Who Are We?
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12
I believe it only fitting and fair that our first blog post be an introduction. Who are we? What is the purpose of this website? Then you can decide if you want to be here learning with us or not. No compulsion, no guilt trips, no expectation that you agree with everything I have to say. This is simply our true story.
My husband, my daughter, and I are chronic illness survivors. We have been fighting this battle for about 10 years. For me personally, it has probably been much longer. The politically correct label in today’s world for our chronic illness would be lyme disease. But lyme disease, we have learned, has many names and many faces. And a diagnosis is just a label that gives someone a direction to apply a specific treatment, whether that label be correct or not, whether the treatment be correct or not. I believe our chronic illness is much more complex than a simple label. But for the purpose of understanding what I am talking about, I will call it lyme disease.
In my early years, I was pretty fearless, and my parents were the best! They gave me the freedom to be a child. Bumps, bruises, mud pies, pets, tadpoles, kick the can, the whole 9 yards! It was simply a healthy childhood, but not without direction and caution inserted when needed. In my growing up years, children were children and not expected to make grown-up decisions concerning their welfare. I was loved and protected by my parents. But like everyone else in the world, we were being taught things by our culture and the media that were simply not true.
My dear mother, who was told she might not be able to have children, was actually blessed with me and one older brother. We survived my childhood together until about the sixth grade. It was not the normal bumps and bruises of childhood that changed my life. One fateful day at school, I received a school immunization that altered my reality forever, an MMR that caused me to be so deathly sick, teachers and neighbors commented they weren’t sure I was coming back. No mention was ever made of the cause of my affliction, including the immunization. From then on, I would easily pick up anything and everything that was going around.
I took a trip to Europe my senior year of high school and spent at least a week of that trip in a hotel deathly sick. I went to about two years of college, occasionally being too sick to even take my finals. I was in and of the hospital, always being told they could not tell what had caused my illness.
I married a uniquely loving and patient man who gave up a honeymoon trip to care for me while I was, once again, sick. I broke him in very quickly with a glimpse of what our future held. I birthed six children but struggled mightily with postpartum depression and intermittent colds and viruses. Several years into our marriage, my husband would begin to experience severe pain in his leg tendons and feet. His legs would swell with redness and heat to the point of having to use crutches for daily tasks. Once again, no doctor could explain the cause of the infection and pain. He survived on heavy doses of NSAIDs and expensive, extremely potent antibiotics.
My husband and I were both raised in families that closely followed Western medicine. My mother at age 62 was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, the result of hormone therapy that utilized horse urine. She died two years later, with no quality of life during those two years of chemotherapy and surgery. My father suffered from sciatica and severe joint pain for many years without explanation. My father would seldom go to a doctor, even though his own father was the dean of a large university’s medical school. He died three years after my mother, also from cancer.
At the birth of my last child, I knew something was wrong, both with me and with my new daughter. I gained weight I could not lose that I had previously been able to lose easily. The postpartum depression was severe, and my beautiful new daughter would also struggle with frequent illnesses. Later we moved into a new home adjacent to high intensity power lines, and that was the beginning of the end. My health would plummet. In that same home, my youngest now teenage daughter would cease to have normal periods and suffer from severe endometrial pain. She too would be bedridden for almost two years.
By the time my youngest was ready to leave for college, all three of us, myself, my husband, and my daughter, would all be diagnosed with lyme disease. It took us many years to begin to connect the dots. But the introduction of the Internet and the exposure to truths we had never before been allowed to investigate would begin to turn on the lights.
Fortunately for us, and even though we had all been raised to trust in the flesh, God has not left us alone. He has always been there placing signposts and turning on lights along the way. But we were finally beginning to understand his messages. At one point, he had distinctly led me to Isaiah 54, “No weapon formed against you will prosper.” I finally understood what exactly the weapon was, and anyone understanding the true history of lyme disease will know the weapon as well.
Most importantly, I understood clearly that it was Jesus Christ himself who had made us that promise. To our utter astonishment, it was not our church leaders or our congregation that would comfort and support us through this Job-like trial. It was not even many of our family and friends. Nor was it the medical establishment and the health care workers, some of which are part of the very corporations that introduced these weapons into our world. There are, however, other individuals also reading the signposts and messages that God sends to them to help those who are suffering. But this is His work in a day and time when “men’s hearts have waxed cold.” God’s servants are only a small remnant.
This is the purpose of this website: His promise of peace on earth. We are chronic illness survivors fighting the battle with Jesus as our leader. We will not give up, for with Him, all things are possible. He desires for us to make a covenant with life, not death. He desires for us to “mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort.” The battle is real, but with Jesus the outcome has already been decided. He has overcome death. It is our job to help each other through this test. Jesus, being moved by compassion and doing only that which He had seen his Father do, healed. We must exercise our faith in Him and do the same for ourselves and others.
Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
1 John 5:5
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12
I believe it only fitting and fair that our first blog post be an introduction. Who are we? What is the purpose of this website? Then you can decide if you want to be here learning with us or not. No compulsion, no guilt trips, no expectation that you agree with everything I have to say. This is simply our true story.
My husband, my daughter, and I are chronic illness survivors. We have been fighting this battle for about 10 years. For me personally, it has probably been much longer. The politically correct label in today’s world for our chronic illness would be lyme disease. But lyme disease, we have learned, has many names and many faces. And a diagnosis is just a label that gives someone a direction to apply a specific treatment, whether that label be correct or not, whether the treatment be correct or not. I believe our chronic illness is much more complex than a simple label. But for the purpose of understanding what I am talking about, I will call it lyme disease.
In my early years, I was pretty fearless, and my parents were the best! They gave me the freedom to be a child. Bumps, bruises, mud pies, pets, tadpoles, kick the can, the whole 9 yards! It was simply a healthy childhood, but not without direction and caution inserted when needed. In my growing up years, children were children and not expected to make grown-up decisions concerning their welfare. I was loved and protected by my parents. But like everyone else in the world, we were being taught things by our culture and the media that were simply not true.
My dear mother, who was told she might not be able to have children, was actually blessed with me and one older brother. We survived my childhood together until about the sixth grade. It was not the normal bumps and bruises of childhood that changed my life. One fateful day at school, I received a school immunization that altered my reality forever, an MMR that caused me to be so deathly sick, teachers and neighbors commented they weren’t sure I was coming back. No mention was ever made of the cause of my affliction, including the immunization. From then on, I would easily pick up anything and everything that was going around.
I took a trip to Europe my senior year of high school and spent at least a week of that trip in a hotel deathly sick. I went to about two years of college, occasionally being too sick to even take my finals. I was in and of the hospital, always being told they could not tell what had caused my illness.
I married a uniquely loving and patient man who gave up a honeymoon trip to care for me while I was, once again, sick. I broke him in very quickly with a glimpse of what our future held. I birthed six children but struggled mightily with postpartum depression and intermittent colds and viruses. Several years into our marriage, my husband would begin to experience severe pain in his leg tendons and feet. His legs would swell with redness and heat to the point of having to use crutches for daily tasks. Once again, no doctor could explain the cause of the infection and pain. He survived on heavy doses of NSAIDs and expensive, extremely potent antibiotics.
My husband and I were both raised in families that closely followed Western medicine. My mother at age 62 was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, the result of hormone therapy that utilized horse urine. She died two years later, with no quality of life during those two years of chemotherapy and surgery. My father suffered from sciatica and severe joint pain for many years without explanation. My father would seldom go to a doctor, even though his own father was the dean of a large university’s medical school. He died three years after my mother, also from cancer.
At the birth of my last child, I knew something was wrong, both with me and with my new daughter. I gained weight I could not lose that I had previously been able to lose easily. The postpartum depression was severe, and my beautiful new daughter would also struggle with frequent illnesses. Later we moved into a new home adjacent to high intensity power lines, and that was the beginning of the end. My health would plummet. In that same home, my youngest now teenage daughter would cease to have normal periods and suffer from severe endometrial pain. She too would be bedridden for almost two years.
By the time my youngest was ready to leave for college, all three of us, myself, my husband, and my daughter, would all be diagnosed with lyme disease. It took us many years to begin to connect the dots. But the introduction of the Internet and the exposure to truths we had never before been allowed to investigate would begin to turn on the lights.
Fortunately for us, and even though we had all been raised to trust in the flesh, God has not left us alone. He has always been there placing signposts and turning on lights along the way. But we were finally beginning to understand his messages. At one point, he had distinctly led me to Isaiah 54, “No weapon formed against you will prosper.” I finally understood what exactly the weapon was, and anyone understanding the true history of lyme disease will know the weapon as well.
Most importantly, I understood clearly that it was Jesus Christ himself who had made us that promise. To our utter astonishment, it was not our church leaders or our congregation that would comfort and support us through this Job-like trial. It was not even many of our family and friends. Nor was it the medical establishment and the health care workers, some of which are part of the very corporations that introduced these weapons into our world. There are, however, other individuals also reading the signposts and messages that God sends to them to help those who are suffering. But this is His work in a day and time when “men’s hearts have waxed cold.” God’s servants are only a small remnant.
This is the purpose of this website: His promise of peace on earth. We are chronic illness survivors fighting the battle with Jesus as our leader. We will not give up, for with Him, all things are possible. He desires for us to make a covenant with life, not death. He desires for us to “mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort.” The battle is real, but with Jesus the outcome has already been decided. He has overcome death. It is our job to help each other through this test. Jesus, being moved by compassion and doing only that which He had seen his Father do, healed. We must exercise our faith in Him and do the same for ourselves and others.
Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
1 John 5:5