Breathing is difficult
I've had a chronic cough since January 2018. Sometimes my prayers go, "Heavenly Father, please help me breath. Please, I just want to breath."
The first six months of this were suffocating. I couldn't speak full sentences. I was putting people on mute every few words during calls at work. I couldn't breath. I had just started to hear myself laugh and sing again, but breathing is the first step towards laughing and singing so those things stopped.
In Japan I couldn't walk without pain. My knees would hurt intensely after just thirty seconds of standing so I hobbled through my mission with pain in every step. When my mission president asked me to extend my mission an extra month I looked down at my knee-braces as I tightrope-walked the curb of the sidewalk and immediately said yes. My prayers changed at that point. Instead of asking Heavenly Father to heal me I said, "If Thou knowest that I can serve Thee without legs, then go ahead, take them."
The pain was so bad I would picture myself raising a family in a wheelchair and decided to be willing to accept that life if it was God's plan.
Today my knees hurt after squatting my 5 sets of 10 reps of 225lbs on leg day, but I can stand and I don't need a wheelchair. He gave me my legs back.
aaaaaaaand then took away my voice. The accident happened five months after I left my ex-husband and one month before the divorce papers were signed. I was broke and didn't have health insurance. I had driven away with what I could fit in in my 04 Nissan Sentra, and then “La Palomita Blanca” got totaled and was gone. A year and a half later and I'm still broke, but now I can't breath.
Breathing.
If it weren't for Lauren answering my phone calls during my time in hell I would not be alive today.
"Lauren...I...can't...breath. I...can't...it hurts too much."
My hafu angel would listen and say, "Breath in...1, 2, 3, 4....hold it...1, 2, 3, 4...breath out...1, 2, 3, 4." over and over again until I could calm the anxiety and breath. I have used this technique for the past chronic-cough year and I rocked meditation at the Salt Lake Buddhist temple due to all of this practice.
I thought I would be magically healed before our work's Christmas devotional at which I was selected to sing. I thought, "Surely He will cure me of my 11 month-cough so that I can perform..."
- I did sing well, but a few minutes after the performance I was throwing up in the bathroom. It is not uncommon for the cough to be so intense sometimes that it causes me to throw up. Sighhhhhh.
I've seen every doctor I could think of. My mother even took me to Guatemala to see her uncle that deals in natural medicines like heal-touch and medicinal flowers. When that didn't work, I went back to old doctors that I had already given up on to try again.
I am now on a drug that calms my nervous system down. It makes me drowsy, but it stifles my nervous system's reactions to all the little things that used to make me cough. NOW - I - CAN - BREATH!!!!!
On Tuesdays I sing with the Debra Bonner Gospel Unity Choir and on Wednesdays I sing with Los Tres Calaveras (haha we don’t have a real group name yet). Completely out of my comfort zone in both Bible-Belt gospel music and old classic Mexican Boleos and I love it. I still cough here and there, but its nothing compared to before and now I refuse to stop singing.
I'm grateful Heavenly Father is teaching me how to have patience. How I am learning to take a step back and breath. In... 1, 2, 3, 4. Out... 1, 2, 3, 4. I’m slowly learning to willingly give Him all of me. Not only my legs or my heart, but my soul in every breath I’m given while on this world.
He lives. Through the atonement of my Savior, Jesus Christ, I get to live eternally with my family if I keep the commandments. I’m trying to be a good human being. I’m trying to escape the smog of Salt Lake’s narcissistic culture and am striving to be His witness. He lives and because He lives, I can breath.
The first six months of this were suffocating. I couldn't speak full sentences. I was putting people on mute every few words during calls at work. I couldn't breath. I had just started to hear myself laugh and sing again, but breathing is the first step towards laughing and singing so those things stopped.
In Japan I couldn't walk without pain. My knees would hurt intensely after just thirty seconds of standing so I hobbled through my mission with pain in every step. When my mission president asked me to extend my mission an extra month I looked down at my knee-braces as I tightrope-walked the curb of the sidewalk and immediately said yes. My prayers changed at that point. Instead of asking Heavenly Father to heal me I said, "If Thou knowest that I can serve Thee without legs, then go ahead, take them."
The pain was so bad I would picture myself raising a family in a wheelchair and decided to be willing to accept that life if it was God's plan.
Today my knees hurt after squatting my 5 sets of 10 reps of 225lbs on leg day, but I can stand and I don't need a wheelchair. He gave me my legs back.
aaaaaaaand then took away my voice. The accident happened five months after I left my ex-husband and one month before the divorce papers were signed. I was broke and didn't have health insurance. I had driven away with what I could fit in in my 04 Nissan Sentra, and then “La Palomita Blanca” got totaled and was gone. A year and a half later and I'm still broke, but now I can't breath.
Breathing.
If it weren't for Lauren answering my phone calls during my time in hell I would not be alive today.
"Lauren...I...can't...breath. I...can't...it hurts too much."
My hafu angel would listen and say, "Breath in...1, 2, 3, 4....hold it...1, 2, 3, 4...breath out...1, 2, 3, 4." over and over again until I could calm the anxiety and breath. I have used this technique for the past chronic-cough year and I rocked meditation at the Salt Lake Buddhist temple due to all of this practice.
I thought I would be magically healed before our work's Christmas devotional at which I was selected to sing. I thought, "Surely He will cure me of my 11 month-cough so that I can perform..."
- I did sing well, but a few minutes after the performance I was throwing up in the bathroom. It is not uncommon for the cough to be so intense sometimes that it causes me to throw up. Sighhhhhh.
I've seen every doctor I could think of. My mother even took me to Guatemala to see her uncle that deals in natural medicines like heal-touch and medicinal flowers. When that didn't work, I went back to old doctors that I had already given up on to try again.
I am now on a drug that calms my nervous system down. It makes me drowsy, but it stifles my nervous system's reactions to all the little things that used to make me cough. NOW - I - CAN - BREATH!!!!!
On Tuesdays I sing with the Debra Bonner Gospel Unity Choir and on Wednesdays I sing with Los Tres Calaveras (haha we don’t have a real group name yet). Completely out of my comfort zone in both Bible-Belt gospel music and old classic Mexican Boleos and I love it. I still cough here and there, but its nothing compared to before and now I refuse to stop singing.
I'm grateful Heavenly Father is teaching me how to have patience. How I am learning to take a step back and breath. In... 1, 2, 3, 4. Out... 1, 2, 3, 4. I’m slowly learning to willingly give Him all of me. Not only my legs or my heart, but my soul in every breath I’m given while on this world.
He lives. Through the atonement of my Savior, Jesus Christ, I get to live eternally with my family if I keep the commandments. I’m trying to be a good human being. I’m trying to escape the smog of Salt Lake’s narcissistic culture and am striving to be His witness. He lives and because He lives, I can breath.
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