people who don't have issues with digestion. Since the first course of antibiotics gave her no relief. She had to go another ten days on a second one. Since the end of Jan, she's had increasingly bad stomach pain. We've been to ER once as well as having to make a trip to her regular doctor in town and another to the gastroenterologist an hour away. And there have been several days that I've sat with her unable to help as she was curled up and crying/screaming in pain. Kelley is normally slightly underweight to begin with, but in the last two weeks has dropped ten pounds because she hasn't been able to eat or even drink much at all. She's 5'7" and today weighed in at 114 lbs.

Besides, dealing with not feeling well myself and Kelley's three weeks of abdominal hell, a week ago my 11 year old son, who hadn't been feeling well, suddenly spiked a fever of 104.4! So we made another trip to the doctor. James had influenza. The next morning,Haley, my fifteen year old daughter came down with it. I know the saying goes,"When it rains, it pours," but this felt more like a hurricane.

Ok so what does all this have to do with being a Weeble? Many years ago, there used to be these toy people, by Hasbro, I think, that were shaped like eggs. They tipped over and wobbled. They were people who wobbled, people + wobble became Weeble. Cute ,huh? The funny thing about them was no matter how hard or how many times you knocked them down, they never stayed down. After all the wobbling was done, they ended up back in their upright position. I remember the jingle," Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down." So although this has been a month of much wobbling, I can still keep my joy because by God's grace and through the power of His Holy Spirit, I won't end up falling down and defeated. Lord, make me a Weeble. Only with better hair. ;-).

May you too become a Weeble and always come back to a place of joy no matter how much wobbling life brings your way!