Tag: letting go

Ready for the snap

Deana5 Comments

Take one Fever

Add a mild anxiety attack

and you have no surgery.

Calling off the surgery was a good call. I went home and slept for three days. Turns out, I was one sick puppy. Once I came to, I discovered that my lungs could no longer tolerate smoke and I am reluctantly happy to report that I am smoke free. I say reluctantly because while I cannot tolerate smoke, it doesn’t mean I don’t crave them. Color me with nicotine patches and I’m tolerable to be around.

Smoking did not go down without a fight. I tried to smoke – it didn’t work. I couldn’t inhale and that frustrated me. So for two or three days, I played with cigarettes, watched them burn, watched the smoke, remembered my Father in Law and my Grandparents, and kinda grieved. Okay – it’s pathetically wierd and I know it. But cut me some slack here okay?

My grandparents smoked and neither of them died from it. My father-in-law and I were very close buds and he did die from it. My emotional tie to cigarettes has everything to do with my emotional ties to these people who are no longer in my life. Letting go of my own cigarettes is another step in letting go of them.

I visited Dr B’s office yesterday and my lungs sound fine.  We talked about music (he likes U2 as much as we do) and surgery and we are ready to rock and roll on Friday. literally – he listens to U2 while he operates. That just totally cracks me up.

I did catch something funny that he does. When he’s talking to me, he stands next to me and holds my right hand with his right hand and he places his left hand on my wrist.  All this time I thought it was a nurturing and centering tactic, which it is. I also figured out that it allows him to feel my pulse while he’s talking to me to check my anxiety. Laugh out Loud. Jeff and I figured that out last night.

I can lie through my teeth, but I can’t lie through my veins. This whole mass-in-the-uterus-in-you-need-a hysterectomy thing has me a little on the scared side.

Out-smarted by a surgeon. Go figure!

So later gators. I have salt water to drink – don’t ask and an operation to get ready for.

I’ll post again later next week. Have a wonderful weekend.

Let’s Talk About it: Girl Talk

Deana5 Comments

Content Warning: This post is for women only. Men read at your own risk. I’m talking about girl parts today.

Women are funny creatures, we’ll either spill our guts and tell you more than you ever wanted to know or we become so stinkin’ private it’s a wonder any of us know where babies come from. We are at times polite and modest to a fault. And we are at times honest to a fault. I’m not saying that’s wrong, I’m just saying that sometimes it is helpful to know things beyond who did your hair or how much you hate my new dress.

Case in point. When I went to the hospital last week, I thought something was truly, seriously wrong with me. Turns out that one in four women develop fibroids in their life time. Not to be crass, but you’d think at 44, I’d know what those are.  “Female problems” aren’t something that run in my family. No one has ever had issue beyond early menopause. I am now learning that several of my friends and extended family have lived with fibriods and eventually had hysterectomies, but I didn’t know that last week.

I do know that my Great Grandmother died from cervical cancer at the age of 86 and I know that she’d had a hysterectomy when she was in her 50’s – but the why behind it went to the grave with her. No one knows. Her cervical cancer went undetected because she never had another pap smear after that.

Fibroids were always something women get in their breasts, not… well… elsewhere. And fibroids were something that was maybe the size of a small pea or maybe a quarter, but not so big that I would be deemed the size of a woman in her 22nd week of pregnancy. Having the emergency room doctor describe my new friend as something that “could be a fibroid, could be a cyst, or it could be cancer, we don’t know right now.” Did not help my heart or my over active imagination. I’ll let you guess which word I focused on.

I’ve also learned that they develop over time and that most women live with them until they get troublesome. Mine has reached troublesome. Why no one found it before now, is still a mystery to me.

For those who have been following my health detour, I saw the surgeon today.

Today’s doctor visit went really well. I like my new doctor and my husband even went with me. There were some glitches, like the fact that my primary never sent him my file or the films or the lab results. This after my hounding her office for three days to get them to process the referral in the first place. Typical really of that office.

I’m changing primaries after this is over.

My new doctor is warm and kind, a surgeon, strong women’s health advocate, and practical. He stated that statistics show there is an 80% chance this is just a benign fibroid, that 1 in 4 women get them in their life time and until tests show it to be something else he’ll stick with that diagnosis. He also reserves the right to change his prognosis once all lab results are in. Yes, it seems “big” by my standards but in his line of work he’s “seen worse.”

Another bonus is he saw the humor in my naming it and doesn’t think I’m wierd for doing that at all; at least not to my face.

He seems more concerned by the polyp on my cervix than the mass in my uterus. I didn’t know about the polyp either. Biopsies were taken for both and I’ll know the results when I go back to see him on the 28th.

I have regular female exams, so these things are new occurances this year. I’m not happy about the timeing. Jeff just lost his mom last month, I don’t want to be down right now. We have trips planned and summer arriving. I’m stubborn, and I have work to do.

I’m not sure what lessons are ahead or what I’ll learn from all this, but like it or not, I have down time coming up. Today, I’m learning to accept the gifts that can be found in that.

My question for you guys: How do you handled seemingly forced down times? How hard is it for you to let go of your plans and surrender to what is?

Living With Epilepsy: Baseball

Deana3 Comments
Suiting up and Showing up

It doesn’t matter that he’s never played before, neither has 3/4 of the team. It doesn’t even matter if the ball is coming at him at 70 miles per hour, he wants to catch. Turns out, he’s really good at catching. It doesn’t even matter that I have a thousand what if scenarios running through my head that put him in the hospital with my “I told you so’s” spilling out of my mouth. What matters is, he doesn’t want to be treated like a kid with a disability. He is a kid who wants to be a kid and unless I want to emotionally and spiritually cripple him with my own fears, I have to let him.

D has had epilepsy (ADNFLE) since he was six and is one of the bravest kids I know.

 He’s fought epilepsy, (16 months seizure free and counting)

 and he’s learning how to drive; standing behind a plate facing down 70 mph baseballs and runners twice his size ain’t nothin’ compared to that. So, I keep my what if’s to myself and let him be who he is, knowing that God doesn’t have grandchildren and that He holds my hands even when I’m watching my youngest play through my fingers in front of my face.

He even played third base.

Written by Deana O’Hara for Redemption’s Heart. All rights reserved.

For more information about epilepsy please see The Epilepsy Foundation.

To help fund research and find a cure please see their Research Funding Challenge today.

Finding My Story for 2010

Deana6 Comments

I was going to post a blog today about my new resolutions, until I read Donald Miller’s Post on Living a Good Story. (You have got to read it, seriously. Awesome piece) No one is asking me to endorse it, I just happened to catch the link on Twitter today and thought WOW, this is so it! And that post is why I am changing how I look at both 2009 and 2010.

“When you do tell your story, don’t sound like the victim. If you do, you’ll sound like you’re whining. Just be truthful in telling your story and aim to discover that slice of humanity that others can relate to.”  David Pierce, to me last summer, author of “Don’t Let Me Go.”

Stories can capture the soul or bore you stupid, kind of like my blog some days.   I’m going through midlife puberty and my voice is changing. Some days I nail it, mostly I squeak. My “mom” days are coming to a close. It’s a scary season for me. I’m still needed, but not in the same way.

I do find it interesting , that my top two blog entries in 2009 were on Letting Go and Understanding our Identity in Christ, By: Cj Rapp. Both received hundreds of hits a piece and they were the most commonly searched topics.

I did not begin 2009 with a story in mind and yet looking back, those two pieces nail it. Letting Go of what holds me back and finding my identity in Christ is the story of 2009 at least for me.  Christ loves me, not because of what I do or don’t do, but because I breath in and out.  I can’t do a single thing to make Him love me less, or love me more than he does right now. WOW. 

That was God’s gift to me last year.  That knowing that I wanted so desperately in January. Remember my verse for the year? – Ephesians 3:17-19. “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

I “get” it today.

 My goals for 2009 were pretty vague – memorize 24 scripture verses, survive graduation and my son leaving for college, lose 60 lbs (didn’t happen) — I was also going to quit smoking, but I copped a resentment last summer and well, that didn’t happen either. — And yes, I am self destructive when I’m feeling resentful. Even so, stopping smoking is a requirement for the story I want to live in 2010.

 

I’m back at square one today. I’m throwing away my resoltions and I’m looking for the story of 2010. What story do I want to live? I’m not sure yet. That will take some thought.

I’m going to take the advice from a teacher again- my story for 2010won’t involve being a victim, no whining might take some work, and it will be truthful. Truthful to God, to my family, and to myself.

How about you? What story do you want to live in 2010? I’d love to hear from you.

EDITED TO ADD:  _– a neurotic note to say  How quickly I forget,  — Donald Miller wrote Blue Like Jazz, one of my favorite books of all time – no wonder his piece on stories not resolutions spoke to me so well. 

Read this guy.. I’m glad I found him again.. I feel a bookstore afternoon coming up.

One Month Tomorrow

Deana1 Comment

Can you believe that I dropped my oldest son off at college one month ago tomorrow? I didn’t think I’d survive the change. I mean part of me knew I would, and part of me was afraid I wouldn’t. You can read how it went HERE. I am happy to report that things have gotten easier for me. Even though I miss him a lot, I no longer cry at the drop of a hat.

I realized that I was treating the situation as if he had died. And he hasn’t. But I was treating it that way. Telling myself that Charlie would want me to be strong. What kind of mother am I if I just curl up and stop living because my son moved out? I’m better than this. And I willed myself through my first couple of weeks. God and I got really close again, trust me.

It’s not that I haven’t been planning for this. I have. My boys are a huge part of my life, and yet I have made sure they are not my total life lest I wake up feeling hopelessly alone when they leave. What I didn’t expect was the tidal wave of emotions. I didn’t expect to grieve.

But you know what? Grieving is okay.

We still facebook each other. He does call. And he has visited home once already. College is going great. He’s going to be just fine. And so am I.

Letting Go (Let Go and Let God)

Deana20 Comments

Once upon a time, or as most tales go, a young gal with a heart full of love and compassion heard a story that made her very sad. Being two pennies short of common sense, she came to believe that she could fix this problem and therefore set herself up as a shield of protection.

Forgetting the words of John the Baptist,

“I am not the Christ.”

she stretched out her arms

and stood in the gap

between those who threatened harm

and the one she was protecting.

If she just tried hard enough,

she believed or fought hard enough,

protected long enough,

everything would be okay.

Only everything wasn’t okay. The harder she stood her ground, the harder they fought and the more he seemed to need her. The more she did to protect him, the less he seemed willing to do for himself and the less honest he became.

Once she realized that no man

carries a burden that someone else

is willing to bear or faces a truth

that no one is willing to tell him

and that he’d grown weaker

and not stronger like she’d hoped,

she laid down his cross

and took up her own.

She meant well and it almost cost her life. In time she remembered the words of the one in the desert. The one who’s role was to make straight the crooked path, and point believers to the one who would come after him. She remembered that “standing in the gap” means standing in prayer and support, not in self-sacrifice.

She found a note one day, written just for her and other two-penny-short friends who mean well. Together, she and her new friends, trudged the road of happy destiny. They laughed, leaned on each other, and stayed under the protective wings of the God they no longer needed to pretend to be.

Letting Go

  • To “Let Go” does not mean to stop caring, it means I can’t do it for someone else.
  • To “Let Go” is not to cut myself off, it’s the realization I can’t control another. To “Let Go” is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.
  • To “Let Go” is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.
  • To “Let Go” is not to try to change or blame another, it’s to make the most of myself.
  • To “Let Go” is not to care for, but to care about.
  • To “Let Go” is not to fix, but to be supportive.
  •  To “Let Go” is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.
  •  To “Let Go” is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own destinies.
  •  To “Let Go” is not to be protective, it is to permit another to face reality.
  • To “Let Go” is not to deny, but to accept.
  • To “Let Go” is not to nag, scold or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
  • To “Let Go” is not to adjust everything to my desires but to take each day as it comes, and cherish myself in it.
  •  To “Let Go” is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.
  • To “Let Go” is to fear less and love more. – Unknown.

Letting Go – is my knowing that I cannot play God and believe in God at the same time.

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Sanity Support:  Do you have an adult child who is breaking your heart? An aging parent taking up your whole life? A problem with food? A co-worker making you hate your job? Learn how you can find SANITY and take back your life.

This post written by Deana O’Hara for Redemption’s Heart. July 22 2009 and may not be copied in any way shape or form.