Sacroiliac, Costochondritis and Diet Coke: Making Sense of it All

Food has always comforted me.  I love the many textures, tastes and varieties and have always been able to eat more than my female friends, and some of my male friends.  My father nicknamed me “hollow leg” as a child due to the sheer amount of food I could ingest.  I was also nicknamed “Olive Oil” back in those days.
Fast forward a few -- ahem -- many years later and my ravenous eating habits are not behaviors I like to boast about.  Nor have they done my figure any favors.

That’s all about to change.  Sure, I’ve done the yo-yo dieting thing for years and I have even lost enough weight to get back into my “skinny jeans” a few times as an adult.  This time is different.

In August, I injured my hip while working out.  What I thought was a minor injury, resulted in weeks of near daily chiropractic appointments, excruciating pain, having to walk with a cane and ingesting large doses of Advil around-the-clock.  Turns out, I have inflammation in my Sacroiliac joint (SI for short).  This is the major joint between your hip and pelvis.

Chest pains are also becoming common for me.  Sharp, shooting pains would often plague me while trying to sleep on my left side.  Breathing deeply would also trigger this pain.  Talk about freaked out?!  After seeing a doctor (for the record, I doubted my chiro could help me with this), having an EKG and diving deeper into my symptoms, my general practitioner determined that I am suffering from costochondritis, inflammation of the cartilage that connects the rib to the sternum.  My "rib" pain happened to be exactly where my heart is located which mimics the effects of a heart attack.

Are you seeing a trend here?

Inflammation is wreaking so much havoc on my body and causing me to feel 40 years older than my years on this planet.

The cause?  Well, there is so much misinformation out there to sift through, but if I’m being honest, I eat garbage and the only liquids I like are coffee (with sugar free creamer, please!) and Diet Coke.  My body has been anything but a temple (1 Cor 6:19-20).

The Plan…

Step One:  Cut out all aspartame.  Regardless of where you are on the aspartame-will-give-me-cancer-and-kill-me spectrum, I’m pretty sure this stuff is bad for you.  Much like people used to smoke in classrooms and office buildings, I strongly suspect that aspartame will continue to be heavily debated as to its negative health impacts on humans over the next 50 years.  Am I suffering from aspartame poising?  Maybe. (for the record, my doctor didn't discredit my self-diagnosis.)  I can tell you that I’m not consuming it knowingly from this point further.

Step Two:  Eat better.  As I stated earlier, this is not a strength of mine.  Luckily, I have great friends and colleagues that can help cheer me on.  I started with an Advocare herbal cleanse to reset my body.  (I don’t sell these products and am not pushing them on you.)  I did my homework and I liked that Advocare doesn’t use aspartame in their Spark drinks and other products, so I went with this option.  I have been making much healthier choices in the last week, and I have a renewed vigor about staying with this new way of eating AND DRINKING.  I have been apprehensively exploring the healthy sections at the grocery store with increasing curiosity.  Curiosity has turned to excitement.  I have discovered coconut oil.  Why didn’t anyone tell me how fabulous this stuff is?!  I also bought artichokes and pinned as many artichoke recipes as I could find.  I love artichokes.  Always have.  Now I am going to eat them more often.

Step Three:  Don’t break the bank.  In an effort to not have my grocery budget sky rocket, we are going to plant a modest garden in the backyard and start with a few winter staples:  spinach, kale, broccoli and carrots.  I realize that we will need to spend more on food, but I am going to continue to look for cost-saving ways to do this.  Your tips and tricks are welcome!

Step Four:  Fit it all in.  It’s no secret that we live a face-paced life.  I have a demanding, full-time job which requires me to travel frequently.  I am a church plant pastor’s wife (think start-up church) and our church has gone from around 20 people to 500 in an astronomically short amount of time.   We homeschool our 7th grade son.  We have a strong-willed and energetic 1st grade daughter.  We are constantly on the go, and when we aren’t, we like to fall on the couch in front of the TV and take a deep breath….or two. Thankfully, my mother graciously purchased a Nutribullet for our family so that I can make “green smoothies” and get our veggies even when life gets in the way.  (Again, not pushing products on you.  I did my homework and this was the most affordable option that received good reviews.)

I want more energy.  I want to feel healthy again.  (I haven’t even mentioned my issues with brain fog, fatigue and sleep deprivation!)  There are no weight loss goals, no inches to count.  This is not about fitting into a cute outfit by Christmas or seeing the number go down on my scale.  This is about my body’s health and its inner-workings that I have short circuited.

I hope that you will follow or even join me on this journey and consider making small steps of your own toward a healthier lifestyle.  I can tell you from experience that your body will give you clues (subtle and not-so-subtle) that you are not giving it what it needs to perform optimally.  I'm grateful that God gave me pain.  I hear You, loud-and-clear!

Missing My Man

It definitely wasn’t love at first sight.  It’s not that I don’t believe in such things.  That’s just not how it happened for us.  After six years of being in the same friend circle, we finally connected on a deeper level.  We ran into each other after not seeing one another for several months and started talking.  After that first initial spark, a fire erupted and things moved incredibly fast.  We were married seven months later.

During our 12 years of marriage, we’ve spent time apart because of work trips and even lived four states away from each other for 6 months while he finished school and I began our family’s transition back to Texas. That was early in our marriage, and I honestly don’t recall missing him all that much.  I had a toddler to chase after, a new job to focus on and bills to pay.  And, something was different about our marriage back then.

I left to go out of town for work on Tuesday, May 14, and, on Saturday, May 26, I will pick up my husband from the airport and spend a few brief hours with him before leaving again to go out of town for one night.  When I get back, he leaves again for three days.  In fifteen days, we will spend one night together.

These past 12 days have been agonizing without my best friend.  I am incredibly independent and there was a time in my life when I was pretty convinced I would never get married.  I didn’t want another person to depend on me, and I certainly didn’t want to depend on a man for anything.  But, I would gladly endure the temporary suffering while he is away over the long-term pain of isolation.

Marrying him was the best decision I ever made.  He periodically tells me or others that I am somehow responsible for his salvation and that he would not be doing ministry if it wasn’t for me.  The truth is, I believe he saved me from a selfish path of bitterness, regret and anger.   Together, we are better individuals.  I see that now.

Since surrendering our lives (and our marriage) to God and vowing to be obedient to Him and not our own selfish desires, an amazing thing happened.  Our marriage went from on-the-rocks, to tolerable to ON FIRE!

Seriously, our marriage is more fun and exciting than I ever thought being in a relationship could be.  Our expectations are communicated and our communication is respectful.  We laugh more, we actually want to spend time together, we look for ways to serve the other and we don’t hold onto feelings of resentment or discontent to use against the other in a future fight.  Our early days of marriage looked quite opposite of the picture I’ve just painted.  Please don’t read this and think we have it all figured out.  We don’t.  Our first few years were beyond tough.  But, I’m so grateful that we stuck with our marriage long enough to enjoy the incredible benefits of loving another person unconditionally.

For the past week, he’s been in Alaska on a mission trip with other creative geniuses, musicians and techies.  I suspect he is having a blast, and I absolutely want him to grow, learn and serve God in other places in the world.  But, I miss him.  Bad.  It’s hard for me to admit how badly I want to melt in his arms.  I still have one more day without him to get through and then he will be home.

God’s plan is perfect.  I didn’t call my husband to serve in a church.  God did.  My husband didn’t pull me out of a place of bitterness and regret, God did.  He put us together for a purpose, and I suspect we’ve only experienced a glimpse of what He will do through us and our marriage to build His kingdom.  And, while I strongly desire to be reunited with my husband, I know that my identity is not found in my husband’s eyes.  My identity is found in Christ and that brings me great comfort.

If you are looking for resources to build a stronger marriage, I strongly recommend the resources found at www.refineus.org and the book Beyond Ordinary by Justin and Trisha Davis.

Lightning Crashes

My favorite blogger, P-Dub, says you should blog like you are talking to your sister.  I love that.  I don’t have a sister, but I always wanted one.  This is a story I would tell my sister, a friend or the person in front of me at Wal-Mart.

The morning started off great.  At 5:45 am, I was on the treadmill and ready for a great workout.  Home by 6:30 am, the kids morning routine would be no sweat.  At 7:45 am, I was perched in front of a dozen Pre-K kids giving their teacher some time off in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week.  Fifteen minutes later, I was relieved of my duties one-hour shy of my original end time.  It was nothing against me, the kids were starting their day in the computer lab.  My visions of wide-eyed Pre-K kids gazing up at me as I read them enchanting children’s stories I dug out of my daughter’s closet the night before quickly vanished.

Actually, I was relieved.  Work demands called, and I was feeling the pressure.  At 8:20 am, I was in my home office working diligently on a large project that had been on the back burner due to other pressing matters.

At approximately 10 am, my whole body recoiled as I experienced the loudest sound I have ever physically endured.  My body shook and my ears rang as I tried to process what happened.  I opened my eyes and looked around to see if the world was still turning and witnessed large chunks of sparks flying off the power lines draped above my neighbor’s backyard.

Lightning had struck the transformer behind our home about 20 yards from where I sat.  I would learn that in the next few minutes.  Immediately after the shock of the boom, I screamed.  Literally.  I’m not a screamer, but I vocalized my fear in a way much like someone who had just learned their loved one had just died.

Zapped transformer

Panic stricken, I ran away from my office area and, thankfully, my husband was there to grab me and hold me tightly and say exactly what I needed to hear to calm me down, if just for a moment.  After checking out the damage and seeing about our neighbor and a lot of deep breathing, the adrenalin rush subsided.

Faced with no power for several hours, I packed up my computer and headed to my favorite, local coffee shop.  Working from a coffee shop would be fun, I told myself.  And, volunteering for a few brief minutes that morning had paid off.  I had make up on and looked acceptable for working in public.

Time to get to work.  I opened my laptop and pushed the start button and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Thirty seconds later -- patience is not a virtue I possess -- I called my husband a/k/a Computer Technician Extraordinaire to explain what my computer wasn’t doing.  I tried his recommendations to no avail and started to experience  the panic stricken feeling rising up in me all over again. Our IT department confirmed my fears.  My work-issued laptop was fried.  Awesome.

I thrive on finding solutions to problems in crisis situations, but I would be lying if I didn’t say I wanted to crawl back into bed at that moment and have a complete do-over.  If my computer was fried, what other dead appliances awaited us when the power was restored?  Insurance deductibles and long hold times started swirling around in my head.  I struggled to stay focused on finding a way to meet my impending work demands.

Finally, action items and to-do lists started to churn in my brain.  I called our IT department and asked for a new computer to be set up for me and shipped to our Dallas office.  I would drive there the next day to pick it up.  I would be working in our headquarter office the following week and could work out any issues.  I emailed my team and let them know about my technology challenges.  I called my assistant and walked her through a few projects she could help pick up for me.  I answered emails on my iPhone and set up my remote working software on my iPad mini that I had brought with me.

I went to lunch and tried to forget about the last two hours.  Our power would most likely be back on after lunch, and I could continue working from home.  The house was dark when we arrived after lunch.  My brilliant husband checked the breaker box and voila, power restored!  I held my breath as we tested each appliance and piece of technology.  It appears that the only items damaged were the guest room TV, a DVD player, the guest room cable box, our internet router and, of course, my laptop.

The day continued to have challenges but whining and complaining about them now feels pointless and futile.  Even in the thick of the stress and  the mess of that day, I still managed to have a Pollyanna-like voice in my head saying, “It could be worse.  I could have been outside when the lightning hit.  I could have not been able to go to Dallas the next day to get my new computer.  I could be suffering from a terminal disease. I could be jobless.  There are so many worse things that I could be coping with.”

As evening approached, I decided to focus on one thing I could control: my hair color.  Dying my hair darker had been on my to-do list for several weeks as evidenced by the unopened box of hair dye on my bathroom counter.  Dying my hair that night proved cathartic and distracted me into concentrating on something that I could do something about.

Lightning crashed and even though my life felt as if it was falling apart around me, I stayed focused on God and His promises.  The storms of life can bring scary, heart pounding lightning, literally and figuratively, and can easily derail our well-intentioned behaviors and send us spiraling into a stressed out mess of emotions.  Or, we can calmly relinquish control of our lives to the one who loves us more than anyone else and be confident that He has our back and will see us through to the other side of the storm.

The scene outside our home a few minutes
after the lightning strike.

A New Start

After a long hiatus from blogging, I’m back.  My goal was always to keep it up, but life, laundry and laziness has kept me away.

Over the past few months, many things have transpired and yet lots of things have stayed the same which I appreciate.  But, God didn’t call us here to be comfortable and settled so I suspect that we will be jarred out of any comfort we have grown to appreciate soon enough.  And, that’s okay.

To get you caught up, last August we bought the house we were renting for the first year and now have a list of about 30 DIY projects.  A new flower bed in the front yard was a good start!

While digging and tilling and sweating in my front yard last Saturday, I found my center again.  Sure, I neglected other cleaning projects and could have spent the day playing Candy Land with the kids, but I felt I needed some intense alone time accomplishing a clear task.  That sense of completion fuels me.  Connecting with nature and strategically placing plants, flowers and mulch felt like a grown-up craft project that I had not realized my soul was craving.

Selfishness was the message at church on Sunday.  Figures. Clearly, I was selfish in my determination to plant a new flower bed on Saturday, but I also know that by doing things that feed my soul, I have more strength to serve those around me.  And, selflessness is the cure for selfishness.

Writing fills me.  It always has.  Since I write all day for my job, I had convinced myself that I didn’t need to write for personal enjoyment.  My hand written journal entries have all but stopped and my blog….well, just look at the date of my last post.

Seeking a balance between feeling fulfilled and giving every bit of energy to the people around me is a constant learning process.  One that may take a life time to get right.

Either way, I’m determined to start writing again and maybe even plant a few more gardens before spring ends.

What fills you and gives you energy to serve others?