Tag: Donald Miller

Radioactive and Quarantined (Day 1)

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This morning I went to the hospital to begin radiation treatment. They took me to a “radioactive zone” room and told me all of the precautions and things I will have to do while I’m quarantined. While I waited to begin treatment, I surveyed the underwhelming room and found it pretty humorous.

Apparently, enough patients have mentioned that they would feel much more at ease if there was an element of nature in the solitary room. There were two tiles directly above me that were “clouds” with lights, and they changed in brightness…what? haha.

Eventually, they took a pill out of a metal box, quickly left, and I swallowed it. Just like that, I’m radioactive.

I remained in the room for only a half hour, but they left a nice Women’s Health magazine for me to read. I learned certain beauty products that are “tricks” v. “treats,” as well as the proper bra to use in your early twenties (and every decade afterward)–what an educational half hour for this I-was-a-tom-boy-most-of-my-life-and-I’m-still-learning-to-fully-grasp-being-a-woman-in-her-early-twenties. I mean, I only started carrying a purse about a year a go… I still have a lot to learn. Expert ladies, how on earth do you fill a purse? I am always impressed by women who have full purses that they could probably fit themselves inside. Tell me your secrets.

That half hour felt like a TLC show.

When my radioactive level was low enough to leave the radiation room, I rode in the back seat of my uncle Steve’s car (soon after the receptionist asked him if he was my husband), and went directly into the room in his house where I will be staying for the next eight days. Other than pressure in my head, uneasiness in my stomach and being tired–I feel just fine so far. I am prepared that over the next few days it’ll all settle in a little more. We’ll see!

I am starting to unpack my “bags of tricks” for this period of solitary “vacation.” Thanks to wonderful friends and family, some of the things I have to look forward to include the following:

Reading Material (many that I am re-reading):

  • Glorious Ruin by Tullian Tchividjian
  • Storyline by Donald Miller
  • Love Does by Bob Goff
  • Life Interrupted by Priscilla Shirer (Thanks Kristen!)
  • The Man of Grace and Grit: Paul by Charles Swindoll (one of my undergrad textbooks)
  • The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer (also one of my undergrad textbooks)
  • RELEVANT Magazines

Watching Material:

  • Netflix
  • Pinky and the Brain (Two complete seasons…YES)
  • The Office, Gone in 60 Seconds (Thanks Skodas!)
  • The Good Shepherd
  • School of Rock
  • Up
  • Tangled

Projects/Activities:

  • Writing letters!
  • Cross-stitch
  • Origami (Thanks Kristen!)
  • Puzzles (Thanks mom!)
  • Coloring Books (Thanks Katie!)
  • Compiling a personal cookbook from my own stash of recipes and friends. I’m still looking for recipes to add and want as many people’s involvement as possible. It’s so much more fun knowing who to thank for each recipe 🙂 If you have any favorites, please e-mail them to me! lydiajoyness@gmail.com
  • Riding my bike on its trainer, starting day 3!

While I’ve found stuff to keep me busy, I can’t wait until I can get outside and enjoy my city again. Yesterday was beautiful, and I went to my favorite spot near our apartment and enjoyed the skyline and fresh air. Until we meet again, Lake Michigan, keep fresh (and so clean, clean.)

View of the Chicago skyline from Montrose Harbor. (Lydia Ness; Oct. 16, 2012)

 

Two Weeks Post-Surgery.

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Tomorrow marks two weeks post-surgery. While the time has past relatively slowly, it is actually pretty hard to believe it’s already been two weeks. Each day there have been small victories in recovery. From removing the dressing, removing the stitches, removing to tape, to being able to lay on my back again, to sleeping in a bed, to being able to shower, to being able to run errands without wanting to fall asleep, to returning to teaching high school percussion.

I’ve been really trying to learn how to rest, which is something I’m not used to. I am so used to being borderline unhealthfully busy and now I am forced to take not just a breather…but to stop. I am also used to exercising daily. Yesterday I “ran” for the first time since surgery (12 days after surgery), and while I was only doing a light jog, my heart rate was between 170-180 bpm the whole time. When I finished, I realized just how much my body still needs to recoup. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try that again for a while…I realize now that there can be severe ramifications to that.

My heart rate is still very elevated from what it normally is. I’ve begun to wear my heart monitor when I’m sitting down, to get an idea of my resting pulse right now. I’m used to my resting pulse being around 60 bpm, because of how active I am. Now, it’s not uncommon for my resting pulse to be around 85 and as soon as I walk from one place to the next, it jumps up to 110-120 at least. I have really been trying to learn how to be physically still. It’s so hard. However, today my resting pulse has been in the upper 70’s, so hopefully in a couple days, I’ll feel safer about running or riding my bike!

This week I starting teaching high school percussion again and it was SO wonderful being back in that element. I truly hope I can inspire these kids and give back to them all that has been given to me over the years.

I meet with my ENT again next Friday for follow up and then meet with my endocrinologist the following Monday to talk about radiation treatment. I’ll be starting radiation in the next few weeks. I’m SO glad my favorite author, Donald Miller just released a new book, so I have good material for the days I’m quarantined for radiation :)!

Thank you ALL for your amazing encouragement and support! I am doing very well, and I am excited to see where this unexpected season of life takes me. I am comforted by Christ daily, and the changing seasons in Chicago–pumpkin spice and crisp air, can’t wait for the leaves to start changing!

Fact of the day: “Thyroid cancer will set a new record in 2012, with 56,460 people newly diagnosed in the United States and more than 200,000 worldwide. Unlike many cancers, thyroid cancer is increasing in incidence, and it’s the fastest increasing cancer in both men and women.” (article)

 

Photos from my recovery:

 

Day 4, second day out of the hospital

Day 4, First time going for a short walk in public. Threw on the scarf as to not scare children 😉

Day 5, Mom helping me wash my hair when I wasn’t allowed to get the incision wet.

Day 6, last day of stitches

Day 7, stitches out, tape on, waiting to get blood drawn to see where my calcium levels are.

Day 7, Came home to my apartment for a night and was overwhelmed by love of my roommate and packages in the mail. As a Colts fan, it was pretty bittersweet to receive a new Peyton jersey in orange 🙂

Day 8, driving for the first time since surgery. FIRST DAY that I did not feel nauseous since surgery!

Day 9, first time heading out to meet a friend to hang out–to watch kickoff Sunday football!!

Day 10, Stitches AND tape off. Complete healing commences. You can see fluid still sitting in the center where my thyroid used to be. Still waiting for that and the swelling to go down.

Day 10, I decided it was pretty cool that I now have two “smiles” 😉

Day 11, I can really see that this is healing beautifully now!

Day 12, Redness is really minimal now!

Day 13, It’s still healing very nicely, though I’m starting to get some serious stiffness in the back of my neck from the lack of use of the front muscles of my neck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Story of Accepting God’s Love

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Growing up I never had a problem accepting the freedom and grace that Christ offers us. I never had any problem understanding his motives, his love, his mercy, his kindness and now I am somewhat ashamed to admit this. While God’s intention is for us to accept and receive his grace and love, I think sometimes we do so too flippantly. Do we fully understand the weight of this gift? I didn’t.

During the last four years, I have learned so much about the character of God, the person of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life. This has been an overwhelming experience. He has given me joy beyond my comprehension and has filled me with a passion to love people and to pursue His kingdom daily. 

“Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly.” Micah 6:8

However, the closer I have come to know Christ–the closer I have come to understanding a glimpse of who He is–the more spiritual warfare I have experienced and the more difficulty I have had to accept this  free grace.

I have become aware of how beautiful it is that in my brokenness, in my pain, in all the ways I screw up, Christ pursues me relentlessly with his love. In my fear, in my uncertainty, he calls me by name and declares his sovereignty over my life. I don’t deserve such love and devotion; I don’t deserve that he desires so deeply for me to know him. I guess that’s why it’s called grace…

Through this acknowledgement and understanding of Christ, the devil has stepped in and tried to strip me down to the core. The past several months I have had days where I am bombarded by thoughts of how disgusting, worthless, selfish and cowardly I am. These thoughts bring me to my knees in tears, crying out to God for forgiveness. I used to think this was God convicting me, but I realize now that it was actually Satan trying to lessen the impact of grace in my life. Many nights he won, leaving me beaten and broken.

“Accepting God’s kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear in our inner ear, a voice saying that we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the Bride that the Groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, he changes our character with a passion of his love.” Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

A close friend recently told me that when Christ convicts us, it’s to draw us closer to Him, it’s to direct us back to Him. If thoughts of guilt and worthlessness flood my mind and there’s no directing back to God, then that’s not God’s voice. It’s the devil trying to convince me that God will not love me in my sin and brokenness. It’s a lie. Satan is a liar and deceiver, and he will do whatever he can to lessen my understanding and acceptance of God’s free love and grace.

I hadn’t experienced spiritual warfare before, but I can tell you, it’s absolutely real and incredibly painful. However, I can also tell you that part of me feels blessed to experience this, because I believe the devil realizes he’s losing me and that my life belongs to Christ. He’s trying so hard for me to not follow Jesus, but it’s too late, my life belongs to Him.

I now know that when I face these dark days and when I feel like I am not worthy of anything, that this is exactly where Christ comes in. His love, his peace, his grace and his mercy meet me there. He comforts me and reassures me that He will never leave me, or forsake me. He will love me despite my failures, he will be there in my suffering, his promises are true.

It is no longer flippantly that I accept Christ’s grace into my life, for I have a greater understanding of my need for him and how little I am without him. I am more thankful today than ever that he sacrificed everything so that we may live abundantly in him and with him. I will never be the same again.

We get one story, you and I.

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I’ll tell you how the sun rose,

A ribbon at a time…

It’s a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn’t matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.

So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?

-Donald Miller, ‘Through Painted Deserts’


Time, Seasons, Change.

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“I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God’s way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.

“I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.

“Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn’t all happening at once.

“Time has pressed you and me into a book, too, this tiny chapter we share together, this vapor of a scene, pulling our seconds into minutes and minutes into hours. Everything we were is no more, and what we will become, will become what was.”

Donald Miller