Message from the Pines

I've always loved pine trees.  There's just such a feeling of peacefulness, communion with God, or being "at home" when I am walking through the pines on the farm, surrounded by tall trees that soar straight up to the blue skies, a soft carpet of rust-colored needles muffling my steps.  When the breeze blows, the needles on the trees seem to whisper into the air, a soft rustling sound that is pleasant to my ears.   

When we moved to our current home, I was delighted to see a few stately pine trees in the yard.  While picking up pine cones is one of David's least favorite activities, I don't mind them at all!  (Guess which one of us mows the yard!) 

I remember as a child, picking up pine cones to use in decorating for the fall and holiday season.  Craft time often involved gluing glitter on the tips of the cone, or creating pine cone "turkeys" by poking multi-colored construction paper "tail feathers" into the larger end.

I marveled at the spiral design of the pine cone, eventually learning that this was some natural mathematical concept regarding spirals.  (I admit, I had to look up the proper term to refresh my memory.  It's called the Fibronacci Spiral.)

A guest once told us that our pines had "cat faces" on them.  I had never heard that term before and asked him to explain.  He pointed to scarred places on the trees, and said at some point in that tree's growth, it had experienced a trauma that twisted it, damaging and scarring the trunk of the tree.

I could see exactly what he meant -- and imagined that there had been some mighty storm that had injured the tree.  Yet the tree survives, and it is fairly straight in spite of the twisted "cat face" that is a reminder of the storm.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a local farm and spied a pine tree that stopped me in my tracks. At some point during its growth, this tree had a catastrophic trauma.  It completely diverted it's path of life. There's no "cat face" here -- it's a total detour where the trunk of the tree may have been nearly snapped in two.  YET it survives.  It obviously suffered some real Bumps In The Road.  While it will never be quite the same as it was, originally -- it still reaches sky-ward, it is still growing.  It is still beautiful enough that I had to take the photograph.

 I felt it whispering to me.  I knew what it was saying.

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Joshua 1:9

It was a year ago this month that my "cats face" trauma began.

May 9, 2018, I felt a strange "shift" inside.  It's hard to describe the feeling but suddenly it was like my sense of space twisted.  That was the beginning of the storm.    

Two days later, I began experiencing double vision.  Within a few weeks, I could no longer hold my head up.  My health quickly deteriorated after that and I began struggling to breathe.  I couldn't walk from one room to another in my house without having to stop, sit down, catch my breath, and rest.  My speech slurred, I choked easily, and had difficulty swallowing. 

At the end of June, I made my first ride in the "business end" of an ambulance because I couldn't breathe.  I spent a couple of nights in the hospital. 
Mid-July, I made a second trip via ambulance.  This time I spent a week in the hospital, enduring multiple tests, trying to breathe, trying to understand what was happening to me.  

I came home with a diagnosis of Myasthenia Gravis, MuSK positive.  I was home just two nights when I made a third trip to the hospital.  I nearly choked to death on a sip of water.   My husband David literally saved my life that night.  

I felt so depressed, so hopeless, so stunned by the whole thing.  I was tethered to an oxygen tank 24/7.  I used a wheelchair to get around.  I needed help bathing, dressing, even combing my hair. I had to take tons of strange medications with even stranger side effects.   Just a few weeks earlier, I was walking 5 miles a day and life was going great.  What storm had hit, twisting my life?  Was this how life was going to be now?  I felt like a huge burden to everyone, including myself.

I will admit, it has been a LONG, TOUGH YEAR.  I have cried buckets of tears, I've screamed at God, I've endured needle pokes, unanswerable questions, difficult and often painful neurological tests, days when my voice goes raspy and my eyes are weak, medications that created other issues that required MORE medications, and days when I literally could not move enough to get out of bed.  Because my immunity was suppressed, I missed out on a LOT of family events, community activities, and church services.  

And yet -- like that crooked pine tree -- I am still here.  I am much better.  I am thankful that I can drive some.  I can smile, thread a needle, eat a normal meal without choking, and take a short walk.  I am learning to pace myself and do what I can, rest when I must.  

I am grateful for my husband David who is a wonderful caregiver.  We have grown closer together during this ordeal.  Interestingly, in studying about my condition he took a closer look at his own health.  He has made some drastic lifestyle changes that have paid off major benefits in improved health himself!

I have a terrific medical team -- having a Primary Care Physician, Neurologist, and Pulmonologist who all LISTEN is quite the jackpot!  Therapists and nurses have helped me adjust, to become more active, to wrap my head around my "new normal" and move forward. 

My support system of good friends and family members is a special blessing.  My sister and I text or talk every day.  I have friends who call, send cards, visit, or just say, "Hey, do you feel like going out for lunch?  I will pick you up!"  An afternoon of laughter with friends is great medicine!

It still isn't an easy adjustment, but I am beginning to settle into this "new normal."  I realize there will still be some tough days, some slow days along the way -- but right now the GOOD days are outnumbering the not-so-good ones, and that is a Super Terrific Thing!!

 I will end with one other Pine Tree message.

"Grow where you are planted."