Ever since my one month post op I have been trying to make this post, today is 10 weeks and 4 days. Clearly it has been hard for me to find the words to express my heart, my mind, my peace and my battles behind all of my medical changes after surgery and the silence that I run to. When I woke from surgery I couldn't speak at all. Nothing would come out. For 4 days I had to write on a board what I needed to say. Maybe my heart is still there. Needing that silence. Needing to sift through the things that do and don't need to be written or spoken. With that, if I were to share the things that remain in my 'cup' after doing some heavy sifting; I will tell you there is peace, hope and beauty despite it all. There always has been. This trach, eyelid droop, incredibly rapid heart rate, dizziness, vomiting issues, uneven pupils that cause double vision and therefore headaches…nothing, NOTHING at all has made me feel like God has abandoned me. I don't feel alone. I feel like God has held me through this all. As my body goes through these changes, as it falls apart.. my spirit keeps rising. I feel broken yet whole at the same time. This body is not who I am and this becomes more and more evident to me as the level of strength between the two grow more and more contrasting. One is not the other, two entirely separate entities.
Now, prior to the heavy sifting…there are moments and days of immense sadness. However this surgery and the changes it has brought upon me in and of itself are not where the roots of this sadness dwell. But instead, something I am used to by now is not getting too comfortable. I find myself needing to constantly adjust to a new normal as my tumors are constantly changing my body. I believe I got to a point that I was at peace with the chronic pain that I was in. But now, with having such a small amount of autonomic function in my body and knowing some dysautonomia cases can grow deadly, I realized that again, in the back of my mind I don't feel like I am going to survive the effects these tumors have on my body. I have faith in God. But faith grows and develops as it is challenged and I am being challenged again by the alter of my life and age of death. Figuring out how to allow my heart into a position that can say 'Ok Lord, if my tumors turn cancerous I trust you' is hard enough. But now I must do the same with whatever extent my dysautonomia has on me.
Since surgery, as I have been wrestling with my sadness despite my faith I have had a desire for silence. The desire to have a cocoon stage, to have this change, body and spiritually be made in solitude. Aside from my body's changes previously mentioned, I have waited to feel different spiritually and emotionally. I have waited to feel something monumental, yet the only giant that was revealed to me was that I, myself, my core…feels the same. After surgery I was expecting my spirit to be forced to follow my body in its downward spiral of weaker and weaker. But come to find out, it didn't have to. My faith in God has remained stronger than my sadness. My soul stronger than my flesh. Even when my sadness is crippling, my faith is just waiting. Waiting patiently as I go through a very human process. I even have times where I can barely find reason to hope. But deep deep down I still know that I am somehow going to get through it. I still feel like a bruised and ever more broken human, but I also feel like a whole spirit dwelling in heaven. There is maximum benefit in learning how to disconnect from this life and body and live where my soul and heart will dwell forever...in heaven. In doing so, I release faith in myself and thoughts that my only human mind can understand and fully immerse my trust in God. Adjusting is hard, but my faith tells me I must follow the path that gives me freedom. My faith tells me God loves me, He is good, His ways are above my ways. These truths are enough and have carried my soul time and time again back up to those puffy clouds, and again I am set free.
**I head out to the Mayo Clinic tomorrow. They said to expect at least a week of testing which starts Monday. I am eager, excited and grateful for the opportunity to go to this incredible facility, but I am also pretty nervous for the answers and diagnosis' that will come from it. I covet prayers for my emotions and perspective to stay in truth no matter what happens.
