COME SO ALIVE

Finding breath and beauty amidst the storm

Tag: strength

When life hands you lemons,

By

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

By

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.

Feeling winter

By

On 04/14/2023

In His Vast Strength (stroke), Lifelines

“…there is something sacred in the fall of snow… Blessings from the heavens, they sustain life. And if sometimes they create difficulties for humans, that’s not the fault of nature. The fault is in the nature of man. Humans…are far too focused on doing and not enough on being.”

William Kent Krueger, Fox Creek

I realize that the calendar says spring and most of the country is seeing spring but, until two days ago, I was still seeing winter. Big snow piles everywhere after a very long, very snowy winter.

To be honest, I’m still feeling a little winter too.

While Minnesota’s ridiculously long season of snow started with a bang (well, a blizzard) in December, my winter actually blew in the previous March. It began the morning I walked into my husband’s ICU room and learned he’d suffered a severe stroke after open-heart surgery.

Months later, on a glorious summer day, I ran into friends…and found myself barely able to tolerate talking with them. Anger at our situation overwhelmed me, frustration at them discussing things that seemed so unimportant in comparison. That was the day I realized I needed to pull away from others for a while.

My sister-in-law warned me not to isolate. But I had to isolate. I certainly was in no condition to be a good friend to someone else, and I had no energy at the end of the day to share what I lived through that day.

So, by time covid hit our house in November, I was used to isolating. It felt comfortable. And by the time I emerged from covid in December, true winter had fully covered our house.

Recently, as the calendar began to close in on spring, I found I needed just a little more time to feel winter. Just a little more focusing on “being.”

Read More

MINE!

By

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 8th 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 40th 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.

Read More

For this week’s post, a plog

By

On 06/10/2022

In His Vast Strength (stroke)

“What are those things that Chewbacca ate called again?” Cody looked at me slightly disgusted. “Porgs. And don’t remind me. That’s just so sad.”

Cody is a sensitive child. I think every day that I picked him up from preschool he had a dandelion, a twig, or a pine cone as a gift for me (I actually still have the pine cone collection in my car by the gearshift).

Chuck and I often hear him talking to bugs, “Hello. Who are you?” I heard that this morning actually. We had some weird bug in the house that I had unsuccessfully tried to swat last night. Cody found it this morning, used the fly swatter to scoop it up, and then opened the patio door and gently let it out.

Calling them his outdoor pets, he loves the birds in the backyard too. He was quite concerned about who was going to keep our bird feeder filled while we were at the hospital for his daddy’s surgery. Thankfully we have some very good friends!

Cody is so sensitive that he had a seizure three years ago the day of Chuck’s first surgery. Needless to say, we were quite worried about him surrounding this surgery too. That may have been the biggest stressor for us quite frankly. When friends asked leading up to the surgery how they could pray for us, we’d ask them to pray for peace for Cody during the surgery and good sleep at night at the hotel. He also sleeps very poorly any place other than his bed and consequently regularly has seizures when we travel – which we have pretty much stopped doing.

So, facing a 7- to 10-day stay was anxiety-producing to say the least.

Read More

His vast strength

By

On 04/29/2022

In His Vast Strength (stroke)

In the last few weeks, I have wondered if ComeSoAlive.com was finished.  I wondered, “How do I show others ‘coming alive’ when I am so destroyed right now?  I’m only writing about how hard life is.  I sound like Eeyore.”

These posts of honesty and pain and sadness are what I need right now.  I have had days that I’ve asked God to help me write, because it’s healing and what I needed.  But this darkness isn’t lifting anytime soon, and you may all trickle away in the meantime. 

So, I thought, “Maybe I should stop writing for a while.”

On the website, I organize the different posts by categories, such as “Beauty in the Storm.”  I typed thoughts during five years of epilepsy and, when I started Come So Alive, I thought that material, “Beauty in the Storm,” was what I would mostly use for posts…until I ran out of those entries.  (I figured it may be a short-lived website.)

Yet, week after week, God has surprised me with blog posts that aren’t about epilepsy.  Some certainly have been but, amazingly, I frequently wrote posts the day I published them that I couldn’t have even written four or five days before, because part of the story hadn’t happened yet.  I have added new categories to the website as the topic list grew.  I didn’t think “Eeyore” would be a great category to add though so I’ve wondered.

Read More

I can’t, He can . . . I’ll let Him

By

On 05/25/2021

In Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy)

Confession:  I’m not really a morning person.  I don’t hate mornings and I don’t sleep in late, but I’m not terribly interested in getting up nice and early to catch the sunrise either. 

Once Cody’s seizures started, all while he was asleep, I didn’t sleep…  I would sort of sleep but the slightest noise woke me up.  Needless to say, mornings became even rougher.

Read More

Sometimes it’s better to receive than to give

By

On 03/02/2021

In Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy)

One quick internet search finds dozens of recent articles and research studies telling us to give.  They describe actual health benefits of giving our time and financial resources to others.  It’s also what many of us were taught from a young age:

It’s better to give than to receive. 

Read More

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén