spoonielife – Page 2

February 2020

Undone

February 1, 2020February 1, 2020by amysaxons

We placed our house on the market three weeks ago and every day since has been like living in some alternate reality. The endless cycle of picking up, putting away, wiping down, and clearing out in order to hide the fact two cats and their humans live here had grown old by the second day. I’ve seen vlogs of people on YouTube who want you to believe they happily clean their house every day and offer advice on how you could learn to love to do the same. I like a clean house and I’m no slacker when it comes to actually doing the deed, but there is no way I want to adopt some ritual that forces me to scrub the toilet every morning in order to feel joyful.

Nevertheless, with the knowledge people could be coming over at the drop of a hat to see the house, I found myself in a state of constant tidiness not too far removed from the feeling you get just a couple of hours before hosting a dinner party. You have ten things to do at once and the pressure is on to get it all done before the first ring of the doorbell. We don’t host dinner parties anymore thanks to my MS. I don’t have the energy to clean, cook, AND be charming anymore. Most days it’s a struggle just to do one of these through to its completion. So, it wasn’t too far into the first week my prayers grew in fervor for God to intervene and make some way for me to survive this part of the process.

We had two open houses and several showings the first couple of weeks which resulted in one low-ball offer that was $40K below asking price and begged to be rejected. However, we received and accepted a second offer this past Monday, but it was contingent on the young couple’s house selling first. It was such a great offer we thought it was worth giving it a chance. For better or worse, a contingency does not stop your house from being shown, though it usually slows things down to a trickle. So, we were absolutely flabbergasted by the number of people who crawled out of the woodwork the day after Zillow and Realtor.com listed our house as “Contingent”. Our hearts and hopes soared that maybe something would come of it all, but my MS was absolutely seething and out to take revenge because I was not complying with its dictatorial demands for rest.

My prayers took on a begging tone asking Him to help me survive and to get another offer that would press the contingency to a precipice and conclusion. With each passing day my appeals intensified to the point they became more like chants than well-spoken prayers.

In addition to keeping things tidy, it grew harder and harder with each passing day to pack up the cats and put them in the car, move the litter boxes to the garage, stash the scratching posts and then drive somewhere to wait until the coast was clear before reversing the process when I got home. By Tuesday of this week I had become so tired I couldn’t walk or be up for more than five minutes at a time. Matter of fact, my energy didn’t even last long enough for the water to boil in the electric kettle for a cup of tea. The situation was dire!

That’s when it happened, right at the intersection of I Can’t Do This Anymore and God, Please Help Me. We got a full price offer on Friday that ended up being the one we got to keep. The young couple who made the contingency offer on Monday was not able to buy our house until theirs sold so they, unfortunately, fell victim to the standard kick-out clause when we got the second offer.

Our realtor, in the business for years, told me that she had never had a house with a contingency offer all of a sudden get so many people wanting to see it. She was still turning down requests to view our house over the weekend well after the ink on our contract was dry Friday.

My emotions have been all over the place through this whole experience. Excitement and anxiousness mixed with a healthy dose of hope, anticipation and nervousness. But when I saw the final full-price offer I thought I was seeing something wrong. I even looked our listing up online to make sure I had remembered our listing price correctly. Sure enough, I had seen it right the first time. That’s when I started sobbing uncontrollably as a flood of relief and gratitude to God completely made me feel undone by Him. Although I had begged God to intervene on our behalf with continuous pleas, I couldn’t take in how mightily He had answered. As the reality of it all slowly dawned on me, my continuous chant turned into millions of Thank You-s and You’re so good to me-s. I couldn’t stop saying it over and over as tears of joy and thanksgiving fell unashamedly down my cheeks. The fact that, once again like so many other times in my life, He had heard my prayers and intervened on my behalf, left me feeling completely and utterly undone and humbled before Him.

I am writing this in the middle of the afternoon while reclining in bed waiting for my MS to wear out its retaliation for doing too much this week. Let my MS do what it may, I don’t care. I am glowing in the ceaseless cascades of my Father’s love for me. I’d spend every hour of every day left in my life stuck here lying in my bed if I had to just to know and to feel His tender, caring, kind, reassuring love. Thankfully, I know I won’t have to do that. It is His nature to be just that good to me!

~ See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1)

December 2019

Life On the Boil

December 8, 2019December 8, 2019by amysaxons

Somehow, every time I steam vegetables on the stove I manage to get busy with other meal prep work and look away at the exact moment the water starts to foam and boil over. It leaves an icky, mucky mess on our glass stovetop that requires a lot of elbow grease to clean up.

The entire month of December can sort of feel like this, too much to do and not enough time and energy to do it all. Pageants, musicals, parties, decorating, cooking, shopping, wrapping, organizing, traveling… the list is endless and it comes on top of our usual work, church, and family duties. In an effort to create and maintain memorable traditions with our children, family, and friends, it seems we overextend ourselves. Stress begins to boil over, taking away the joy of the season and making us feel like a mess on the inside.

These days, Christmas or not, many people choose to live their lives set on a constant boil. Every spare moment of time is filled with activity and on the go. I don’t want to leave the impression that it’s wrong or bad to have a full calendar. I suppose I used to do that too when I still could. It felt good to be busy with school and church activities, going to the movies or hanging out at a friend’s house, attending concerts, having dinner out, or just riding around town with my best pals. It was fun being away from home and it felt as if I was seizing the opportunity to really get my money’s worth out of every moment of life.

I don’t want to go back and change much about that time in my life, except that I wish I would have weeded out some of the empty, self-indulgent things I did in a mindless effort to keep life bubbling away. Instead, I would have benefited from some unfilled moments so I could study, reflect, and work on my relationship with God.

Thanks to MS, I rarely live life on the boil anymore. Most of my days are somewhere between a long, slow, gentle simmer and stone cold. Amazingly, just as with food, there is as much nourishment and fullness in life whether it’s served hot off the boil, warm from a good simmer, or cold straight out of the fridge.

On most days, I am glad life has slowed down. It has allowed for me to boil life down to the essentials instead of life boiling me down. Yes, sometimes it’s true that I would like to have a bit more boil and a little less cold, but the joys of life can be savored either way.

My wish for you this holiday season is that you purposely carve out some quiet time to grow your relationship with God. You likely won’t find Him in the chaotic, hectic, hubbub of festivities, but in the quiet stillness of a holy night about 2000 years ago.

November 2019

If Only… NASA, Amy, and Youth

November 24, 2019November 24, 2019by amysaxons

Sometimes the difference between an intricate, highly complex machine working or blowing apart is down to a simple, small component’s integrity at one single moment in time. NASA learned this lesson the hard way in both the Challenger and Columbia disasters. In both cases, the defective components were made months and even years before either shuttle was assembled.

As the symptoms of my MS have progressed, I am reminded of how “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14) each of us truly are. Despite billions of dollars worth of research, centuries of learning about the anatomy and physiology of the human body, and life-long careers devoted exclusively to trying to figure out what goes wrong to make MS activate, there is still so much we don’t know. In the early 1600s, German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler was correct when he described his study of planetary movements as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him”. This statement is true in every avenue of mathematics and science, especially in the study of biology.

Somewhere, somehow, some way, long before I ever had any symptoms of my Multiple Sclerosis, all the viral, environmental, hereditary, and biological elements were just right to kick this disease into action in the biological petri dish that makes me me.

My immune system got all confused and started destroying itself. Thanks to MRIs, I have seen for myself the white smears and dots scattered across my brain and spinal cord where tell-tale signs of damage can be easily seen. It remains inexplicable how it happened, but that doesn’t stand in the way of it being true. All my progressive, worsening problems with balance, walking, incontinence, dropping things, quick and excessive fatigue, tingling, and slow processing are all due to these white globs that made their initial marks nearly thirty years ago.

It’s staggering to imagine that such small blobs etched out so long ago have created the big problems I deal with every day.

Hmm, I feel a life lesson coming on. Sometimes it’s the little, but wrong, things we allow ourselves to do early in life that eventually turn out to be our undoing in the end.

If only someone would have checked the integrity of the O-ring on the right solid rocket booster before the Challenger took off, seven lives would have been saved. If only one day we could figure out what causes MS and how to stop it before other people’s neurologic integrity becomes comprised and they end up going through a progressively worsening disease process. If only we ourselves strove to live Godly lives and to teach the young how to choose right, so many lives would flourish and God would be glorified. If only.

November 2019

Sister Trip on Mom’s Birthday

November 8, 2019November 8, 2019by amysaxons1 Comment

This past Monday was my Mom’s birthday, it was the fourth year my sister Susan and I celebrated it without her. It’s always a tender kind of day for both of us, one that’s full of sweet memories hemmed in by missing her.

This year Susan flew from Texas and I flew from Missouri to spend Mom’s birthday together in Florida. Mom always loved that we were close as sisters and she would have thought this was an excellent idea! It certainly was, ummm…, an interesting experience for me flying solo. I was drug backwards through two terminals, in and out of three elevators, and on and off the sky train to get to my connecting flight to Orlando via Dallas.

We stayed at my sweet mother-in-law’s vacay house near New Smyrna Beach. We filled our days with lots of reminiscing, stories both old and new, lots of laughter, and, of course, exceptionally good food!

We got sand in our toes and sea breeze in our hair the first full day. The tide was in and the waves were white-capped one and all. That afternoon we discovered the scenic, old downtown sidewalks and stairs into nearly every store were not meant for me (or anyone else with limited mobility) to peruse, so we went back to the house and lounged the afternoon away.

Mom took us girls to Epcot over spring break in 1988. How can it have been that long ago?! Yikes, we’re getting old!! Susan has been back since then but I haven’t. So, we decided to go on Monday, November 4th, Mom’s birthday. Mercy, we enjoyed ourselves and know Mom would have approved of all the sights, sounds, and tastes! We lucked into being there during the International Food and Wine Festival. We ate our way around the world and let our inner gluttony rule until we had made a full circle of the park.

As good as the other days had been, I think our last full day was probably my favorite. We found a beautiful, quiet, out of the way, public park with a pier jutting out into an ocean inlet. We sat and soaked up the Florida sun, the sounds of the leaves rustling through the palmettos, and the peacefulness of our surroundings since no one else was there.

As we turned around to walk back along the pier to our rental car, we noticed a common egret perched on the wooden rails. It looked straight at us and then serenely continued to preen and go about his business as if it knew we were harmless. Susan and I quietly inched our way closer taking picture after picture until we were no more than three feet away. Egrets are very common shore birds in Florida and someone else residing there might have hardly noticed his presence. However, we were mesmerized by him and thought he was anything but common, as his name implies. His feathers billowed in the wind and his black legs and toes were a beautiful contrast against his white body. And his eyes, his eyes! I’m positive he not only saw us but appraised us as he stared our way. We three stood in our strange, small huddle for several minutes with him posing and us snapping picture after picture. He was the one who had called our meeting together by his mere presence so it was only polite that he should be the one to adjourn it. With a deep bend of his knees and a long stretch of his wings he was in flight, soaring over the waters and away from us. Susan and I talked about him and what a fascinating creature he was, but we were just one side of the experience. I’m back home in Missouri now but find myself thinking of him. I wonder if he thought anything at the time of the two women held in his charms and if we left any sort of lasting impression on him that he remembers now.

Much like the memories of our Mom, his brief encounter with us will linger and live on inside us.

October 2019

I’ve Become a Little Sew and Sew Thanks to Information Overload

October 1, 2019October 2, 2019by amysaxons3 Comments

Hello Friends, happy October to you!

It’s been three weeks since I finished my Ocrevus infusions and, thankfully, I have returned to my normal MS baseline. I’ve had quite a few people ask me if I have noticed my MS “getting better yet”. Sadly, the answer is no. There aren’t any cures for MS and there is nothing to take away the damage that has already been done. The purpose of Ocrevus, and all the other disease modifying drugs, is to try to stop any further damage from occurring. There are many researchers working hard to try to figure out how to not only stop MS from progressing, but also how to repair damage to the nervous system in order to reverse the debilitating symptoms of the disease. This is a pretty good segue into the information overload mentioned in the title.

Perhaps you are like me and have had to take breaks from social media and the constant barrage of local and international news for the sake of maintaining your own sanity. Well, about a year ago I signed up to a couple of daily MS research news outlets. They arrive in my inbox each morning and present several summaries and links from around the world to everything ranging from research proposals to current studies in mice (poor little mice, they’ve born the brunt of forward thinking MS flops and successes), comparisons of a current MS drug against a possible new drug, clinical trials in all manner of stages, forums about MS, and even articles by fellow MSers about how they live and cope with the disease.

I typically do like to be on top of all the latest MS information, but here lately I’ve been feeling like it’s all too ivory tower. Down here in the trenches, at least in my trench, it’s muddy and wormy with the walls always caving in and needing constant repair. I’m covered in the dank, earthy stench that never leaves my nostrils, even when I dare to raise my head in an effort to try to go over the top, despite having trench-foot. To top it all off, a hail of bullets marked MS come flying over my head intermittently keeping me in a state of constant vigilance and exhaustion.

So, at least for now, I’m going to lie low down here in my mucky but familiar trench and try not to worry about what the people in the ivory towers conjure up for the next move. I’m not giving up on it and I’m glad someone is in the ivory tower, I just need a break from it all for a while.

To that end, about a month ago, I dusted off my sewing machine, turned the music up, and started stitching away! My Mom was a wonderful seamstress and even owned a fabric store when I was young. She showed me how to sew but it didn’t come as easily to me as it did for her. I took a sewing class in high school and had a few lessons through 4-H, too. I’ve sewn a few things through the years as an adult but never really thought of it as something I could get into as a regular hobby. That is until now. I am thoroughly enjoying myself and looking forward to each new day to get stuck in to some new project! The first one was this little sewing catch-all.

I used the leftover material from the catch-all to make some cute bowl huggers for the microwave.

While it is true that some days I am too tired to sew at all and other days I have to take breaks after just a little bit of sewing exertion, just being in my little sewing space brings me joy. For example, looking at all this thread…

…and ALL this fabric with cats ❤️ brings me inspiration for new projects to try when I eventually do have energy!!

I finished up a couple of these boxes yesterday so I would have a better way to see and store my fabric.

I’ve made several things for others, too, which has given me joy and purpose. Fair warning: If you get a Christmas gift from me this year it’s probably going to be homemade. But don’t worry, not all the fabrics I’ve been stashing away have cats on them 😉.

Signing out from the trenches and hoping you’re upwind from me!

Amy