Welcome,
This page is designed to give you a little glimpse into my own personal world as I've struggled and battled to come to terms with this chronic illness I'm now facing. I'm sharing portions of my journals compiled over the past few months with the hopes that you will relate to them and find comfort in knowing that you are not alone in this battle!
April 4, 2019
How can a person experience so much joy and so much grief in such a short time?!
I thought that 2014 was the worst year of my life – I was out of school and forced into treatment in Colorado...treatment that lasted over 3 months, but ultimately saved my life. I wouldn’t be sitting her typing this today if it weren’t for that awful experience. One of my best friends is a woman I met and walked through that journey with. So much good and so much joy came out of that grueling, life altering experience. It was one of those situations where the hours passed painfully slowly, but in hindsight – sacrificing 3 months of my freedom and my life, to ultimately gain REAL freedom and health was totally worth it.
As I type I am painfully aware of just how seemingly awful this past school year has been. I have experienced grief, disappointment, health issues, money issues, and so much more. But the same God that got me through 2014 has been here with me, walking me through this year as well. I have spent more time on the bathroom floor in pain and in tears than ever before in my life.
But on that bathroom floor, often times, is where my heart broke even more for Jesus. That bathroom floor became my holy ground, my meeting place. As I pleaded with the Lord to please help me through this – through this not-so-new-anymore health battle, through the accompanying depression, through the grief of losing someone I love and also the grief that comes with losing certain capabilities within my body – as I knew them to be previously.
Somehow, much to my own surprise, I’ve managed to drag myself out of bed day after day even when it felt like the toughest thing to do. I’ve managed to show up, and I’ve learned to forgive myself when I can’t. As I face forward towards an upcoming year of unknowns – not being in school, not having a clear career path, being newly married and navigating the change and transition that comes with combing lives with another human, etc.
God is good. God is here – in the mornings where I can’t get out of bed, in the moments when the headaches cause tears to come, when the sadness and frustration feel like too much...God is always here. If I know only one thing for sure, it’s that God shows up. It just doesn’t always look like we want it to look or like we believe it should look.
But God is smarter, wiser, all-knowing, and also loves unconditionally. Something I’m learning to accept is that I am not an exception to that rule – God loves ALL His children the same and He loves us all magnificently. I’m trying to stay positive, to cling to hope, to continue showing up for others in the ways I so desperately need people to show up for me...I’m trying to let go of the fact that literally every single aspect of this mysterious “medical mystery” is out of my hands, accept that things will take time to get better. I’m also learning to grieve the past 1.5 years of my life that I’ve suffered with this. And I’m working towards acknowledging that it’s a good thing to hold on to the hope that this will all get better, but also to know that I can’t EXPECT it to get better – Gods ways a greater, higher, and more powerful than anything I could ever imagine. I’m praying for a miracle, all while praying that God can help change my heart to view this current reality as a blessing in disguise.
“From His eternal perspective, it's tolerable to allow our temporary dreams to fall apart.”
― Jennie Allen
“When things fall apart, the broken pieces allow all sorts of things to enter, and one of them is the presence of God.”
― Shauna Niequist
March 29, 2019
March 14, 2019
Dear Body,
I am sorry you are broken. I am sorry I can not fix you no matter how hard I try. I feel like a failure, like a hopeless case.
And then I begin to get angry – I am NOT sorry you are broken. Because maybe you aren’t BROKEN. Maybe the system is broken – this system that defines health as the highest achieving, most possible striving, most fittest, strongest, smartest, busiest, and on and on and on. Maybe I can not fix you because you don’t need to be FIXED.
Maybe you need a break. Maybe you need rest. Maybe you are growing and changing and my understanding of your function has simply not caught up. Maybe I feel lost because you feel foreign, but maybe you are equally frustrated with me for not caring for you and loving you in the ways you need.
I’ve never been one that believed in “growing a relationship with my body.” But now it seems as though I have no choice. You do not function like you once did – you don’t work in the same ways. It’s as if you are a baby again – your cries for help are so abstract and my only option in order to bring you peace and comfort is through trial and error. We are speaking differing languages and it’s possible that we are equally frustrated.
My brain hates science. I hate it now more than ever. I’ve said it 100 times: it’s the 21st century – fix this already!!!! The resources are there. The knowledge is there. The solution is out there somewhere – always feeling as though it is just beyond my grasp.
But maybe hating science is pointless. Maybe telling the world around me to “fix me” isn’t the way to go about cultivating an understanding of this newfound shell I inhabit. Maybe, even though the resource and the knowledge and the potential solutions are all out there somewhere in the world, maybe right here and right now, the best thing I can offer to myself is grace.
Grace for this season. Grace for today. Grace for this moment when I feel defeated and weak. Grace for this body that is crying out for help – so tired and weary from the constant striving and quest to do more, more, more. Maybe this is God’s way of teaching me that I can manage to cultivate grace in the storms. I can learn to stop, to rest, to seek His peace no matter my circumstances. Maybe this strange, mysterious ailment that feels like a burden and a punishment is actually a blessing in disguise. Or maybe not. But I definitely won’t know until I’m on the other side.
Today, I am in the middle of the storm. I am in the middle of the mess. I look in the mirror and my head throbs, my eyes are overly dilated, my stomach is being...uncooperative, at best. My body is tired and weary and everything within me is screaming at me to crawl back under my covers and ignore the world for the day. That’s me. That’s my body in this moment—that’s where we’re at.
And so, right now I am asking for grace – grace from myself, for myself. Grace from the world around me. I am tired. I am so, SO tired. But I am trying my absolute best with all that I have right now. Grace. Please, Lord….grace.
“You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural.
You are more than dust and bones.
You are spirit and power and image of God.
And you have been given Today.”
― Shauna Niequist
March 13, 2019
Maybe my destination isn’t where I envisioned it would be.
Maybe my distance may take a little longer to run.
God is growing my resilience in this strange, unpredictable season of life. God is helping me to be resilient to the pull of the world and the nagging of my human nature as He helps me run this race which is turning out to be longer than I thought and with a finish line that’s appearing to be in a much different place than I would have chosen for myself.
But God knows best. He can see the end before the beginning. He can see the entire staircase when we can barely make out the next step. We are capable of running the race set before us...but we can’t do it in our own strength. And fighting the Lord’s plan for our lives only exhausts us more. The end destination, if it’s where the Lord has called us, is the BEST destination for our lives and our purpose. Our weary souls won’t be at rest on this side of heaven unless we are walking in His footsteps.
March 7, 2019
It is March...and I am thawing.
The winter begins to melt away and I am left with what often feels like a broken, hollow shell of a human. I am left with the aftermath of winter - the body broken from grieving a loss that should never have happened, a mind riddled with anxiety over everything that remains outside of my control, and insides that are all mixed up in knots that need to be sorted out.
My brain hurts. My heart hurts. Everything feels so loud.
But it is March! I am thawing...
There are birds that cautiously begin to chirp in the mornings, and despite the weather man predicting snowfall, the days stay brighter for longer.
There is hope at the end of the tunnel...because it is March and I am finally thawing.
My sweet friends, how much I long for you to know and experience the goodness of our Savior. He is here....present in the suffering and in the thawing and in the glory yet to be experienced. Things have been hard.hard.hard, but He has been walking me through it...every single step has been His provision and His dictating. He is good, when we are not. He is good when the world feels cruel and unfair...when we’re scared and feeling hopeless, HE IS STILL SO VERY GOOD ❤️
Stand strong in the knowledge that He is not finished with you yet. It is March...and if your thawing hasn’t begun, cling tight to Jesus, because your thawing season will come and it will be glorious!
February 22, 2019
Maybe there’s a bit of denial tucked among my struggles. I don’t want to be sick right now. I don’t want to be consumed by depression due to being sick. I don’t want to be dealing with crippling anxiety day in and day out. I don’t like the fact that this disease and the medications used to prevent me from going blind have caused me to spend most of my day in the bathroom and made it hard to maintain all the work I did 4 years ago when I was battling an eating disorder. This disease has literally sparked spiritual warfare in my life – it’s attacked me from all angles and my heart is weary from fighting. I know that I can persevere in the Lord’s strength. I have so much love surrounding me and so much support lifting me up. But I don’t want to need that love or support. I want to be healthy. I want to be able to put my best foot forward.
I don’t want to feel useless or purposeless. I don’t want to feel weak or needy. I don’t want to just take up space in a world that needs people who are willing and able to fight to change it for the better. I am not at home in my body right now. I wish I was, but I’m just not.
“I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything's easy. I believe that loss and emptiness and confusion often give way to new fullness and wisdom.”
― Shauna Niequist
February 4, 2019
Ask me how I am.
Someone ask.
I will not volunteer the information that I am breaking inside. I will not burden those around me—all struggling in their very own ways—with my confusion, heartbreak, grief, and simultaneous gratitude for the Lord. The contradictions that were occurring inside my soul were staggering and enough to wipe out even those with the greatest emotional endurance.
24 was a wild season of immense loss. I fell prey to the belief that, because my physical health and my emotional capacity have diminished, I am no longer an acceptable human being. I was reduced to a flat, low-energy, shell of a person who lost her spark. The “obnoxiously optimistic” Sarah Catherine was buried deep beneath someone who was grieving the loss of physical health and trying to navigate the messiness of the gap between who I was and who I am in the midst of illness – a wide expansive valley where I saw no way out and felt lost in the desperation to get back what I had before. After almost 2 weeks in the hospital with very little to show for it...I found myself bargaining with the Lord, “If you just heal me, I promise I will do x, y, z.” “Why, Lord, after everything that happened medically in 2014 is this happening?” “God, do you see that this is happening to me, but also to my parents, my fiance, my friends and loved ones? They are hurting too – especially my parents.” I was telling God everything He already knew and trying to talk Him into healing on my own terms.
My turbo-tanks got WIPED out. I was running on empty.
As I embark on the 25th year of my life, I am trying to be open to finding joy and growth in the painful circumstances of everyday grieving. Through wild seasons of life, scattered with joy and immense blessings, I am learning how to navigate imperfect healing. I am working so very hard to come to terms with the loss of the person I knew myself to be and to accept the unknown parts of who I am becoming. Again and then again….and then again.
I know that I can trust that the heart of God is so very good – that He loves me endlessly and wants nothing but good things for me. I am learning to view life differently in the aftermath of illness, loss, and change. I know that for the very best things to come together, often times everything must first fall apart. Control is an illusion, dear friends. And when we let go of our need to control the paths of our lives and the process/timeline of our grieving, we can then transition to learning and growing from it instead of running and hiding from it.
One thing that brings me SO much comfort on the most difficult days is the reminder that God accepts me just as I am, but He loves me FAR TOO much to leave me this way – He longs for us to grow in Him, to seek Him more, to ignite His Kingdom with love. The world needs you. And the world needs your brokenness and your story. Allow yourself the space and time to grieve. It will change you, but it won’t break you. And, if you let it take its own time, it can be a glorious and fruitful season of growth through grieving.
February 2, 2019
There are always valleys in our lives – that’s nonnegotiable. But sometimes we get stuck in them because we have been in them for what feels like SO long that it becomes our new “normal.” And that can enlarge any previous struggles with depression, anxiety, mental/physical illnesses and therefore hinder our spiritual lives and our walk with Christ.
I have tattoos on my wrists. One means “God is greater than the highs and the lows.” and the other is the image of mountains (actually the blue ridge mountains)...because I find peace in nature and it reminds me of the best parts of the place I grew up. I have always found I feel closest to God and to heaven when I am climbing those mountains and especially when I am enjoying the view from the top – I just feel so small that suddenly nothing is about me anymore. It really makes you realize how big the world is around us. I have these tattoos on my wrist as a reminder – I can constantly see them.
But oh how easily our human minds play tricks on us and lure us into disbelief. I have found myself doubting there is a lesson to be learned here in this season of unknowns, grief, and celebration. I have found that here, in this valley, I have given in to the idea that this is my home now.
Our homes are never in the valleys. We may reside there for a season, but friends, our home is in HEAVEN. Our eternal resting place! This earth is just our temporary home and, although we may change addresses frequently while here (like in the game of tennis, we may be rallying back and forth between the mountains and the valleys – a never ending quest to forward our mail to the right address!!) but we should never set down roots during our time here on earth. This is temporary. This is fleeting. This is a brief moment in time.
We should strive to always seek more – more of Christ, in every season we encounter and regardless of whatever our current address may be. You may live in the valley for a season, but that shouldn’t be your long-term retirement plan. God will provide the wisdom. God will provide the lessons. God will provide the way out of temptation, God will give you the perspective you need if you make the conscious choice to surrender.
Surrender is my word for the year of 2019, so I’m trying to make sure it’s on my mind a lot and that I spend time frequently meditating on it/thinking about and letting it sink into the depths of my soul. It’s not easy – especially in a world where we are taught to take so much control of our lives into our own hands.