Few Miles Down the Road

Well, I've been journeying a few miles now and the road is not quite as scary. Some of you know how our "Christmas" week went yet most of you do not. We are blessed that we had a month to prepare ourselves for the family decision that this year there was going to be no material focus in December, that there was going to be no hype around December 25th and if that would not have been planned for one month I would have had a much more difficult decision on my hands than I did December 23rd, what I will share with the group about that week is that Brent took the children and spent 5 days with his parents and the children in Sierra Vista, Arizona and we are so blessed that his parents are enjoying the month of January bonding with our children in a time frame that they have never been able to before (the kids stayed behind).
We miss the children greatly but know that my getting on a schedule, medicines stablized and recooperation is much more important and that the love and stability that they are receiving from Grandma and Poppa is a great blessing.
Brent and I have been looking back and seeing so many ways that God has actually been orchastrating this for months. Starting with hiring my assistant, Megan, in March last year. What seemed to be countless hours of her doing nothing was countless hours of her gleaning how to run the center in my abscence now. We went to lunch yesterday. She's amazed at how much she can tell others to do through the time God gave her with me. Brent and I see the week vacation that God gave me in September when I left the children with his parents as preparation for them to be with them this month. Brent's parents helped rent the car for him to bring the children for Christmas, with a Christmas check from a friend that more than paid for the car. Brent and I went back and forth whether he should add me to his health insurance or not in 2008. Nothing on earth could have been haucked to pay for the bills incurred had he not added me come open enrollment, in October. (O.K. I'm wrong. No wonder I love cows. God owns the cows on a thousand hills and He will provide with or without insurance. He has proved Himself faithful over and over again, including allowing this.)
My prayer again, is always....for Your glory Lord, all for Your glory!

Love, Honor and Respect

I received an email today, and this paragraph (offset in brown text instead of black text to set apart from mine) sent my mind spinning…(I know it doesn’t take much right now! Hey, there was a funny – yes the laughter is still buried in there somewhere)

It feels selfish, egotistical to “love” ourselves, but instead of being egotistical, it is absolutely essential. Remember, the Bible says to Love others as you love yourself. I began on the journey of loving and respecting myself, (I actually thought I already did) I knew I loved my kids, so for someone to say, “You can’t love someone else unless you love yourself” made no sense to me! But what I found was that once I began to truly love, honor and respect myself, I then could love my children more completely. I loved them from strength rather than from need.

Brent and I have been blessed in the last few years with the gift of being introduced to the series “Love and Respect” (many of you may be familiar with it. When the CD version was first given to us to listen to it was first difficult for me to receive as I thought it was just one more way of being told I had no respect for my husband. But what I have now been able to verbalize after a lot of healing is that no one ever taught me what that means. Now as I’m reading the statement above I’m contemplating the thought that while I have always known there has never been any love for myself have I ever known how to respect or honor myself? What does that mean?

Those who have known me for years know I was not taught to respect and honor my mother and at 39 I am still learning and regretting years of that pain. Then about a month ago I sat at my table and cried with a friend as we discussed the thought that the God tells us to honor our mother and father in the Bible with no conditions. He doesn’t tell you to honor them if they meet up to your expectations or their sins aren’t bigger than yours….God I don’t understand you want me to unconditionally love my parents and honor them and respect them and at this point I was going to say who taught me to do this? Oh God help me my unbelief! When I’m just to weak to look up to you and I just don’t get that you were there all along! Forgive me and pick me up. Thank you that you are unconditional!

Boy's Best Friend, Mommy's "Rocky Road"

After much waiting and praying, Saturday I woke up crying-"I don't know how much longer I can wait for a doggy slobber of my own!" Brent told mom, "take her and the kids to check the mail if there is no good news from the Golden Retriever Rescue go find her a dog." Ten hours later we returned home exhausted with "Rocky Road's" adoption paper's in hand, and an appointment to pick him up from his surgery the next day. My Mom had been hoping we'd find a female medium height but when I took a small unknown mix female out to pen to get to know her (read 9 month old as 9yr old-wow was that BIG mistake! she stood on all 4 and jumped over my head when I threw the ball to see if she knew how to play fetch- I told Mike, my helper this is definately not a dog for my family!) Mom decided calm was more important than gender and that is when I went and got "un-named" Rocky to meet the family and it was love at first sight. He was so calm he didn't want to get up for Mike but when Mike had me get in pen Rocky got up and got right in "gate" with my step. We had a great walk together. How he got his name is they had a desert landscaping area that had a boulder upfront and bigger rock behind, Rocky of course wanted to pee on the boulder 5 or 10 or 20 times fine with me but then he wanted to pee on the rocks behind the boulder I told him no, I can't walk on those rocks and if you try to go back there I'm going to have to name you Rocky.....up and over the boulder Rocky went hence....Rocky! When I shared his name with a dear friend she said of course you named the dog Rocky, this last few months has been a very Rocky Road for you and remember Rocky Road ice-cream is the best....especially Breyers with the chocolate covered almonds and marshmellow swirls! Hence....Boy's Best friend, Mommy's Rocky Road!

He's gorgeous! 50 lb Lab mix small for a lab and most mellow lab you could ever have met! He didn't even bark until coming home after slipping his collar on a walk with Daddy this morning and running the neighborhood for 6 hours this morning. We are seeking obedience classes immediately! Tightened the collar too!

Kids are good with him and he is great with them. Think Brent bonded more with him today in my chaos of having him loose for all those hours. I'm so happy to have a dog!

200K Wonder in Winter WonderLand

Thank you Lord for the soon to be four years of blessed use we have had out of this wonderful van which rolled over 200,000 miles. If you look close though in this picture that isn't the only blessing displayed! For this 200,000 Wonder is parked in a Winter Wonder land! We had 2 hours of snow flurries yesterday. This picture was captured by Jordan our uprising photographer. Yes, all that white is the snow blanketed down for over one hour. It was beautiful.
Of course remember, we live on the high part of the "bowl" of the valley our elevation is about 2980 I think, a dear friend of mine in the middle of the "bowl" didn't even know it rained. That's what's fun about the rain, in 5 minutes you could please us all~!

Karen's Prayer

I came across Ps 3 and I called my husband to verify that I'd not be taking this chapter out of context to consider “enemies” pressing in against David as “emotions” instead of people. So this is my prayer to God thinking of the emotional battle I’m in right now.
Please first read Psalms 3 from the King James version then read my prayer, you are welcome and encouraged to share my prayer with others you may feel may benefit from it please include the title "Karen's prayer and above paragraph and prayer in entirety" when doing so!
1. Lord, how great and loud are these voices of fear and lies that torment my mind and trouble me! Many are they that rise up against me!
2. Many there be which say of my soul, there is no help for him (her) in God, give up!
3. But You Oh Lord, are a shield for me! You are my glory! And the lifter of my head I have to feel no shame!
4. I have cried unto God with a loud voice, He heard me and ministers to me!
5. I can lie down to sleep and know that God will sustain me.
6. I will no longer face alone the tens of thousands of fears and doubts that set themselves against me all around me.
7. Arise Oh Lord; Save me! Oh my God! For you have smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone; you have broken the teeth of my tormentors.
8. Salvation belongs unto the Lord: thy blessing is upon thy people.

So, what's going on with Karen?

Ok, so if you have spent much time with me at all in the right setting, I have just enough ‘control freak’ in me for you to have seen that I love to be the center of attention and that I really want to have a lot of fun- especially if it involves coffee and doing things my way, did I mention I’m a control freak? But lately I’m surprised to hear that there may actually be some out there that don’t know that I like to be the center of attention, to have a great time and that I can be really funny. They don’t know that I love to laugh and at one point I had a great sense of humor.

I have invited many of you to my blog for the first time to tell you all what I’m going through at once; many of you for the first time will be seeing me be transparent and vulnerable.

I have been experiencing various pain for some time now. One type of pain I was reminded started 18 months ago. They wanted to operate to correct the problem, immediately, and for reasons beyond my control, and now I thank God, I never had the operation. But over the last six months I have been living with chronic severe pain and chronic fatigue. I have asked my husband and mother to keep it a secret because I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. Now I know that what I was really afraid of while my body was rapidly attacking it’s self and I was loosing muscle control, was not being “the strong one” anymore. I was scared of becoming dependant on others and how it was affecting my interaction with my children and I was trying to hide it all. This stress mixed with the stress of doing “too much” at the pregnancy center, and then stepping down from Executive Director @ the pregnancy center which meant for the first time in 20 years I’d not be reporting to a job, my system went on overload and I had a melt down!

As you know I spent a few days in the hospital after being taken to the emergency room November 17, 2008 for being confused and disorientated. On the way to the emergency room my husband held me through a seizure. I was admitted into the hospital for more tests because the CT scan and chest x-ray revealed no stroke, heart attack or seizure. The ER Doctor said I’m looking at the symptoms like a stroke and there is a syndrome that can bring on 24 hour paralysis after a seizure but tests don’t show what my husband watched happen as he held me.

Now, they know that I’m experiencing migraines (I didn’t know that some of the headaches I have are migraines--I’ve had headaches my entire life most days of my life); and that the migraines bring on panic attacks and that the panic attacks can cause me to hyper-ventilate which could cause my body to do many things. It did not surprise the Dr. explaining all this too me that it was like a seizure. He has many patients that cause themselves to pass out with their panic attacks from migraines. But they also did some more testing, some emotional testing, and they think that I’ve held too much stress in. One theory I’ve heard is that they think my body is shutting itself down in self-defense. But the basic consensus is that I’m experiencing a chemical imbalance in the brain, that I’m PROBABLY bipolar. My general practitioner has diagnosed that already but my counselor said she isn’t ready to put a definite diagnosis on it yet. She says I definitely fit the criteria, but we need to re-evaluate once we can weed out the many short term stressors going on.

I have been gluten free for over three months now, but that doesn’t help the chronic pain or fatigue. However, the septic systems of Pahrump have screamed Hallelujah. I’ve also finally found some great wheat-gluten free flour I love!

MRI did not reveal MS like we were anticipating. When I started having major involuntary muscle spasms I prayed, “Lord, even if you want me to have something like MS I’m ok with it. I just want you to be glorified. I want to be able to praise you in all things.” (Bipolar never would have come to mind to fill in that MS blank; anything but a mind /emotional disorder, right? Come on now “I’m a control freak!” EXACTLY!)

So, I’m sitting in the Neurologists office the day after I’m released from the hospital following up with his nurse practitioner and he is asking me about my stress level. I make like a snorting noise and say what stress….are you kidding me? Start sobbing, “Josh, you know what the worst part of this whole thing is? I’m a born again Christian who spends way too much time bragging about being a stinking control freak when the bottom line is, GOD is suppose to be in control of my life!” I don’t even know if he is a Christian or not, poor guy. Oh, Lord I pray for Josh right now. Please use my words to him any way you can! May you be glorified!

For the time being I get to have lots of company while they find the right med’s for me, as they don’t want the kids and me alone while Brent and Mom are at work. So if you want to come have a freshly brewed cup of steamy hot coffee with my favorite vanilla-cinnamon creamer, come get a heaping helping of Taylor hospitality.

Through this all, I’m learning to enjoy each and every kiss and hug even more. You can never ever, ever say I love you enough! Tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us and I am learning to quit feeling guilty for not making promises, commitments and expectations (that is the hardest – ok so I probably haven’t changed that one yet) about tomorrow and let tomorrow bring what it might. I may say I want to do such and such tomorrow and tentatively let’s plan to but I’m learning to be much more flexible. That is something I lost a long time ago.

A few of you that I have confided this in already have asked, “do you really believe you have a chemical imbalance?” Yes, it’s the only thing to me that explains why I don’t (feel) recognize one shred of myself. You may occasionally get a glimpse of the mask I may find laying around somewhere but ME….no one…not even my mom recognizes at times. I know that the enemy of our soul roams around like a lion seeking whom he may devour and I believe that I have been a prime target for attack for the stands that I have taken in the pro-life movement and I remember once losing my voice after telling a young man when prompted by the Holy Spirit that abortion is murder, this is one major reason why I covet many prayers right now and praise God that I have found a counselor who is not only a born again Christian but familiar and supportive of the pregnancy resource centers and pro-life movement. She does believe that I have bottled a lot in the last two years and that it was a great loss for me personally to step down from my position at the center and somewhere along the line I surrendered my identity to the identity of the center and I agree this is not proper and I caution all leadership of PRC’s to ask God to examine your heart and show you if you have lost you before it’s too late! Imbalance is not a sin, the neurons misfiring and not sending the proper messages is not a sin; the initial battle I fought walking out of my GP’s office that day was “how can I be bipolar and a born again Christian? I thought you are one or the other?” My counselor reminded me that our brains are comprised of neuron transmitters and chemical balances are necessary. I am in fact only responsible for my reaction to these misfiring neurons and chemical imbalances.

This sanguine who wants to be the life of the party and have every one like her, mixed with choleric who likes to control things just a LITTLE too much; is choosing once again to lay it all down at the foot of the cross where we are all equal and where we are all sinners and it really doesn’t matter that I’ve been vulnerable and transparent.
What matters the most is that God receives all the glory and honor and praise! What matters is that He is still on the throne and that none of this surprised Him There are countless ways that my husband and I have been able to see God’s hand through timing and directing the events and timing of the last 22 days since I originally began melting down. My favorite song right now, in this space in time, has become Blessed be the name: “On the road marked with suffering when there is pain in the offering blessed be your name, every blessing you pour out I’ll turn back to praise”….I think that is right….

Good night all and to all a good night. I love you.

Something a Mom shouldn't hear

"Ouch! Mom, your beard is poking me. No more hugs until you pluck your whiskers!"
True. All that is true, but it just ain't right! Goodmorning to me! Snuggle time...will it ever be the same?