Finding your bridge back to health isn’t always a straight, steady path. You’ll encounter twists, turns & sharp angles along the way. You’ll hear scary squeaks from weak footings underneath you. It will feel wrong, frightening & disorienting. You may even lose True North for a bit & have to wander backwards & around to reset your health compass. Whatever happens don’t let yourself freeze up. Standing still is losing ground. Treading onward is the only bridge there is back to health. That all sounds so trite. But it’s all so true. And it’s all I have to offer right now. Honestly, the way I feel today I could have written this post with one punctuation mark & it would have told the truth. (?)

WHERE TO START

Living near & being treated by GOOD Dysautonomia | POTS | Mast Cell | Lyme | Gastroparesis | Ehler-Danlos | Chiari specialists, and staying on the meds they prescribe is a start. I’m building my bridge as I write. Every word is a step forward. This website is a quasi, hand-crafted overpass between where I was 20 years ago: unable to move or eat, needing a toilet next to my bed; & being able to walk around the neighborhood like I see so many others doing with such ease. I was able do a little of that. Walked a mile and a half (!) at Point Lookout Beach in July on a coolish day. Then the heat of summer hit me hard. I’m on a temporary pause now due to BP drop/tachycardia symptoms, and back on Gatorade. I can also tell you doing this blog is sometimes injurious to my health, due to the amount of work needed – especially since I don’t really know what I’m doing technically with this blog & all that goes into maintaining it.

But I\’m not giving up. I owe it to my husband & my sister who have supported me through so much. I owe my parents too. When they were alive they were always there for me. And I owe it to God who put me here to DO SOMETHING WORTHWHILE. At this precise moment in time I would categorize myself as cautiously optimistic my bridge to health will be completed – if I keep going. I choose to believe making this website was taking the first step.

I JUST CHANGED MY MIND

I have not written any of these posts in Word & copied & pasted them here. I write in WordPress as I go. Something came over me as I read the previous paragraph back regarding the phrase “cautiously optimistic the bridge will be built.” I’m not going to delete it because I want you to see what I was thinking & feeling a moment ago & what I’m choosing to think & feel now.

Change can take place spontaneously, if your mind is oriented with what you really want. Cautiously optimistic suddenly sounds to me like a set-up for failure. Because I know how things went in the past I’m presuming they will go that way again. Yes, I still feel lousy, very low, weak, upset about my situation & haven’t gotten to the right dose of the right medication yet. Even so, I have decided to change my thoughts about what’s occurring.

For thousands of years may wise men have tried to warn us thoughts have consequences. Our Lord said “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap.” (Gal. 6:8) He wasn’t talking about planting crops. What you sow in your mind is brought into reality after a certain amount of time. When it finally shows up in our lives we have forgotten our past ruminations & therefore don’t recognize out past thoughts have come to fruition. Why should I keep bringing into reality the same physiological nightmare that almost killed me? NO! I’m going to think the opposite & trust the opposite will bloom into reality. I have nothing to lose & everything to gain. Therefore, I now categorize myself as ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN MY BRIDGE TO HEALTH WILL BE COMPLETED AND I WILL WALK OVER IT TO A NEW LIFE.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop medication or do stupid things like vacuuming the house when I don’t feel well (I did that last Sunday & almost passed out), or walking in the hot sun, or going up & down the stairs repeatedly. That will bring on fainting & tachycardia. I have to tattle on myself lest you think I always practice what I preach. The other day before getting in the shower I had tachycardia & could feel my BP drop. I decided I would tough it out. Like an idiot, I took the shower. In my mind I was being heroic. Far from it. It was wrong thinking accompanied by dangerous exertion. I’m lucky I didn’t pass out, hit my head & die. I was doing what I wanted against my better judgment – because I hadn’t been able to take a shower for five 5 days for exactly the same reasons. I just wanted what I wanted. I was being selfish actually & acted with pure stupidity. Where was my regard for my husband? If something untoward had happened to me how would he have felt? He’s been through enough. The rest of the day I was physically ruined & spent hours recovering from my mistake. Don’t be foolish is what I learned from that episode. How many times must I re-learn what I already know? I’m better than that. And so are you.

MIRACLES DO HAPPEN

As I wrote the words above my feelings started changing. My thoughts changed. They’ve taken a turn & are moving me into a different place. (The trick is to sustain them.) I’ve been praying for health for so long, waiting for God to heal me miraculously, in a split second, the way He raised Lazarus from the dead & commanded him to come forth from his tomb. If that was God’s will He could certainly make it happen for me. But even Lazarus had to do his part: he had to sit up on his burial slab, pull off his burial wrappings, and start walking his way back into life again. Maybe it’s time for me to do the same.

Perhaps there’s a method Christ was trying to convey to us in the instruction: “Ask and ye shall receive.” (St. Matthew, 7: 7). What if we changed the first word from Ask to ACT?

YOU CAN DO MORE THAN YOU THINK YOU CAN – SO LONG AS YOU THINK PROPERLY

When dysautonomia or any of its associated conditions turn you into a prisoner of your bed there’s not much you can do. Even thinking is a luxury. But you can:

• Talk to God though prayer. Ask for health.
• Express gratitude even though you’re not well, because you’re still here & have the opportunity to build a bridge to health.
• Now comes the really hard part. You must literally see the bridge in your imagination. Nothing in this world has ever been built without someone first imagining it & seeing it in his mind’s eye. But it’s not just imagining it that builds it.
• In order to turn a thought in the mind into objective physical reality one must believe not just in the possibility of it becoming real, but in the SURETY of it coming into being. Put yourself in the place of wellness and FEEL THE WELLNESS. One must also take action to make it happen. A cake won’t bake itself no matter how much you think about it. Ya gotta mix the stuff & put it in the oven. THEN the cake you imagined first in your mind becomes a delicious treat for the whole family to enjoy.

HOW TO HELP YOURSELF

Envision yourself, via your imagination, having crossed the bridge to health that YOU built with YOUR imagination. You must try to do the imagining every single day. (I know how hard that can be. And on some days it will be downright impossible. But at least make the effort every day to picture a few seconds of you in a better place.) And here’s the most important thing, you must BELIEVE that not only will it happen but that it already HAS happened – despite all appearances to the contrary (as per Wallace D. Wattles). That’s how you’ll create for yourself a different future than would have occurred without you imagining it. It’s not mumbo jumbo; it’s God’s law: “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap.” 

I don’t have Instagram but I saw a meme from it somewhere. It was a woman holding up a sign. Only her hand was visible, along with the sign, and the vast ocean behind it. The words on the sign read: YOUR FOCUS DETERMINES YOUR REALITY. To a great degree that is true. Plus if Instagram says so that makes it true, right?

THE METHOD

God gave us imagination as a tool. Like any tool we have to first learn how to use it then use it. So imagining is the FIRST ELEMENT & must be done daily. BELIEVING THE BRIDGE WILL BE BUILT before you see it built is the FAITH part of the equation. “Be not faithless but believing.” (St. John, Chapter 20). Without Faith the bridge will NEVER be constructed. Imagining & Faith are intertwined necessary components. You have to ignore what you see & feel currently & become expert at seeing yourself in the future healthy & well.

1. PRAY (Ask.)
2. IMAGINE (See the vision of your future healthy self.)
3. BELIEVE it has already happened. (Because it has. You just haven\’t reached that point yet. Have faith that you will.)
4. ACT (Take some kind of step toward rebuilding your health. Depending where you are in your journey it may simply be taking your medication is the only step you can take. And that’s fine. If the medication is the right medication & you start feeling better, then you can start thinking of new ways to help you health along to wonderful.

YOU ONLY HAVE TO CROSS THE BRIDGE TO GET THERE!

What does building a bridge back to health look like for YOU? Please tell me and everyone else reading this post, how are you building your bridge back to health?