Tag: hope Page 1 of 2

Summer reading

On 06/09/2023

“…having a positive attitude isn’t always painless – it’s a process, much like keeping a journal.”
It’s Gonna Be Okay journal

While shopping yesterday for items for Cody’s camp next week, I remembered I had wanted to buy a gratitude journal for a friend. I sent her a text asking if she or her whole family would use one. I hadn’t heard back from her by the time I finished my shopping list so headed to the journal aisle.

The reason I wanted to buy a gratitude journal for her is that her family is facing a summer of some very intense health issues. A gratitude journal wouldn’t magically make things better but it could give them a way to watch for good things this summer during the hard.

I was looking for one with a nice cover, something they could keep as a remembrance of getting through this stressful time. Instead, the first one I saw said, “IT’S GONNA BE OKAY” which caught my attention because I have a few friends who say that or something similar frequently. Then I read the rest of the cover and actually laughed out loud:

“A journal to reassure myself when I’m overwhelmed by the creeping sense of impending disaster and the all-encompassing fears both specified and vague that colonize my mind, body, and soul…”

Ha! I realized I was buying a journal for myself too.

Then I saw the journals “OKAY FINE, I’M GRATEFUL!” and “I’M SO FREAKING FREAKED OUT” – and grabbed one of each of those as well. I thought they were a nice complement to each other for my friend: some days we can be more grateful than others…some days we just freak out.

It turns out my friend already had a gratitude journal, but she readily accepted the freak out journal.

I paged through the other two last night and, while I have no shortage of unread books that I could read this summer, I appear to have two new ones to add to the summer reading list. There really isn’t much to read each day, just a quote about gratitude or optimism and a blank page for me to record “What I’m hanging hope on today” or “Why I’m grateful today, more or less.”

“While it’s true many of life’s ups and downs are out of our control, it’s also true that we can choose to enjoy the ride.” (introduction to It’s Gonna Be Okay journal)

There will be ups and downs this summer, not just for my friend but I’m sure in my own life as well. Because that’s life. We have good days and bad days. Or, as the Lawrence Welk quote for today’s summer reading states,

There are good days and there are bad days, and this is one of them.
Lawrence Welk

When life hands you lemons,

By Carrie

On 05/19/2023

In Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy)

…use a lemon filter!

Ok, that may not be what you were expecting me to say. I’m referencing the goofy filters (overlays to videos) on Instagram, in case you’re totally baffled.

A friend asked me today what I do to add laughter to my life. I pulled out my phone, opened Instagram, and showed her a video of me as a lemon. Just a lemon with my eyes and mouth, no body. And she threw her head back and laughed.

Now the reason I’m a lemon is not funny. I recently created a private Instagram account…named after the name another friend had given her newly discovered cancerous lung tumor.

My friend lives in a different state so I can’t even help her. The tumor had grown so large by the time the doctors realized she had cancer that she can’t get enough breath to talk anymore…so I decided to talk to her.

We log into the account, I post videos, and she writes comments on them. They are all meant to make her laugh – because she had asked for funny cards or notes to keep her spirits up…and thankfully we have the same sense of humor.

On my second video, I discovered a filter that made my face a lemon…and since I was still recovering from shoulder surgery, it had been many days since a shampoo – so a lemon filter was perfect!

She loved it so much that I played around with other filters and have even created Season 1, Episode 2 of “The Lemon.”

Life throws so many lemons at us, so many circumstances we just can’t control. But we get to choose how we are going to face those circumstances.

Like by turning my face into a lemon to add laughter to someone’s day.

We shouldn’t deny the pain of what happens in our lives. We should just refuse to focus only on the valleys.
Charles Swindoll

Through darkness to sunlight

By Carrie

On 05/05/2023

In Lifelines, Light and Dark

I’ve known Holly for…well, since I’m only 28, let’s say three years. We met at one of our first jobs out of college and only worked together for a year before she moved on. Thankfully, we have stayed friends for 25…I mean, three years.

Holly is the friend who offered help and to whom I rather vehemently replied I was tired of asking for help before my recent surgery…the friend who then graciously accepted my pathetic request to drive me home from surgery…and to a doctor appointment a few days later. Whose husband spent his lunch hour shoveling my driveway a few weeks after that. Oy vey.

Thankfully, she’s used to my melodrama and has even seen me at my worst, very literally.

“I think I’m depressed.”

I said that to my therapist (not to Holly), who simply said, “Yes, you are.”

“Do I need medication?”

“I can’t prescribe medication,” replied my therapist. “You’ll have to talk to your doctor about that. But do you think you need it?”

I was sleeping 10-12 hours at night. On the weekends, I was also napping for another 2 hours – neither was my normal. On weekdays, I couldn’t nap because of work. Instead, I cried the whole drive to work…and sometimes at my desk when my coworkers were elsewhere.

None of which I was really aware of until someone said to me, “I’m worried about you. I think you’re depressed.”

So yeah, kinda seemed like I needed medication.

“I think you have situational depression. Once the situation resolves, I think the depression will too,” explained my therapist.

I hadn’t realized I had fallen into a 6-foot-deep pit of depression until someone pointed it out. I knew I was sad but I was in the middle of a really sad situation.

Once I looked around and only saw darkness, I then looked up and saw sunlight and blue sky…and worked really hard to resolve the situation, to get out of the pit. Therapy, almost weekly. For a good 18 months at least. Attending Al Anon. Talking with my pastors. Learning to talk to God.

And sharing with Holly.

Who not only didn’t judge but said, “I have another friend going through the same thing. I need to connect you two.”

Ok, I’ll own how long I’ve known her, because 25 years is an amazing run for a friendship.

And it was part of how I went through the darkness of depression and walked back into sunlight. How I was able to come back to life on the other side.

So if you think you’re depressed – you see darkness but no sunlight – choose someone today and reach out: a family member, friend, coworker, neighbor, your or your child’s teacher, or pastor or priest.

Find a therapist or a treatment facility at Psychology Today’s website.

See your primary care provider or go to a hospital.

Contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The NAMI Helpline is available M-F 10 am – 10 pm, ET. Connect by phone 800-950-6264 or text “Helpline” to 62640. Click HERE to chat or HERE for a support group.

IN A CRISIS, CALL OR TEXT 988 OR CLICK HERE TO CHAT

Depression wins when we aren’t even aware of being in a 6-foot-deep hole. It wins when we hunker down in the hole, too ashamed to let others see where we are. It wins when we believe the lie that we are alone.

You. Aren’t. Alone.

“Girls Night Out. Tennis. ANDRE AGASSI! Ahhhh…”
Facebook post, October 1, 2011

Through

By Carrie

On 05/01/2023

In Lifelines

“The only way out is through.” That’s what my new temporary tattoo says…because it’s hard to read on my atrophied, saggy-skinned forearm. Ten plus weeks post-shoulder surgery and I’m 2-4 weeks slower in recovery than most people. I’m frustrated, angry, and ready to give up on PT – except then I’ll NEVER recover.

So I stocked up on these tatts because someday I WILL be through. Through the pain. Through PT. Through recovery.

May is Mental Health Awareness month. I decided to share a little of how I’ve gotten through situational depression, anxiety, and PTSD in my posts this month.

Today I’m simply reminding myself the only way out is THROUGH.

In the interest of not overwhelming you with emails this month, I will only post to Instagram. You can see these extra posts on ComeSoAlive.com or on Instagram – you don’t need an Instagram account to view it in either place.

We aren’t going under

By Carrie

On 03/24/2023

In Peace

I have so many posts I want to write, have started writing…but my brain just can’t seem to write them. I thought I’d be further along in shoulder surgery recovery by now – further along in lessened pain. I’d be back to me, just in a sling. Back to writing.

But five weeks post-op, I still find myself either lowering the Tylenol when the vertigo it triggers gets too bad and wakes me up throughout the night…or in pain from less Tylenol which then gets too bad and THAT wakes me up.

Full disclosure: lots of tears and lots of swearing at stupid little stuff in the last week from lack of sleep.

Sunset

By Carrie

On 12/30/2022

In Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy), His Vast Strength (stroke)

The last five years have taught me to be mentally prepared for bad things to happen.

Oops, sorry, we misread Cody’s MRIs for the last three years. He has a different kind of epilepsy, one which not only will he not outgrow it but he will need brain surgery for it.

Oops, I was wrong four years ago when I first met with you, Chuck. You do actually have a genetic issue and it’s likely what’s killing your family members. You need to have it monitored and will need open-heart surgery at some point.

And yes, those are mostly direct quotes – no candy coating going on with either doctor.

We heard both of those about two months apart. One year later we heard it was time to start brain surgery assessments and then time to have open-heart surgery.

A few months later, we had a flooded and destroyed formerly fully-finished basement. Then a job loss a week before open-heart surgery.

Another open-heart surgery less than three years later. A stroke.

So when something went wrong last week with the website I have spent over two years creating…well, of course it did.

Except I’ve taken it relatively calmly, after the initial panic.

I mean if someone hacked and destroyed my site, they are way more technically savvy than I am and there’s really not much I can do about it.

I still haven’t figured it out. So, Come So Alive might look a little different this year. Or maybe not.

I guess we won’t know until we get there.

Which is how life is anyway so perhaps that’s fitting. Maybe even that’s the lesson God wants me to learn this new year.

You’d think I’d have learned that lesson after the year of stroke we’ve had, but, no, I went to bed last night wondering about the future…

“You won’t know till you get there, Carrie, so stop trying to figure it out. To guess. To prepare. You can’t prepare. No matter how much you go over projections and possibilities in your head, you’ll never be fully prepared for all life brings.

“But you can let Me walk next to you, you can slow down and walk next to Me, so that when you get there, you get there with Me. And I AM all the preparation you’ll need.”

So instead of thinking ahead, I decided to look back. I scrolled through my photos on my phone from the last year and rediscovered these beautiful sunsets.

Do you know that Jewish days begin at sunset?

“While a day in the secular calendar begins and ends at midnight, a Jewish day goes from nightfall to nightfall.”*

As I post this, the sun is setting. Another new day is starting. And I can try to prepare for the bad I’ve come to anticipate.

Or I can simply enjoy the sunset closing out today, knowing no dark night lasts forever. Tonight’s sunset will usher in a new morning – and He will be there.

He already is.

I will walk among you and be your God…
Leviticus 26:12

*https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/526873/jewish/The-Jewish-Day.htm

Anticipation, Part 1

By Carrie

On 10/21/2022

In "Come So Alive" Origins, Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy)

I anticipate with excitement a certain day of the year, every year. I can’t tell you what day it is, though, because I don’t actually know. To be more specific, I don’t ever know the exact date until the day it happens but the event that I anticipate, that I can tell you, I love the day my peony opens! Or peony, depending on how you pronounce it.

That day also happens to be a day I dread, because it rains that day and beats down my beautiful peony blooms, light pink, double blooms as big as my hand on tiny little stalks. It rains that day. Every. Year.

This year the gloriously painful day was June 15^th. I know the exact date because I took pictures of the bloom. It was sunny in the morning when I awoke to several massive blooms that had popped open overnight – but by 11:30 a.m. the sky had turned cloudy. I decided to take a picture so I could enjoy their beauty longer, knowing they would only survive a day or so.

As I squatted in the dirt so my camera was even with a bloom, thunder clapped somewhere in the distance.

Seriously, I’m not making that up.

MINE!

By Carrie

On 08/19/2022

In "Come So Alive" Origins, Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy)

Or as my niece used to say, “Miiiiiiiiiinnne” with big, blue eyes and a small, plaintive voice. I swear, as a two-year-old, she had a whole legal argument in that one long, drawn out word.

Almost a year ago, I wrote about reclaiming the 8^th anniversary of Cody’s epilepsy diagnosis on October 23, 2014, by hosting our fourth fundraising concert on that day this year, but, really, we had started riding the epilepsy rollercoaster August of 2013 – we just didn’t know it yet.

Cody’s first, out-of-the-blue seizure was on my 40^th birthday. Well, technically, it was at 2:00 a.m. the day after my birthday but close enough.

Because the ER doctor that night thought the seizure was provoked by a fever, we didn’t get an accurate diagnosis for another 14 months (and two more seizures).

There have been minutes in the last eight years since hearing, “Cody has epilepsy” that were unbearably, painfully long, where I literally had a hard time breathing, and yet the years have gone by in a breath.

If I knew then what the epilepsy rollercoaster was going to be like and how long it would last, I would have spent those years living in terror instead of living each day growing in strength. Each day since then was needed to get me to today. Carrie at Day 1 wasn’t able to do this for eight years. But each day has been like training, making me a little stronger. . .and a little stronger, so Carrie today can do this for eight years.

I don’t want to but I can.

When the “what-if” happens

By Carrie

On 04/22/2022

In His Vast Strength (stroke)

We talk so much these days
Because I have so much to say
You stay and listen to me closely even though
You already know
You already know
JJ Heller, “You Already Know“

I found that song a few months ago (more accurately, that song found its way to me) to add to the “100 Days” playlist. It’s a very catchy tune and those lyrics play in my head frequently. Sometimes, in the weeks leading up to surgery, they were the only lyrics in my head all day.

You already know. “You” in the song being God.

Last week, I reposted “Looking hard for signs of life” from Good Friday 2021, which it turns out is what we are doing this year after a new storm hit. In the original post, I wrote,

“After the storm, the ashes, the hard winter, do I usually look for life? Or do I just mourn the loss? Do I keep walking when the trees are bare? Even though there are dead leaves wherever I put my foot next. Do I hope, looking hard for signs of life?”

A year ago when I wrote that, God knew. He knew what life would look like a year later. And I feel a little betrayed. He knew and He didn’t tell me. That may sound odd. No, I don’t actually hear a literal voice of God but I do hear from Him. He knew and He didn’t tell me what was coming.

Looking hard for signs of life (again)

By Carrie

On 04/15/2022

In His Vast Strength (stroke)

I debated posting on Good Friday because it seems too holy for anything I could write, but this post from last year came to mind. In rereading it, I had forgotten that, even though I wrote it in May, it took place on Good Friday in April.

I wonder if the disciples felt this way. A life-shattering event as the sun set on a Friday evening, the beginning of their Shabbat. Shocked and seeing only death around them. A Saturday of silence where there was nothing they could do. Scared and wondering how the story ends – or if it already had. Having no reason to assume new life was just around the corner.

I guess that’s where our stories differ. They could not have hoped for life after death. A year after writing this post, we find ourselves looking hard for signs of life again. As we mourn. As we keep walking. And as we have to trust that spring and new life will follow this harsh winter we have had.

Looking hard for signs of life, first posted May 4, 2021

I found a bench in the sun and waited for my friend to walk the labyrinth. I had walked it first and wanted to give her time alone in it. Once she finished, she sat on a bench across from me, and we shared our experiences, which in the same labyrinth were very different from each other’s.

There were large, barren trees in a ring around us. I wasn’t paying much attention to them but my friend commented on the one behind me, whose crooked branch I was sitting under. She had been quietly assessing if it was a dead branch and the likelihood of it falling on my head. But then she noticed very small buds on the tree and realized it was safer than it looked. She said,

“You really have to look hard for life.”