i've waited a few weeks to post this blog and i'm not exactly sure why. i know the things i'm about to write were things i wanted to share, but i think the idea of sending these words out into the abyss seemed a little scary. so i write slowly, with caution, asking God to take my humble offering and make a meal of it.
towards the end of september i went to the doctor for a physical because of a pre-exisiting condition part of the physical involved me having an ultra sound a week after my original appointment. my ultra sound was seemingly routine, but a few days later when my doctor called with the results it seemed that things were not routine. she was concerned that perhaps my original pre-exisiting condition was a mis-diagnosis and that i had something much more complicated and scarier. she encouraged me to see a specialist and said she was no expert (being a GP) and that i should wait to worry till after seeing the specialist. yeah, right.
about a week and a half went by before i could get in to see the specialist and during that time i became a crazy person. i cried at the drop of a hat (literally, i dropped my beanie one morning and burst into tears). i suddenly became one of those people who trolls the internet for information and i made my mom listen while i rattled off every scary story i read. i was hurting, deeply. i was scared and sad and angry. when i am feeling vulnerable my first instinct is to crawl inside myself and hide. i am not a share-er. i do not let people in easily, it's just not in my nature. but because of some very important work that God has been doing in my life recently, i decided to ignore my instincts.
i gathered a handful of close family and friends together and told them what was going on. i asked for their support and prayers. i asked them to open their hands and help carry the weight that i'd been dragging around. amazingly, they did. i can't express in words how that healed me. years ago i had been betrayed by someone that i thought was a safe place and i had decided that trusting people was no longer an option. for years i'd been walking around on the earth carrying the anger and pain and distrust. it. was. exhausting.
trusting my friends and family with this very tender pain wasn't easy. a couple times i woke up in the middle of the night worried that i had made a mistake. but after a few days i leaned into their love and i felt so incredibly safe. they cried with me, prayed for me, and told me it was all going to work out. who knew that such simple acts would be so precious?
in the end, the specialist said my original diagnosis was correct. she believes that my GP just didn't factor in some other important variables when reading my scan. it was a roller coaster of a month but i think God took me on it so i would learn that he created me for community and i'm so glad he did!
