Tag: relocation

What Is Joy?

January 9, 2015

2014 was a rough year.

Continuing illness from our house with mold, landlord issues, lack of employment, moving across country, saying goodbye to friends and family, and then a job loss took its toll on our family.

So when our pastor, Matt Keller, at Next Level Church here in lovely, balmy Florida began talking about choosing joy during his holiday sermons, you can imagine my divided thoughts and emotions. Yes, I know God’s good, and in all of it, he has done incredible things.

But we were challenged to choose joy. In every setting. You know the verse in James, “Count it all joy, brothers…”

REALLY??

Interestingly enough, around the same time, I was contacted about Margaret Feinberg’s new book, Fight Back With Joy. Would I be willing to write an honest review if I were provided a few chapters?

Naturally I said yes.

I don’t think this was a coincidence. Joy seemed a struggling commodity in our lives this past year. I wanted joy. I need joy. Maybe my word for this coming year should be “joy.”

Margaret says in her book that she always thought of “…joy as a natural byproduct of a life well lived.” I think that is what I believed too. But if that was the case, then I hadn’t lived well the previous year, had I?

Was joy the measure of whether my life was good or bad?

It couldn’t be. And if joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit in my life, something God grants me then couldn’t I have it for the asking? Couldn’t it be cultivated in my heart?

What is joy anyway?

This is what Margaret Feinberg reveals in Fight Back With Joy.

And she goes a step further, showing how she chose joy in the midst of a diagnosis of cancer. Say what? Who does that?

In her typically engaging, lay-it-all out there way, Margaret shares how her life-threatening challenge created a compelling platform for discovering and communicating what true joy is and what it meant in her darkest time of need.

Defiant joy that declared darkness would not win.

We are encouraged that joy doesn’t deny hardship. It doesn’t sugar-coat our trials and pretend they are easy. No,

…joy is a weapon we use to fight life’s battles.”

Wow. It seems my battles have been joy stealers. The concept that I can choose joy to fight gives me hope and fills me with – joy!

Margaret goes on to explain all the ways God gives us joy. Such as through embracing his love for us, looking for joy in each good thing, being blessed by people God sends to refresh us (like Philemon for Paul in the Bible) and choosing to create moments and situations of hilarity. Those are only a few of the thought provoking and uplifting discoveries this encouraging author offers.

I nearly cried when my first few chapters came to an end.

This is a book I needed. And I have the inkling that many others do as well. We need this honest look at how to deal with the trials of our lives. Life, especially these days, is rough. Not everyone is facing cancer, but as Margaret acknowledges, every one of us has dealt with or is going through some difficult situation.

And God intends for us, enables us to live in joy.

Even in the darkest, most heart-wrenching of times. Not putting on a fake smile of “Everything’s great!,” but existing with something deeper and stronger in the midst of pain or sorrow.

I for one need that.

Thank you, Margaret, for sharing your story. Thank you for showing us how to fight in life with true joy.

The World of Chronic Illness

October 12, 2014

A month ago, my husband and I decided it was time to move.

We’ve lived in a beautiful area where the forest meets the ocean, but it seems that along with redwoods, dolphins and the Santa CruzIMAG0295 Beach Boardwalk, mold also abounds.

Looking back over the thirteen years I resided in that spectacular area, I never considered my health issues as mold related. When I moved there, I was a struggling single mother of three teenagers, teaching school full time, homeschooling and working a second job.

Exhaustion was a way of life.

But eight years later, after the first couple of months of being married and living in a different house, I couldn’t drag out of bed and became sicker each week, I wondered if it was more than simply my hectic life causing the problems. Eventually we found that unseen mold filled the house.

After moving, I began to get better.

For a nearly two years I became stronger. I felt well again and had energy to walk, work out and maintain a normal lifestyle. Still, my physical “radar” could tell when entering a moldy environment because I would become nauseated, dizzy and develop a headache within minutes of exposure. But most of the time, I could avoid those situations.

Until we had been in our next home for about sixteen months.

Once again, I began to feel ill. For the first t, I passed it off as lifestyle. But given our previous experience, it wasn’t long before I made the connection. Our bathroom shower had broken tiles that had grown worse during the time we had been living there. In addition, there were water marks on the ceiling under our bathroom. These were signs of potential mold growth within the framework of the house. We alerted the landlord to the problem, but received no help. After a number of months, a plumber applied caulking to the cracks. For the next year and a half, I was terribly ill.

Far worse than the first time.

Doctors had no answers. The sores on my tongue and blisters all over my hands and inside my body were systemic, but that was all they could tell me. One diagnosed an autoimmune disease.* But which one? No clue. Only one or two of my symptoms matched any given one.

Another doctor diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis. Except my blood tests proved negative. The adrenal stress tests showed a compromised immune system not producing (or assimilating) cortisol. I wasn’t intolerant to gluten. My thyroid was fine.

The lump that developed in my jaw overnight? (I was pretty sure it was a swollen lymph node). The emergency room physician and staff didn’t know. Did no tests. Sent me home with an antibiotic prescription “just in case it is an infection.” With no fever, no sign of infection and only localized swelling and pain, the doctor couldn’t be certain. I suspected mold in my system was causing my body to fight overtime without beating it.

Could you check for mold in my system?

I asked every doctor I saw. The homeopath, the medical doctors, the naturopath and the ER physician and nurses all shook their heads like I was crazy. There’s no test for such a thing they told me. Mold can’t cause problems like yours. Everyone has a little mildew in their shower. Even the doctor that believed mold causes problems had no knowledge of what to do for it.

Try a dehumidifier,”  he said.

Except the mold was in the walls, and the air we breathed in our house as a result of the leaks and water damage, not the humidity. DSC_0006Tests proved it. Our son suddenly developed asthma and broke out in hives. Steroids barely contained it. I ran essential oil diffusers in our home to kill the mold. It helped, but didn’t solve the deeper problem. And I was starting to experience balance and memory loss.

After my doctor desensitized me to mold for the third time in a year, I decided it must be in my system as well as our environment. (He was great and strengthened my immune system which helped, but we couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting well completely.) Hours of internet searching led me to a lab that did mold testing. But the cost was into thousands and not money we had.

Still, what else could we do?

 

to be continued…

*some of the conditions misdiagnosed as a result of or suffered in tandem with Mold Sickness are rheumatoid arthritis,  lupus, Lyme disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS) to list a few