Overwhelmed--but Overshadowed (and Charcoal Poultices)

 Jonathan does not have time for debilitating Lyme-like symptoms and pain and bizarre gastrointestinal issues like a fistula--and yet, something has to be done. He is depended on for overseeing multiple jobs with Building Hope Enterprise often with workers who may or may not show up), besides other mission-related work like praying at two evening wakes and a funeral for a homicide victim last weekend and picking up several people for church--and helping see that I get to all my medical places as well as his. 

Thankfully, a few days after I started him on a regimen of doxycycline antibiotic for possible Lyme or similar insect-related infection (based on my research and using leftover antibiotic I had on hand until his doctor can prescribe fresh), he observed a small but noticeable decline in the pain he'd been experiencing, which told me we were on the right track.

"We have to be our own doctor!" I said with both despair and hope the night I yanked the antibiotic bottle from the kitchen cupboard and handed Jonathan his first pill. 

When we were making plans Tuesday for him to travel the 3 1/2 hours to Sioux Falls the next day to get a hopefully more detailed and accurate Lyme/coinfections test yesterday, I offered to go with him to help drive so he could do paper work. I was hardly up to it myself, but with the cruise control, I managed to get us all the way to Mitchell yesterday morning before I was too weak to keep driving. 

The doctor who turned in the Lyme test there urged Jonathan to get surgery scheduled ASAP for the fistula that had started to cause problems in the last few days.

But saying to schedule a surgery and doing it are two different things. 

The gastroenterologist (you have to pronounce that word in separate syllables to get the whole word figured out) in Sioux Falls took one look at Jonathan's MRI and refused to see him.

"You need to go straight to the Surgery Center," the doctor's office said. 

Well, that was easier said than done, too. 

First of all, the surgery center refuses to see anyone without a referral. So trying to track down a referral from Jonathan's urologist was the next step and took at least one or two days. We still don't know if the referral has arrived to the surgery center yet even though the urology office claims they sent it.

Meanwhile, I have spent hours researching Jonathan's nasty kind of fistula, which is acting like an abscess at this point, and trying to figure out what home remedies we can use to keep it from worsening while we wait for the medical system to fit us in. Of course, we could go to the ER, but ER surgeons would likely not have the specialized skill needed for this kind of surgery. They could probably do something but might not do the best job. 

Anyway, I looked in my book Be Your Own Doctor and decided to try the author's recommendation of a charcoal/flax poultice to help draw out any infection and possibly help healing to happen before surgery. Her testimonial stories in that book are nothing short of miraculous.

 I knew charcoal was going to be messy. 

Charcoal is anything but pretty although it is clean and totally safe and harmless. (Even ERs use it for poison cases or drug overdose, and the blood of kidney dialysis patients is put through a charcoal filter, if I remember correctly. You can drink charcoal water safely to help clear out infections of most any sort, this author wrote.) 

Upon arriving home yesterday evening and after helping to unload the car and put away things, I tried to think of the steps to take toward a poultice or whatever else Jonathan needed. Once I stood for a while in the bathroom asking myself why I was so upset. As if my own physical issues aren't bad enough, now I'm having to singlehandedly help a totally discombobulated hubby through not just one but multiple issues--some of which are not well treated by regular doctors or the conventional medical system. 

My personal question had a personal answer that I realized and came to terms with.

Just pausing to check myself and my attitudes didn't fix the issues but helped me see and verbalize to myself what they were and accept the things that I had no control over. 

I was still tired, upset, and overwhelmed, but I was able to keep moving without blowing up.

In Sioux Falls, per Be Your Own Doctor's instructions, I had purchased a canister of activated charcoal made from coconut shells and whole, fresh flax seeds which Jonathan ground in his coffee grinder. I mixed equal parts together of those two things with enough castor oil to make a thick paste. 

Up in the attic I found some old throw rugs and old towels and an old torn sheet that I spread all over the carpeted floor in our bedroom, because I didn't want to have to clean stray charcoal from the carpet like I had to do a few months ago when we used charcoal for something else. And I applied the poultice to plastic wrap and flipped that over and applied it to the fistula for overnight. 

About 10:30 I finally collapsed into bed, suddenly realizing how terribly tired I was. 

Ten minutes later, the non-stop dry lightning that would set a neighboring rancher's hay stack area on fire by morning was being added to with thunder and the possibility of rain.

"Oh!" Jonathan gasped. "I don't know if I closed the hatch on the back of the Honda!"

There was no use in lying there mollygrubbing. 

Jonathan had to stay tight with the charcoal poultice so 

I got up and put on shoes and a robe and went out and closed up the Honda which not one of us, including myself, had remembered to check after unloading our stuff. 

I took some Hyland's calming tablets to try to sleep.

And I thought about the words that had been going through my mind during the evening:

"All my life You have been faithful.

All my life You have been so, so good."

Those words were not going through my mind because I was so good or so spiritual or because I was making this specific choice to--you know, do the right thing and have the right attitude.

They were just there--a result, I think, not just of God's faithfulness to me but also of the fact that in my life and home, music and song has been included.

Music has been a big part of our lives.

And when overwhelm comes, 

rather than curses and swearing and complaints,

the words of a song about God's faithfulness and goodness were coming unbidden into my mind. 

We were overwhelmed. 

Desperately overwhelmed. 

But we were also overshadowed--

overshadowed with God's goodness and faithfulness--

the goodness and mercy I sang about the night before when I noticed Crystal trying out a new piano arrangement of "Surely Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow Me" to play at church sometime.

She played and I sang.

And even though we are still going through the valley,

goodness and mercy are following us,

overtaking us,

overshadowing us.

Blister Beetles Attack!

Blister beetles attack a garden overnight. 

All of a sudden, there they were in ours this morning--gray and long and menacing!

I had already picked a heaping bowl full of green and yellow beans up at the town garden, besides a grocery sack of cucumbers, and a few zucchini or yellow squash--while our pastor's wife huffed and puffed beside me, helping pick and telling stories the whole time in a disjointed voice resulting from a throat issue she's had for many years. She's difficult to understand, but what would gardening be like up there in that garden without her absolute delight in watching the garden grow? She is always asking me to come see this and did I notice that? And she'll pass along all the gardening advice she thinks may be helpful.

Crystal came out to help when I arrived back home to start harvesting out own garden, and she recognized those slinky bugs immediately. 

Blister beetles!

After she and I picked all the vegetables we could harvest today, she found garden gloves and started systematically finding beetles and dumping them into a bucket of water. 

Then she sprinkled diatomaceous earth on beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers. After the temperatures cool this evening, she'll go out with a spray bottle of Neem oil mixture. 

Speaking of temperature, yesterday it was 109 degrees. Jonathan was glad for a cooler gym for the funeral at which he was to offer prayer yesterday afternoon. Today the temp was 102. 

At the moment, it is 95, with merciful cloud cover but also haze from smoke. I hear people are struggling with the smoke in the air from here to Michigan. 

With all the heat, blister beetles, and involvement in wakes and a funeral related to what has been ruled a homicide rather than a suicide, it's easy to be disconcerted. But we have so little to complain about and so much to be grateful for. 

It was good to take six people to church last evening--one who had just been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, another who has managed to stay sober for a whole month, and four children between the two. 

"Where is your mother?" the lady asked Crystal, and she told her that I wasn't feeling good after chemo. 

It made me feel good to be asked about--not a matter of importance, but rather of connection. 

"Come visit us like you used to do when you visited my mother," the lady begged. 

And I hope to.

Because blister beetles, devils, heat or smoke--none of these can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

When Your Life Feels Like You've Been Shot from a Potato Gun

 There are times life feels like you've just been shot from a potato gun!

Danny created a potato gun from scrap plumbing and likes to occasionally shoot various items out of it--not always potatoes--shoved out of the "gun" by an explosion caused by lighting some sort of fluid Danny had first sprayed inside the other end!

On July 4th it was a little red parachute!

We watched as the parachute inflated and floated downward in the bright blue sky. 

Sometimes life feels like there's been an explosion (quite literally if not figuratively) and we are shot out of any sort of comfort zone into unfamiliar space.

It is then that the parachute God had already put in place begins to inflate. 

Precious promises inflate for us.

God's Word brings hope to our despair,

strength for our weakness,

grace for our need,

comfort for our sorrow,

guidance for our confusion. 

One day in the past week, I was feeling very discombobulated after we've been wondering more and more if Jonathan is dealing with Lyme besides the other conditions he has. The pain that has become systemic after the insect bite has not let up. We are beginning to research Lyme, and so many symptoms fit, yet some are far from classic. 

As I wandered about the house one day, I remembered one of my favorite authors, Margaret Jensen, telling about how one time she came home greatly discouraged from either college or work to her family's home in an apartment in Chicago (not her Swedish mother's favorite home but the one where they lived after God called Margaret's father to minister as a pastor in a city church).

"I just want to die!" she moaned to her mother as she collapsed in a heap probably in the kitchen where her mother was working. 

Her mother never skipped a beat. 

"If you must die," she told her daughter briskly, "iron!"

Margaret looked at the iron sitting there and the heaping basket of clothing needing to be ironed. She got up, began to iron, and before long, she no longer wanted to die! 

Accomplishing a task that needed to be done was one of the best antidotes to discouragement and grouchiness. 

And so I kept moving. I got out my own iron and ironing board. I ironed blouses, skirts, and Jonathan's shirts and hankies. 

"Never despair," I copied onto a note that I still have in an old Bible, "but if you do, work on in despair." And so Jonathan and I work on. 

He spent hours two different days trying to fix our stove. The ignitor switch had messed up and was clicking incessantly.

He tried this and that, consulting google and trying something else. 

In the end, he disconnected all the ignitor switches for the stove top, cut the lines, tested and found the faulty switch, then repaired the cuts and switched the good griddle switch to the burner that had the faulty switch. We'll have to light the griddle with a match, but we rarely use that anyway. Now we can use the stove again!

This evening  after a day of work, Jonathan is gone to a wake where he was asked to have the prayer. 

The wake today and funeral tomorrow is to be held at the community building in Wood, about 20 minutes away. I was feeling too beat after chemo to go with him, but I assured him my prayers would be with him. 

I had visited Bonnie in the nursing home Wednesday. She had asked me if I would write a letter for her to her friend with a last name of Turning Hawk. (Last names of native people fascinate me.) There was no chair for me to sit, so I wrote the letter at her dictation standing at a little table. We told about how Bonnie has been cleaning out her drawers and throwing things away; how she has gotten a bird house and puts out bird feed and loves to watch the birds come; about her friend that comes to visit and was helping her write this letter. And then she was eager to allow me to pray with her.

And today I sent the letter at the post office. 

Because when we have been shot by a potato gun and just want to die, instead we find some work to do,

and instead of despairing 

we hope,

and rejoice,

and someone is helped 

by our trust in God. 

The Day Full of Forgetting--But God Doesn't Forget Us!

 Today was so full of forgetting it wasn't funny. 

But it's no wonder. One person in the family had to leave at 6:30 for work. Another person had to leave thirty or forty minutes later for Colorado with our dog that needs to be bred with Rose's stud. The other person had to leave five minutes before eight to turn off the garden sprinkler up at our garden in town because water restrictions say we cannot water past 8 in the morning. That left Jonathan and me to try to be on our way around eight o'clock to head to Rapid City for my Echo and later regular doctor appointment and chemo. Oh, and for Jonathan's three or four appointments as well (not including a grocery stop and the never-to-be-left-out stop at Menards or Lowes for umpteen needed items for the business/mission.) 

Somehow we managed to get out the door and down the driveway--suddenly realizing we'd forgotten the antibiotic Jonathan just had to start for his possible Lyme (more about that later). I was driving, so I backed into the grass and turned the Honda around. I dashed in to save Jonathan having to get out as he is extra stiff and sore after a day of pouring concrete yesterday. 

Happily we were on our way, me driving so Jonathan can do paperwork. About twenty minutes down the road I realized I'd forgotten my phone! This felt like a bit of a disaster because I wasn't sure how much I'd need to be in touch with Jonathan about when to come pick me up and who knows what. Besides, when I'm having to wait around a lot in between appointments, it's nice to have my phone to be in touch with people. I was looking at possibly six hours in the hospital and no phone. 

It was easy to be upset and grouchy. But I realized this was a chance to trust the Lord--and I thought about my old friend and now sister-in-law Anita who had traveled with me long years ago to Honduras before either of us were married. We were both interested in possibly teaching in Honduras and were making an exploratory trip to visit the missionaries. Upon arriving, my small duffle bag was stolen out of the back of the pickup truck before we had even left the airport, at least as far as we could figure out. Several of my necessities were in that bag and other things, including my camera!

"It's a chance to trust the Lord," Anita reminded me gently, and I loved her for it, but also for quickly offering to share her things with me if I needed them--such as her toothbrush! Well, not really that, but Anita had, of all things, brought along an extra camera and allowed me to have it for the trip. 

But now return from Honduras back to today in South Dakota. By the time we arrived at the hospital in Rapid City, Jonathan was driving. I went in by myself, lugging my purse and book bag that had my water bottle, books to read, journal, and my lunch--and a heart heavy with discouragement, worry about Jonathan, and my own physical and emotional struggles right now.

"Lord, I need someone to minister to me today," I told the Lord, this person who usually prays for an open door for the gospel or a chance to be a blessing to someone when I go for hours to the hospital or chemo. I hardly felt like walking, much less ministering to others.

 I was on my way to the heart and vascular department when I realized I was chilly and had not thought to bring my sweater in. I had also forgotten to bring in my bottle of Body Armor Zero Sugar electrolyte drink which I rather desperately need and depend on during and after my chemo treatment. 

I sat down after getting checked in, moping a bit about all the forgetting today. Just too many things to keep track of, I guess, besides everything on our minds--especially with wondering if we're going to have to try to treat Jonathan for possible Lyme on top of everything else. He had to call a doctor today to ask about a Lyme test.

I got through the Echo and all the pain of the technician pressing the gizmo around on my ribs to find just the right spot between ribs to look at my heart, but she was very kind, even thanking me for my patience, walking me out the hall, and telling me, "You all are heroes. You are warriors!" and I thanked her heartily and wished her a good day. Those kind words really lifted my spirits, as had the warm cotton flannel sheets she had brought in to wrap my body and shoulders in during the Echo. 

Then I tried to think what to do next. I had more than an hour between appointments. Well, first I checked a vending machine I'd seen before to see if they had anything like sugar-free electrolytes. No such bottles existed in that machine. But I saw a man grab a bottle of something off a shelf at the cafe, so I checked in there, and wonder of wonders, they had a few flavors of Lyte Body Armor with coconut water, electrolytes, and no added sugar. I chose blueberry.

True, the bottle cost over $3, but I had just noticed a little bag of change I'd recently put in my purse so I had some change to contribute to the need. The electrolytes helped me feel better as usual, and I decided to walk to the cancer center by way of the outside sidewalks in the warmth rather than traipse through long corridors from the hospital to the cancer center. If I hadn't been lugging such a heavy bag it would have been a bit more fun, but I still enjoyed the walk around the block to the cancer center. 

Once I checked in, the lab called my name nearly an hour early. As the nurse prepared to poke my arm vein, I told her how my youngest daughter had just gotten her first vein poke a couple days ago when she and her brother both took part in the local blood drive. Right now (and the nurse agreed) there is a severe shortage of needed blood, and the Red Cross is urging people who are able to get involved in donating blood. Below is the truck the blood drive uses (Sorry it turned out sideways.)

As I took my seat again in the waiting area, I noticed a man walking down the hall past me. My eyes were drawn down to his hands, and I saw that he was wearing something like chains. It wasn't handcuffs was it? Yes, sure enough. It was handcuffs, and two sheriffs were following the man closely. Had he just been arrested for something? It didn't seem likely. I later assumed the man was a prisoner coming for cancer treatment. 

That put my day's forgetfulness troubles in perspective. I could be a prisoner. I could be walking in handcuffs into a cancer center where people would all stand and stare after I walked past. (I watched that happen. It's not every day you see a prisoner walking places with two police escorts!) 

And I could be in a wheel chair. Plenty of those came in. I may be in one some day. But right now, I was able to come in to the cancer center once again all by myself--walking. I would get to hear the oncologist tell me that the Echo results were good, even better than last time, and that all my blood work was good except for a lower than normal white blood cell count. But it wasn't dangerously low, so we could proceed with the chemo.

And so we did. 

But not before I overheard a phone conversation of a lady who talked loudly enough to prove she was not in the least worried about people overhearing her! She said something about her doctor in Pennsylvania, and about God's goodness to her, so after she was done on her phone, I called over to her. She left her seat and sat by me, and we visited--two ladies, one with breast cancer and the other with non-Hodgkins lymphoma that she'd been battling for 20 years but had just been told she didn't need to see the doctor here in South Dakota for another year!

She was amazed that I was familiar with her old stomping grounds in York, PA. She had often traveled Rt. 104 through Penns Creek, where my siblings, two children, and I have attended Penn View Bible Institute in the past. We connected on that and on being believers in Christ, and before she left, we prayed for each other. 

The God Who knew about all the things I had forgotten today had not forgotten me! 

Sunshine Through Petunia Petals

 A few days ago, the setting sun was creating so much beauty as its light shone through the petals of the petunias in the hanging baskets on the front deck. 

The week was so busy it was a blur. 

And I wore out--especially after Thursday afternoon when I traveled the one hour to Winner to go with a Lakota friend as she is starting an elder ministry--visiting several church people or ones related who reside in assisted living homes or nursing homes in Winner. We went to three different homes.

I haven't been quite rested since, but I wouldn't trade the afternoon for anything. I had so much fun.

The lady I went with had been hesitant to go by herself, and when I heard about it, I offered to go with her the first time or two to help her get started. I took flowers from our gardens to share and my autoharp to sing with. 

Ministry is my deep joy, and helping someone else learn to start to minister in quiet, loving ways in the name of Christ is a profound joy, too. 

I hope we shone some light into several lives that day. 

And as the sun sets, we give all that we do and are into the hands of our loving Lord, asking Him to love through us, minister in the ways that only He can, and touch each heart around us with His amazing love. 

Mothers of Firemen--and Mosquitos

 Today is Sunday, and after a very tiring weekend, this mother of a fireman feels a little bit like this. 

  

"Don't tell me I've bitten off a little too much to chew?" seemed to be the perfect caption for this photo Rose sent me of little Ellie who somehow got into a box of leftover pizza before someone could catch her!

This morning seemed like a bite too big to chew--even if I hadn't chosen it. Part of the overwhelm had to do with a door left slightly ajar last night when Danny raced out through the garage to take the car to a fire. I rushed outside to the deck hoping to catch him before he got inside the car, but he was already turning the key and starting the engine. However, he noticed I was on the deck and rolled down the window. 

"It's a fire in a hay field!" he hollered.

"Where?" I hollered back. 

"I don't know!" he shouted, roaring off. 

Further down the driveway, Crystal was walking home from an evening stroll when she heard the sirens going off up in White River and Danny roared by her. Later he sent this picture. 

"The orange is fire," he messaged.

It was quite a while later that I went to turn off lights before going to bed and discovered a cloud of mosquitos by the door to the garage. The door had been left slightly ajar, and mosquitos had been attracted to the lights inside. This was not funny. Crystal and I turned off all inside lights except the one by the door and swatted as many mosquitos as we could see. I shut our bedrooom door, went to bed, and hoped for the best. 

In the morning, hundreds of mosquitos populated our windows, screens, ceilings, and walls. They were everywhere except our bedroom. Our home that has typically, gratefully, stayed free of mosquitos except for an occasional one, was infested. As if the constant chigger bites aren't enough, now mosquitos were all over the house! (Hadn't I just recently counted my blessing that we only had to deal with chigger bites on a regular basis but not mosquitos as I had to deal with in Ukraine and as others have to in Africa. )

I spent quite a while on this Sunday morning swatting mosquitos on windows, screens, ceiling, and walls, taking down screens so that the squeaky creatures would go outside, and otherwise endeavoring to rid our home of these nuisances. It was not the way I  had expected to spend Sunday morning.

Danny had been gone for three or four hours last night helping keep the grass fire from spreading beyond 30 acres. A haying machine whose bearings had stuck ended up sitting a while in the field while heat and hay smoldered around the hot bearings and then kindled a fire in the grass. For Danny the fire was about 45 minutes away, back a dirt road and then back a rough lane to the field. He got home between midnight and one somewhere only to be wakened at four by a call to another fire. That was three or four fire calls in less than a day, and more to come today. 

There hasn't been any rain for a couple weeks or more, and temperatures have soared above 100, reaching 105 today. Our water district issued a directive that there is to be no outside watering. Another town up the way, thanks to a serious electrical outage about a week ago that left some of us without electricity for many hours, was having trouble refilling their water storage tank, we heard. There was also dirt in the water. Someone had been needed to flush all the fire hydrants in the town, 45 of them, and that person ended up being my son Danny. He worked evening after evening on this project, and then there was still dirt, and he was needed to flush the hydrants all over again.

Now we are not allowed to water our gardens! Hannah and I went up to our part of the garden in town very early Friday morning and picked beans, weeded a bit, and dug most of the potatoes. I quietly watered at the roots of plants to try to save them through these next few terribly hot days. We did not turn on the sprinkler--a watering method that can waste a lot of water.

Our pastor's wife and we two stood at the edge of the garden and prayed for a miracle. We prayed for rain. And we prayed for a family who lost a young girl Friday. She had been found in the trees across the road from Gus Stop. Hannah had seen police cars and others clear down in the ditch on that side of the road, she said. And the next morning, Crystal, who was cleaning at the hotel where the mother had been, overheard bits of the grief-filled conversation and was later filled in by coworkers. 

Mosquitos in the house and trying to figure out how to save a garden during water restrictions seem pretty minor compared to losing thousands of dollars worth of haying equipment--or a precious daughter. 

And so this mother of more than one volunteer fireman swats mosquitos; counts her blessings; prays fervently for those suffering pain, grief, and loss; and prays for rain. 

And outside our window, clouds are thickening as unexpected rain is now in the forecast!