Have you ever felt the pressure to answer the question, “How are you?” with “I’m ok”? Have you ever felt like giving any less of an answer, regardless of what you’re actually feeling, would just be a burden to society? … Continue reading
Hey guys, I know it has been awhile. I’ve come to understand that sometimes what you think is the most messed up parts of life will quickly become lesser than what you are about to experience. I have also come to understand that I cannot be as perfect as I would like to be. I can be so consistent for a large period of time but chaos will come and my idea of perfection will fly out the window yet again.
It is my hope that today’s writing will help you, possibly even inspire you to take life’s difficulties from a different angle. It is my hope that if you are in despair that you can reach from my suffering and learn to wade through the deep waters as I have. Because in reality, the bottom is that sometimes life just sucks. Life hurts. Life is definitely no walk in the park. Sometimes we may find that what we think is the most perfect thing in the world ends up uncovering its blemishes or even worse, to find out that our item of perfection was nowhere near what we thought it to be. I’m guessing something or even someone probably came to mind as you read that. It’s a dark place to open up to. It’s a difficult thing to think about. But I want you to hold on to that person, hold on to that thing, and when you’re ready, keep reading.
I’ve been hurt, as I’m sure you all have. Not once, not twice, but more times than I can count. Am I alone in this? No. Does it help me to know others have been through my pain? Well, if I’m truly honest, not all the time. And that’s ok! Nobody has truly been in your exact shoes at your exact moment in time with your exact problem. That’s a time and space nobody can fill but you. But what you have to understand is that when people reach out to you, they are trying to comfort you by telling you they know what it’s like. It may not help you at that moment. In fact, it may make you mad that they would even try to feel like they know how you’re feeling. And that’s ok! But try to understand why they are saying what they are saying, and if you need to, just tell them to listen. People often feel awkward by not giving you advice so let them know their silence is ok. Be open. Communicate. Back off my sidetracked thought…
Pain sucks. Being hurt sucks. There have been times when people have admitted things to me that almost shut me down right away. In those moments, I truly wish I had never gotten out of bed. I wish that I could relieve myself of my duties and just revert into a hole where nobody knows who I am or that I even exist. At those moments, ignorance truly seems like bliss. It absolutely sucks to be in emotional pain. But, hiding pain is not the answer. I’ve come to realize that by escaping our pain, we are only burying a problem that will resurface again later. Pain that is not dealt with correctly will grow to such a size that it has the ability to affect you for the rest of your life, even subconsciously. We need to find a reason to get us through that pain, a method of dealing with it intentionally. Though I’m no expert on this topic, I thought I would share a bit of a journey through pain with you.
Someone once said something to me that I did not want to hear. They admitted something they had not told me for many months. My body went through the initial physical phase of wanting to shut down, literally go to sleep. However, I was at work and that was not an option. So I sat. I couldn’t look at my phone. And the feelings strongly kicked in. What this person admitted was nothing even done intentionally to me, but even they had mentioned they hated having to tell me. I was angry, sad, depressed, everything all at once. And yet, in my head, as upset as I was and as much as part of me wanted to lash out, I also pulled myself back to notice the sincerity of what they were saying and realizing how bold it was of that person to tell me. They were willing to take whatever reaction I gave in order to tell me the truth. Even though the truth sucked, my mind kept reminding me of what they had just done. It’s not always easy to walk in someone else’s shoes when you’re the one in pain. But somehow, someway, it’s so important that we slow ourselves down to realize that perhaps the situation isn’t so easy on them either. Perhaps they regret it more than you hate hearing it. Perhaps they’re sharing it with you because of how awful they feel. Perhaps they are already so sorry that they’re willing to let you decide what the final outcome will be.
I could not escape the feelings I had for the next few hours of the day. I had no way out. Did it change the way people saw me? Absolutely. I was referred to as “the one who’s almost ready to cry.” My job had to come first. I am, after all, responsible for the little humans in my care. And though I could not bring myself to respond like normal to this person, I also knew that I would regret making that person feel any worse than I knew they probably did. It’s important to note that I did not want to respond plainly. I wanted them to feel my pain. But in my head I knew they already were prepared for how it would make me feel, and logically (not led by emotions), I knew I couldn’t make them feel worse. So I responded in the best way that I could to tell them that I was (or would be) ok.
Fast forward to the end of the day. My room was quiet. I was finally alone. I attempted to think of driving to release my thoughts, but my motivation for anything was depleted. Instead, I decided to put my head down on my desk and just feel and think. Just be in the moment, by myself, and let myself be. It took almost an hour, but it was exactly what I needed to do. I needed to let myself fade into myself. I needed to stop holding myself up and being strong for others. It’s ok to be weak. It’s ok to cry. It’s ok to acknowledge that what you feel absolutely sucks. But as I was thinking, it occurred to me where my thoughts were going, and like a lightbulb moment, I felt like I discovered a key to life. What I learned was this:
I was mad. I was angry. I was hurt. I was in pain. I was deeply saddened. I didn’t want to continue with my day. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just wanted life to stop. I knew these things. I felt these things strongly. I acknowledged them and let myself feel them, but I had to know why. Why was I so angry? Why was I so sad? Why did this hurt me so much? Though it may seem like the answers to this were obvious, I didn’t allow myself to take my first answers. Instead, I dug really deep. (Again, keep in mind this took an hour of self-discovering misery with my head down on a desk, broken and alone to figure this out. It’s not an easy process, but it was worth it.)
What I discovered was more than what I thought I would find. Was the news pleasant? No. I hated every bit of what that person admitted to me. My idea of perfection towards that person was blemished and it sucked. I was angry about the choice they had made. I was angry that it took them so long to admit it to me. But underneath all of that was the realization that even though it was ok for me to feel how I was feeling, it was not ok for me to not realize my role in the whole situation. I don’t mean that in any way I had any part of the bad decision this person had made. I literally knew nothing about it whatsoever. What I mean is that when there were times that I had to admit things to this person, this person did not skip a beat in treating me any differently or loving me any less. In fact, if I had replayed the situation in my mind, this person barely even blinked an eye and constantly told me that the past is the past and it was ok. I expected this person to be mad at me, but they didn’t show it whatsoever. And it was the same situation where what I had done was nothing done intentionally to them either. It was just bad decisions that needed to be admitted. And for someone to love me and accept me through my dark past, how could I not do the same for them? After all, they did tell me. After all, they were prepared to accept any reaction that I gave. After all, they were leaving their fate in my hands.
As I thought about this, it didn’t make me feel a ton better. I mean, yes, it did a little. But I’m going to sound selfishly honest that even still, that did not help as much as it probably should have. So I kept my head down and continued to dig. And the final thing that hit me was this: I was mad at that person for making the decision they did when I knew what the right decision was. Yet, in the past, I had been – multiple times – guilty of the exact same thing. It hurt me in such a strong way because hearing what they had done caused me to relive what I had done as well. I began to beat myself up over it as people had in the past. I began to tell myself that I deserved what this person had done even though it was never done intentionally to me in the first place. No wonder I wasn’t feeling better because I was bringing myself down over the situation more than the situation even called for! That person wasn’t meaning to hurt me, yet I was hurting myself. It’s sometimes amazing (good and bad) how our brain connects things. It’s like our past is stored in our brain, waiting to be brought out by any similar situation we experience. So many times we can think of personal stories that relate to situations we hear of, even if it’s not to the same magnitude. Sometimes, we think a lot of ourselves whether we mean to or not.
At that moment, I had to stop myself. I was mad at this person for doing the right thing of telling me the truth (which, partially, rightfully so) when in reality, I was the one beating myself up and hurting myself the most. That person wasn’t my true enemy, I was. After calling myself out on what I was doing, I realized that no, I did NOT deserve this. No, I did not deserve to be hurt. No, I did not always make the best decisions in my past, but I did not deserve to have those decisions put on me again to punish me for what I had done. No, I did not deserve to hear this bad news or to even have it exist. And as weird as this may sound, those thoughts were the most freeing thoughts that finally started to break the anger. The truth is, I couldn’t stop the hurt. The truth sucked no matter how you look at it. Bad news is just bad news. I didn’t have to be completely happy. But I did need to realize that it was ok for me to be sad and angry WITHOUT having to deserve to feel that way. I did need to realize that this person did not DESERVE for me to make them feel worse when they already regretted what they had done. This person was hurting because they knew they had hurt me, and as much as it bothered me, I knew this person cared so much that their pain was most likely equal to mine because I knew this person understood.
I feel like this is kind of a difficult thing to explain without being able to experience it with you. But it was the thoughts, the realizations that made this better. When all of these things finally trickled down and started to make sense, I knew I had to get it out. Hence, here I am. I feel like sometimes, we are so good at reacting and hiding how we actually feel that we forget to actually tell ourselves that it’s ok to feel how we feel, and we forget to take time for ourselves so that we can actually learn to swim through those dark thoughts and emotions. We don’t have to hide but we do need to understand and choose what to do. It’s ok for things to take time and it’s often better if they do.
Later on, I met up with this person. I’m a very facial-reacting person. It was obvious by the look of my eyes that I had been hurt badly and had been crying. I couldn’t hide that. But with the resolve in my heart to respect this person for admitting things to me, and with love in my heart for knowing that this person was probably crying about the situation too, I determined to try to smile and tell them it was ok. Was it easy? Not really. I still was sad. I still was hurt. We hugged. We cried. But at that moment, I knew it was ok to hurt together, because that also meant that we could heal together. We both had to experience the pain. We both had to support each other as much as we could. We both had to decide that we were going to get through it together, and that’s the beautiful part. As much as the hard days are hard, the healing process is like nothing in this world. When two people, whether friends, family members, or especially as a couple, when two people are able to take a situation and deal with it united, together, unwilling to let the other suffer alone, magical things happen. The healing that takes place grows a stronger bond than was there before. The love grows deeper. The appreciation is stronger. Though it takes time, it’s a process worth pursuing.
Two items came to mind as I was reflecting over this healing process. One being broken bones. I have been told that bones heal stronger after they are broken (for healthy individuals of course). This amazed me. But if we think that the bone knows what broke it the first time and is then preparing to be stronger for the next time it happens, it’s easy to see how this analogy applies to this situation. When two people are broken over something that happens and they are able to successfully go through the healing process, it is unlikely that same event will happen again and if it does (so long as it’s not stupidity repeating itself), you will be a stronger unit to confront it together.
The second being Kintsugi pottery. This is pottery that has been broken, but has been sealed back together with gold. The cracks are referred to as the scars, and the scars are nothing short of beautiful gold. Being broken hurts more than anything. I would take physical pain over emotional pain any day. But that healing process of being put take together, making a bond that was stronger than before, is as beautiful, as valuable as the gold that holds the Kintsugi pottery together.
This was a long post. I applaud you for making it here. It is my greatest hope that somehow these words may have helped you in some way. It is my hope that you will understand that we don’t have to fight this world alone. We are all here, living in this spherical space together. May we strive to be there for each other. May we learn that our feelings are ok, but it’s our thoughts that we need to keep in check. May we remember to slow down before reacting and may we never stop seeking to know ourselves better. We can make it through everything that comes our way. God has designed us to be strong people. Even when we feel like we can’t make it all alone, He is still there with you. He will never pull His love from you. You are loved my friends. I am praying for you!
Have you ever been in such thick fog that you can’t see anything around you? I’m talking about the kind of fog when you lift your hand out in front of you, your eyes cannot even find your body’s missing … Continue reading
A couple years ago, I was invited by a friend to join a group of Facebook. Upon reviewing the group, I found that it was indeed Christian focused and designed specifically for women. I thought, “Great! Another way to get … Continue reading
I wish I could accurately describe what my life has been like the past while. However, no matter how hard I try, I cannot come up with a truly accurate description. The best I can do is tell you that … Continue reading
Journal:
There was absolutely not way for me to document each day. It was a whirlwind of doctor’s appointments, surgery, recovery, sleeping, eating, etc. Of course when I say sleeping, I mean off and on all night long. My husband had a very hard time coming off the anaesthetics following his surgery and refused to get the prescription medications that they offered him. He ended up receiving three incisions across his stomach (one of which was through the belly button) and thus it caused him pain with almost any movement. As long as he was idle, he was ok.
While he was in my care, I made sure that he received the best nutrition I could (he doesn’t eat everything I eat and sometimes it was more important he was happy than fighting over what food he wanted). Everything I made was vegan. It was only what he ordered in that was not. I was quite pleased that he allowed me to make him an awesome smoothie every morning. I highly recommend this nutritionally-filled shake.
Surgery Recovery-Boost Shake
7-8 Bananas
1 scoop Vega Chocolate Protein Powder
4 tbsp. Manitoba Harvest Hemp Pro Fibre Powder
4 tsp. Chocolate PB2
1 tsp. Green Protein Alchemy Magic Mint Powder
5 Medjool Dates
My husband is not the healthiest eater and rarely eats fruit. He also still is in the mindset of getting in as much protein as possible. So to accommodate all of these things, this is what I came up with. The nutritional profile of this shake is really good and it filled his cells with awesome nutrients for the day. I may not have been able to control everything he ate, but I at least felt better that the first thing his body was encountering in the morning was a blender full of goodness.
He also was really good about taking vitamin pills (I hate taking pills). He gave himself lots of B12, Vitamin D, and other vitamins that he had brought with him.
Though he was able to manage pain well and quite honestly, seemed to recover faster than the previous two times he has had this surgery, the doctor still gave him a 4-6 week recovery period. So he knows he has to be careful. Neither of us would like to go through this surgery again nor do I think he actually will if it goes wrong again.
My diet has been all over the place over these days. I have put much more care into making sure that he has had his meals than me having mine. I ate some of the meals off the Winter Days of Fruitrition menu, but did not finish them at all. I have 5 meals left that I am determined to accomplish by the end of the week. I still ate vegan but I would guess about 50% of my foods were cooked. I can’t even realistically report how I felt due to food because I also didn’t sleep well. With my husband getting up every 1-2 hours during the night and trying to do everything for him during the day while also maintaining sub plans and coordinations with things going on at school with the substitute teachers, I had no extra time for sleep. In fact, over 3 days, I only had 6.5 hours of sleep total. So I was very tired throughout the whole thing but happy nonetheless to be around my husband and to be able to take care of him.
Journal:
Today was a busy day. I had to work and try to get things ready for the substitute teacher that would be in for me the next two days while also trying to coordinate all of my husband’s appointments for the day before his surgery tomorrow. Thankfully, I woke up in enough time to actually make two smoothies this morning – one for my husband and another for myself – so I actually got to eat breakfast! I also had made some homemade orange juice last night that was easy to take with me this morning. However, this was a very sour orange juice… not sweet at all. Ugh… I paid $50 for a case of oranges and they are terrible. I’m really noticing the low quality fruit this year and it sucks. I’m not sure what I’m going to do.
After school, my husband and I had to leave right away for his last doctor’s appointment. He had blood work that had to be done fasted, so he had not eaten anything since the smoothie in the morning. He was so happy to have the blood work done so that he could finally eat. In celebration, I took him to what used to be our favourite restaurant. It’s a restaurant where you can build your own stir fry. However, when we got there, the name of the restaurant had changed, the management had changed, and instead of being a flat rate, we found out afterwards that we were paying by weight. Well, that was one hefty food bill. I don’t think we will be frequenting there any time soon.
We got a hotel for the night, a super nice one! It had a really nice kitchenette that I unfortunately did not get the chance to use. My husband was only allowed to eat until 2:00 am so we ordered a midnight pizza. I got a medium, hand-tossed pizza with extra pizza sauce and topped with pineapple, tomato and mushrooms. It actually was really good. You don’t need cheese to have a good pizza!
I stayed up as late as I could working on my sub plans. I did not end up with enough time to get them done at school during the day. Eventually it came to a point where I had to set my alarms and take a nap. I wasn’t concerned with getting a ton of sleep myself, but more concerned that my husband got good sleep so he could be better prepared for his surgery in the morning.
Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is bad.
-Happy my husband is here to visit.
-Tired.
-Slightly stressed.
-Hair looks awesome and is feeling great.
-Dehydrated. Need to get back in the water.
Weight at the end of the day = I was not able to weigh myself as there was no scale at the hotel.
Total Calories = 3610 (90% carbs, 3.5% fat, 7.5% protein… awesome macros!)
Journal:
Well, today didn’t turn out to be the day I thought it would be. Here’s a list of what I mean:
So that about summed up my day. I was so excited to have my husband come home. It was really great to see him! However, I did still have to work the next day and he had a series of appointments to go to the next day, so neither of us could stay up late. It didn’t take either of us long to fall asleep.
Review of Symptoms:
-Tired but excited.
-Hungry but satisfiable.
-Acne still bad.
-Got my hair cut and it looks pretty good 😀
-Not feeling good after what I’m pretty sure was some dairy ingestion.
-Digestion is so out of whack.
Weight at the end of the day = 171.6 lbs (still the same)
Total Calories = 3164 (74% carbs, 17% fat, 9% protein… a little high in fat!)
Journal:
I don’t know what happened to me today. Somehow I still ended up going to sleep later than normal, but even though I felt fairly wide awake, I still laid in bed for forever this morning. it wasn’t because I was cold or anything, but perhaps it was still a subconscious tiredness that seemed to kick in around three hours later. However, it was an exciting day because tomorrow, my husband comes to visit! I cannot wait!
I didn’t get up in time to make a smoothie this morning like I had planned. So instead, I packed up approx. 1.5 kg of mandarin oranges to eat, and also packed my last Romaine lettuce heart with some Medjool dates and half of an English cucumber to eat together.
The day actually went fairly well. I was able to eat all of my food which was really good. After work, I had a meeting that took way longer than we thought it would. However, it was good to have it done and out of the way.
After the meeting, I ran home to get ready and go to town. I had some grocery items I wanted to pick up plus go to the gym and fill up my car. I grabbed a salad… and then noodles. I was so on track! I did only get a small noodles this time with nothing else added for simple carbs. I also drove to two stores and went in without getting anything which was a little stressful in itself. I did not find any persimmons tonight and I need about 19 to finish the winter week of Fruitrition. I’m a little nervous about that, but have a few more stores I’m going to try tomorrow.
I had a really decent workout at the gym, though I did not finish my negative pull-ups. I will probably sound a bit “baby-ish”, but I really liked it better when my husband was there to set those things up for me. I’ll get over it sometime and make it up on another workout. But for tonight, they were skipped.
After getting home, I made a banana-date smoothie. My digestion is a little messed up with all the late night eating and the one cooked meal I’ve been eating a day, so after the smoothie, I did not eat anything else! Late night snacking was completely avoided tonight which made me super happy! And that pretty much summed up my night. I got almost everything done that I wanted to, and the few things I have left I should have time to do tomorrow before my husband arrives. In the meantime, I’ll be praying that I find some persimmons; a decent price wouldn’t be so bad either.
Review of Symptoms:
-Energy good.
-Endurance is good.
-Digestion is wonky.
-Acne is bad.
-Very busy today.
Weight at the end of the day = 171.6 lbs (same as yesterday)
Total Calories = 2970 (89% carbs, 5% fat, 6% protein)
Journal:
I did not sleep very well last night. In fact, I didn’t go to sleep until extremely late, ended up waking up in the early morning as I had passed out on the couch, went to my room and went back to bed. This is not how to get good sleep…
Today was the busy day. I had a house to get ready, making sure everything was clean, and I had to get stuff ready for the week and ready for my husband’s surgery that is coming up this later this week.
To start off the morning, I made 1.8L of orange juice. I don’t like the oranges I bought. They are way less juicy than the prior ones I had and took so much longer to juice. I also used 7 more oranges than last time to make 200 mL less of juice. There truly is a difference in the oranges you use.
The next thing I ate was 2 bananas for a snack. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually just peeled a banana to eat it, so this was actually nice to be able to do.
After I was done cleaning the house, but before getting ready for my soccer game, I made a 10 banana smoothie with a few stalks of celery blended in. It wasn’t phenomenal, but it wasn’t bad either. It definitely filled me up.
Even though I had the banana smoothie 2 hours before the soccer game, I was still full at the game. We actually had a really good game (the score was 5-5) and I felt awesome during the game. My hip pain that I had is gone (I will keep an eye out until tomorrow though) and I just came from the game feeling great. I remembered to take a bottle of water to the game this time, so that helped as well.
After the game, I ate 5 dried figs that I had brought with me. It was definitely a convenient snack to bring with me to eat on the way home.
Finally, I tossed back and forth about whether to eat anymore tonight or not. I don’t have all the fruits I need for the week, and I really need to use up the bananas. But, I didn’t feel like I had enough stomach capacity to have 8 or 10 bananas in a smoothie. So what did my late night irrational brain come up with? A can of maple beans I have sitting on the cupboard. Ugh… Let’s just say I really wish that wasn’t the option I had chosen… Either way, to bed I go for tomorrow I am back to work.
Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is the same.
-Hair is super soft.
-Raw foods make me feel great.
-Digestion was a little slow…
-Energy was great.
-Excellent stamina in today’s soccer game.
Weight at the end of the day = 171.6 (up 1.2 lbs from yesterday… no more late night eating!)
Total Calories = 3433 (80% carbs, 10% fat, 10% protein… how perfect is that!)
Calm in Christ and Fitness 