Over these past few months I seem to be battling a series of small, but discouraging illness.  And over it all looms the shadow of a possible larger illness.  Is this cough or pain just a cough or pain?  Or is it something bigger?

 

Through my life I can’t even count the number of times I went into the doctor with some small complaint and come out finding out I have a serious medical condition.  Fatigue?  It’s fibromyalgia.  Sore wrist?  I have 7 (not bones in each wrist and they dislocate easily.  Need new glasses?  Have monocular vision.  There’s no small ailment that might not require physical therapy.  Seriously.

 

And it’s discouraging.  It makes you paranoid of your own body.  It makes you expect the worst.  And it makes you afraid of seeing a doctor for fear of what you’ll find out.

 

Recently I’ve been feeling this quite acutely.  I expect to keep getting sicker.  I expect to be able to do less.

 

And I don’t expect healing.  I’ve stopped expecting healing.  Which is ridiculous, because the number of times I’ve heard the words “miraculous recovery” from doctors should be telling me something.  Despite all that has happened, I still lack faith.  I still look for the silver lining in the cloud, rather than expecting the cloud to leave.  I look for what I can be learning in illness, rather than expecting it to leave.

 

I know this is wrong.  I’m praying about it.  I’m working with someone on this.

 

Tonight I was asked to pray for healing for someone else who is hurting.  And I didn’t hesitate for even a moment.  I jumped right in and prayed with boldness.

 

Evidently I have faith for others and for God working through me, just not for healing for myself…..

Some books I read hardly seem worth a mention on the blog.  For instance, my last book, The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan was weird weird weird.  I generally like McEwan, but this one just kept getting stranger.  Why didn’t I put it down?  It was only 100 pages long.

 

My current book does bear mention.  True Compass by Edward Kennedy.  I used to read a lot more biographies than I do now.  Memoirs are an interesting thing though.  Are they just to make themselves look better?  How accurate can they be?  Are they just an exercise in ego?

 

Teddy’s book is really good.  I haven’t gotten up to the parts of his life where he rather went astray, but so far it has been a good read and very interesting.  His life covered so much history and it’s very interesting to get an inside view.

 

I’m on page 100 of 500.  Can’t wait to devour the rest.

I spent the first part of this week so very thankful to feel healthy again.  It was amazing to have energy again.  I got through some very big work things and started planning for the future.  Things felt different.

 

And yet…

 

I had this sense of foreboding.  How long could feeling good last?  How would I use my time well?

 

And then…

 

Last night I walk through the door to my house and was hit with a wave of perfume.  I thought I would be okay.  It was fabric softener (oh, how I hate fabric softener) and it was really really strong.  I got ready for bed and tried to go to sleep before I panicked about things.  Except that I was clearly having an asthma attack, and going to sleep while having an asthma attack is not the best idea.

 

So, I got back up, took my inhaler, kept fighting the panic and set to work dealing with the issue.  I put the clothes back in the washing machine with some fragrance free laundry detergent. I got some windows opened.  Eventually I fell to sleep around 3 am.

 

Today, of course, I’m dealing with the fallout.  Inevitable wheezing, fatigue, pain and what feels like the start of a cold.  And I’m depressed.  I’m depressed because this cycle seems never ending.  I’m depressed because it has turned to a big drama at home on the theme of my being a freak.  It’s one thing to handle this kind of drama when you’re feeling well, but with the physical and mental aftermath, all I want to do is pull my duvet over my head and hide for a long long time.  Or until I feel better – whichever comes first.

It’s amazing how getting over my cold has allowed a whole section of my brain to engage.  This morning I finished a task that has been haunting me for weeks.  I needed to update a wiki.  I would look at the instructions and everything would swim in front of my face.  This morning I got through the whole thing remarkably quickly.  It’s amazing how much mental agility we take for granted!

 

So thankful to be a thinking human being again.

The cold seems to be slowly receding and I’m starting to feel human again.  However, the surreal feeling of “why am I the teacher?” continues.

 

Exhibit A is one of the reports from one of our students who is off on a justice week

Mike

Ummm…  yeah.  Got a little choked up reading that.

 

Then, this afternoon I had a skype call with another woman involved in one of our courses and she was talking about crazy things that have been happening.  Conversations in pubs that ended up involving everyone else around and been clearly God inspired.  And lots of other inspirational stuff.

 

At one point she asked me “Do you ever feel like you’re in one of the books you read?”.   I think she was being rhetorical, but the answer is clearly “Yes, Ella, I definitely do.”

Last week I did a big teach on learning, so I’ve been thinking a lot about why we learn, what we learning and how we learn.  I had some great lightbulb moments during my preparation and the teaching itself went pretty well.  Overall I felt like I had reached a new level of understanding in this journey to understand learning that I’m on.

 

At the same time some really cool stuff has been happening with the students.  Cool experiences, good writing, inspiring stories and it’s been great to watch all that.  And a good reminder that the teachers are also the learners.  There’s still lots left for me to learn and I’m going to enjoy doing that.

Haven’t been blogging as I don’t really want to rename my blog “Chronicles of Snot”.  However, thankfully, I found a fabulous new website that has kept me laughing.  For all of you who love (or hate) the Food Network, check this out.

Food Network Humor

Please send Nyquil!!

I’m sitting in the Stanford Boiler Room thinking.  I can hear beautiful piano music from their worship room downstairs.  I can hear people in the kitchen preparing for community meal.  And…

I’m fighting off another cold.  Fighting might be the wrong word.  I’m so tired of being sick.  So tired of not being able to breath.  So tired of having no energy and never being able to do everything properly.

I have to wonder if there’s a message in all of this.  I think I’ve been doing a decent job of resting and sabbathing.  I’ve been eating well.  No reason to keep getting sick again and again.

For now I’m going to drink some Lemsip and enjoy being in a wonderful big room with music and someone making a nice dinner for me.

Some new favourites in my world:

Singer:  My new Chris Tomlin CD Glory in the Highest arrived this week.  I’m trying not to wear it out before Christmas.  However, an early favourite is Winter Snow, which features Audrey Assad.  I love her voice!  It’s great to discover a new favourite.

CD:  Church Music by The David Crowder Band.  I have some of their other stuff, but I really think this CD is the best they have put out.  I particularly love the song The Veil, but this is one of those CD that holds together as a cohesive piece of art.  I would highly recommend you listen.

Podcast:  Finally started listening to Andy Stanley’s leadership podcast this week.  Excellent.  It’s not just sermons, but a snippet of a talk with an interview about the key points.

Television:  Ugly Betty!  Seriously.  I watched Season 1 in August and now I’m hooked.  Glee isn’t available in the UK yet, so that can’t be a favourite yet.

Book:  Good Eats The Early Years.  It’s a birthday gift that took a while to arrive (thanks Bryan).  Not at all what I expected, but an amazing reference book I know I’ll be going back to again and again.  I’m trying to win all of England over to my love of Alton Brown.

Just a few superficial snippets from my life.

I had decided that this year I would do American Thanksgiving as my schedule currently looks like I’ll have more available time then.  Instead, I would just cook a chicken for my house.

As tends to happen with me, that just seemed to grow.

In the end we had:

- root vegetable soup (sweet potato, potato, carrot, onion and parsnip) with apple and pear relish

- roast chicken with garlic and orange – for some reason the small chicken took more than 2 hours to cook

- sweet potato mash with fresh ginger and nutmeg

- fried parsnips

- baked stuffing

- fresh bread

- apple crumble with warm custard

It was really really good!  Should have thought ahead though to how much of the meal required peeling.  Luckily, my friend and I were having an Ace of Cakes marathon during much of the day.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!