Hi Everyone,
My name is Brenda Holman. This blog is intended as a therapeutic tool, and hopefully it will help someone else in the process. I definitely hope it will entertain you, and myself since I am stuck here in the hospital awaiting a triple bypass surgery.
I know nothing about blogging, but I am doing this in order to keep some sort of sanity, and to make since of all the insanity I have experienced.
People tell me I go through these experiences with Grace. Well, it is not my doing. It is God's grace. It is the presence of the creator in me that I seem to work so hard to shut out at all other periods of time in my life, except when I really need Him. He's still there. Thank you.
The "Chronic" Cure is Christ. And, I do not mean for those of you afraid of religion, and afraid of spirituality, that you have to become someone hypocritical, or judgemental, because you don't. I was afraid of that at first. I didn't want to become one of those people in order to love God. God just loved me enough to help open my heart and allowed me to come to Him on my terms. He still does.
I live with chronic illness and disease. Chronic pain. Physical limitations. These are things that many Christians believe you should not have if you "believe" hard enough, or if you have enough Faith. When I say many Christians I am including myself in that category. I have struggled so very hard, punishing myself over and over for the fact that God has not healed me. But, it is not just the act of being healed of one condition I struggled with, He seemed to be strickening me with more and more. Piling on the struggles. So when He would pile on the disease, I piled on the sin in retaliation.
Juvenile Diabetes
Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis
Osteoarthritis
Degenerative Scoliosis
Hip Dysplasia
Anxiety and Depression
Then came drug abuse and alcoholism to cope. This was my teens and twenties.
Then Sobriety and Recovery and finding my relationship with God in my 30s. But the disease kept coming. The scoliosis and arthritis turned into back and neck surgeries. Hip replacements. My ovaries began to fail and I had miscarriages.
The diabetes worsened and now I am 41 and need a triple bypass and I am in heart failure. I have a blood clot in my leg, and they tested me positive for MRSA. From the outside looking in, I look pathetic and broken and people tend to think that I have brought this wrath down upon myself. Maybe I have, I don't know. I know everyday I do the best to manage my diabetes, and to manage my pain while retaining my sobriety. My life is a set of checks and balances. I try and make sure I do not allow my insides to affect your outsides. Just because I am having pain or a hard day doesn't mean I get to make the world miserable. I refuse to live that way. I refuse to let pain win. I have asked for deliverance from this heart condition, but if not, then so be it. The surgeons will do their best, and so will God, and I can only do my part after that. This life is temporary,but Heaven lasts always. I am holding onto that. My body has never held up to it's end of the bargain... But my Spirit has flown, and it will continue to do so.
