Prints and Petites and A Life Update

We have had a lot on our plate the last few weeks, and I am dragging a little. I haven't been painting nearly as much as I ought to. Shortly after my last blog entry, our cars were hit by a drunk driver who totaled one and caused a fair amount of damage on the other. They ran on foot after totaling their car. Talk about learning more about auto insurance than I ever wanted to know - we finally have the claims settled and got a replacement car last night after more than 2 weeks being home bound. I really should have been painting more, but my health has been up and down since the CO trip and we have had a few bad storms that knocked power and internet out. We are also moving at the end of the month across town - not far, but it is daunting to think of packing everything up again. Since 2012, I have moved 6 times, and this will be the 7th. All of the stressors these last few weeks have taken a toll on my MG symptoms. I am not bouncing back the way I anticipated, so we have stopped tapering down my medication. We were hoping by tapering down that we would see a second remission - that the powerful immune suppressants kicked my MG into a dormant state. That is not the case. We know that multiple remissions are rare, but I am still hopeful that all Travis and I are doing to better my health will get me back to the point where MG symptoms don't need to be managed by medication because they aren't there anymore. I've been having fatigue, ptosis, and some blurry visual disturbances that have been increasing the frequency of headaches (luckily no migraines at this point). It is frustrating, and Travis has let me have a little pity party for myself for the last 24 hours since my neurologist check up. I know that there is nothing else I can do other than pray and take care of myself, but it is hard to shake the feeling of failing or inadequacy. Remission happened once before - why won't it happen this time around?

When I was first diagnosed, people used to tell me things like "God won't give you what you can't handle" or "You must be very strong for God to give this to you". I don't believe that God works like that - I don't think he envisioned this for my life when he created me. God doesn't give us what we can handle, God helps us handle what we are given. If I believed that God gave me MG, I would be so angry with Him (which I was, for a time, for feeling like He allowed this to happen to me). He is just and a judge, but he isn't a punisher. He is a helper. So I choose to believe that while this was not part of his original blue prints, He has equipped me. He's given me the gift of making to bring me hope. He's put people in my life who may be afraid of what lifelong chronic illness brings, but will stick with me anyway. And He's given me the mystery of faith that, while I still can have my moments of righteous (or unrighteous) anger, I always come back to trusting that God is my 'ezer - my power and strength.