I am unable to sleep tonight. I have loads on my mind. The song Rabbit Heart by Florence and the Machine speaks to my heart tonight.  Shall I start making the list of things that are on my mind tonight and make my heart race like a rabbit? Here I go:

First on my mind is of course this dreaded Vasculitis condition called Wegener’s or GPA for short. Unfortunately, my throat is constricting again and I have to go through another dilation surgery before I can have the dissection surgery. The dissection surgery is where the doctors will cut out the affected portion of my throat and reattach. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? I have mixed feelings about getting this procedure done, one feeling is I’m excited I want it done now, but certain things are in the way right now. The second feeling I have is fear, this means enduring a scary procedure and with my history of spasms during surgery it could be dangerous.

Second thought that comes to my mind deals with what to do with all my free time, there is only so much time you can spend thinking about a battle plan to fight on. My battle plan consist of looking at things mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually because being balanced in all these areas is important to me. I have to admit that I am not perfect at choosing healthy things to eat. I am an overeater. I use food as a medicator so that I do not have to face certain things, especially boredom, which I am sorry to say is a factor in my life. Yes, I keep busy with books, Internet, my cat Nicholas is even entertaining and of course my care provider Myron sees me five days a week for two hours, but still I feel that there is something missing, my purpose.

That leads me to the third thing on my mind. What is my purpose? Why am I here? Why did God allow me to survive two near death experiences?   I realize that some small miracles have happened and I am taking inventory of my life and where it is I want it to be. I have a great therapist who has been given me some great tools to work with. Such as: learning what my values truly are on a worksheet that he gave me last Friday. I have my assignment done; it took me awhile to figure out what it is I believe about each section. The sections include: Couple/intimate relationships, Parenting, Family relations, Social relations, Employment, Education/training, Recreation, Spirituality, Citizenship/Community, and Health/physical well-being. Can you guess which two I had the toughest time figuring out? I will tell you, Couple/Intimate relationships and Parenting. What I did is I thought about what is I am wanting in these areas and therefore what my core values are in relations to these areas. Since I am not able to be a mom, my Vasculitis disease basically tells me I cannot have children, plus my age, makes this impossible, but there are many other ways I can parent something. I can parent my cat; I can help parents who struggle with children with attachment disorders. Who fights for them? It is always about what you can do for the child, being a parent of a child with attachment issues is a challenging, draining, and sometimes dangerous job and there has to be something that the moms and dads can do to recuperate after struggles. That is why I have helped in respite care, heck my sister in law Kris and my sister Carri help with respite care for struggling parents. If you are a struggling parent there is a great organization that has awesome tools to help. It is called Family Challenge and they are having a camp the weekend of Mother’s day. I am not able to be as fully involved as I would love to be, but I can pray for the camp, I can provide respite for parents with challenging children, and I can of course spread the word. I have put a lot of thought into this.

I must head to bed now and get some sleep. I have an appointment with Timothy tomorrow where I hope to share what I am learning with him and gain some more tools. Until next time, sleep well everyone.