I am taken by surprise to see the picture my husband takes of me walking into the room.

What happen?

God healed bones and nerves to give me strength stand to stand up straight, and I lost it?

 

Back in 2010, my muscles are so weak I need assistance walking any distance. I use my husband and daughter to help me walk, but I am about ready to get a cane. My butt muscles need help.

Before I buy a cane, God steps in! He gives me brand new vertebrae which takes away pain and starts connecting nerves to create muscle strength.

An example of of my weakness before: my middle school daughter comes home from school,

“Mom can we play catch?”

“Yes!”

Heading out back with mitts and a softball we start but I am not able to throw the ball across the yard to her. Why?

I switch to underhanded tossing and it works, but my body stops functioning after only three throws.

“What is going on? Why can’t I throw the ball? Is sitting on the couch all I can do? I am only 40 years old!”

A few years later I loose the ability to raise my right hand above my head or extend it out in front of me. I don’t understand.

Age 49, God challenges me to run! Christmas 2011, I am able to run a funky mile by running the blocks and walking the streets. I am working hard enough to stop at the end of the street to catch my breath before I turn and run home.

The next day I have a desire to run. I’m thinking,

I can’t run two days in a row.

The desire is strong enough I try,

Wow! I can lift my legs and run!

Running two days in a row is a definite miracle! God is So Very Good!

Over the years, God continues to teach me how to stand straight and tall so the bones reform causing me to loose my forward lean. I am able to grow muscles and my new strength erases my  limp. It is shocking when I try to show someone my old posture but it is gone! My forward lean disappeared.

A friend says, “Every seven years our cells completely change over.”

I have spent enough time standing straight and tall that my forward lean is erased!

Looking at the picture I wonder,

“I have been standing tall and straight for years, so why am I leaning so far forward?

Searching for answers I decide my peak happens in 2017 when my daughter sees me returning from a 10 mile run and says,

“Your legs are skinny!”

The first inclination of weakness shows up after Mom dies January 2018 when I need someone to help me weed my flower garden.

The year 2019, comprises of being caretaker for my dad and my husband. This is when my thinking starts to change from run to walk,

“I am able to run 5 miles so I should be able to walk 5 miles.”

November 2021, Grace, my cat dies. May 2022 Dad dies and depression starts to creep into my life.

When I try to get my strength back I believe lies!

First I believe all I need to do is run one mile a day to keep my strength.

A year later, I remember when God taught me to run at least 2 miles daily, But it is not enough.

In the winter of 24-25, I happen to run 5 miles and the next day I feel strength in my core!  I am standing tall for the first time in years!

Since life gets in the way, I started doing planks and push-ups daily. This helps me stay strong enough to run when I get the chance.

It is a journey of faith as I fight for health and strength!

Strength makes life easier and more fun!

 

 

About 6 months ago I tried to do the intermittent fasting and failed. I just watched a program about Keto and intermittent fasting by Eric Berg “The New Body Type” and it is getting my attention. This program went straight into facts and didn’t spend an hour selling.

The reason I found it is because the benefits of lemon water showed up on my YouTube feed. I watched his program on drinking lemon water because it has been a daily habit for almost 10 years and I have taken it with me everywhere I have traveled.

Anyway, I was interested in the facts and it sounds like there are many benefits  for example, keeping the liver happy? I should watch it again and take notes.

Thinking about eating the salad for breakfast makes me think I was probably more energetic when I started my day with my plate of salad and boiled eggs. The reason I quit probably has much to do with Dad dying and the traveling to the West Coast twice this last two months. There is nothing like 8000 miles driving that will  mess up a person’s eating habits.

It might be a good thing to return  to eating salad for breakfast and see how it fills me with energy. I will check out this keto thing and see how I can fit it into my life.

If nothing else I do know that drinking my lemon water every day is a very Good thing and I will continue to use it every day, it is a good thing that I truly enjoy lemons!

God Bless you this very day. Amen!

Being truthful God reminded me today I started cutting back on my salad breakfast because it is so much easier to just fry eggs and have a piece of toast. Eating the more healthy way takes more work but I feel better and have more energy so the goal is to keep working at getting better each day.

God is so Very Good!

My whole life I have been skinny and didn’t understand as I gained weight. In my thirties my weight rose to 130 pounds and I told myself it was good because my body worked better!

My weight continued to rise another 10 pounds each of the next two decades. I wanted to do something, but what could I do? Exercising most days didn’t seem to do much. My real problem comes from weakness due to scoliosis, and the need to eat food for energy to function.

January 2011, God gave me 5 new vertebrae and started to grow nerves cut in 1976 during scoliosis surgery. 

I started to be able to run 5 days every week.

It took food to give me energy to be able to run. I added another 10 pounds, bringing me to my high weight of 160 on my 5’4″ and shrinking frame. Some of it was muscle but my face showed something different.

Over the next few years of running, I grew stronger and gained confidence! Two different years, I notice the shorts I was buying were two inches smaller from the previous year.  The last thing I heard before life took a turn was my daughter say, “You are very skinny!”

The next three years we drove 5,000 mile many times a year to visit family as Mom died and moved Dad out of the house. My real problem came when Bart, my husband of 36 years started to have difficulty walking and keeping his balance. This lead to neck surgery to save his spinal cord. Two years later he is still recovering and getting stronger. The first year after his surgery, he could do nothing! It took everything I had to keep life going, and I had nothing left to keep me strong. Then COVID hit!

So now after a year of stress and the covid fears I find myself struggling to fit into my clothes. I try running. It helps, but I can’t do it regularly yet. My weight goes down for a few days, but I can’t yet keep going and my weight goes back up.  Getting busy with cleaning and yard work is good, but my body isn’t as strong as it was, and it gives out.

Two days ago Bart read something in Readers Digest about intermittent fasting. There were a couple ideas: one was fast two days a week; I have fasted for 24 hours many times, I loose weight, but food gets thrown out. The other idea is to eat everything in six hours.

Hope has arrived. I have tried the eating everything in six hours for two days. I am pleased to find my weight lower than I have seen for months. It is hard to eat all I want in 6 hours. Bart believes he is seeing more energy in me and I have less pain today. I guess it will be a wait and see. I will keep you posted.

God Bless you all with The Peace only Jesus can give. Amen.

Suffering sciatic pain for over a year I searched for relief. My doctor said, “The sciatic nerve is wrapped in a muscle, when one is swollen it inflames the other becoming a vicious cycle.”

Finding a solution became my goal: the medicine from the doctor did nothing, and stretches only helped for the moment. I looked into everything to gain knowledge and understanding. I saw an ad for free Outback pain relief on Facebook. I decided to try it because it has tea tree, and eucalyptus oil, healing from nature.

Applying it just above my hip joint, the pain was gone in just over a week.

Since it worked so well, I tried it on muscles pain from scoliosis, surgery, and nerve damage. Lately I have found numbness in my knee, the doctor said, ” the numbness is from kneeling.”

I use Outback Pain relief daily, to keep the numbness away!

 

Learning to live my life better!

 

Some of my earliest memories of the sunrise are weekends at Grandma B’s farmhouse in the summer.  She would wake me each morning to stand at the edge of the field, and watch the sun come up and puts words of being a princess in my head. In a dress with a white sweater, she would hold me tight, keeping away the morning chill, standing together, filled with love, watching the sun rise.

A few years later we are living on Grandma W’s farm. This Grandma didn’t rise to watch the sun, but to work the farm. Each morning I would wake with the sunshine peaking in my window, and the sound of Grandma making breakfast was traveling up the stairs, to my ears.  Crawling out of bed, I tip toe down the stairs quietly, allowing my sister to continue sleeping. Grandma reacts with surprise and joy when she sees me enter the dining room and greets me with a hug! I see the sun pouring in the windows, casting a beautiful glow in the dining room that is only seen in the early morning summer sun. Grandpa is out milking the cows before I wake up; but he makes it back to the kitchen before breakfast carrying a pail of fresh milk for Grandma: to be strained, skimmed, and chilled. Each morning we poured the fresh cream on our cereal and berries, what a treat.

During the years my daughter is a toddler, I am pleased to find she is not a morning person. She joins my husband wanting to sleep in giving me the ability to get up and spend some quiet time with God before the day gets busy. This works well all the days of my life, until year 50!

To have the morning change so drastically, my evening also needed to change! All my life, bedtime has been around 10 in the evening.  I am very thankful for my friends during sleepovers; they moaned and complained, but didn’t prank me when I fell asleep, long before they did.

The days my daughter is young, I am often tempted to go to bed just after 8 pm! The very last year I go to bed before midnight, I have an online Hebrew class; it ends at 10 PM, pushing me to stay awake until it ends. The very next year I have a Hebrew class in the morning and I struggle to pull myself out of bed and be awake up for it.

Something switches around the time I turned 50: sleep starts coming in the early morning with the sun rising! It is such a strange thought to feel awake and alert and look at the clock to see it is midnight! It messes with my head! This change shows up when I wake up, wide awake after sleeping in bed for 2-3 hours. I start to be awake for hours in bed.  At first it bothers me and I stress about how little sleep I am going to get because 5 am is approaching. I pray and take medication to sleep, but stay awake. I turn on a cd or podcasts to keep my mind positive and learn, while I wait to fall back asleep.

Before the change, in my 40’s I am so weak (from scoliosis and accident damage) I nap 1-3 hours in the afternoon after the 8-10 hours of sleep at night. Turning 50, Menopause has something to do with my sleep changing, but also the healing and strength God is providing has a great deal to do with it.

WISDOM ARRIVED!  I lay down (not in bed) if I am tired, resting my back for scoliosis.  Going to bed before midnight, no longer works. I learned Peace and how to enjoy my time awake in bed. Stress and worry make everything worse; if I am not sleeping, I trust God to carry me through my day.