The Dreaded Weather: Fibromyalgia’s Nemesis

Two days ago on January 11, the weather coming home from work was seventy-one degrees.  I live in the Midwest, and this is unusual weather for this time of year.  Today, we are under an ice storm warning and upon waking, the temperature was in the twenties.  That is a fifty degree drop in temperature in two days!

To create a perfect storm, today is Friday the 13th and there is a full moon.  I can’t make this stuff up.  Fibromyalgia sufferers know what this means.  A collective sigh can be heard around the world.

Our bodies are human barometers, and I believe we tell the future weather patterns better than any weather person out there.  It starts with that telltale part of our body that lets us know something is brewing.  For me, it is my left hip.  The questions commence: Will this stop here, or will it boil over into a flare-up?  Then the panic and pleading follow: Please don’t get worse!

My body decided to not play nice, so now I am entering through the rabbit-hole.  For an added bonus, the foggy brain is visiting and making me feel like a bumbling fool.  I love feeling like a ventriloquist’s puppet and when my mouth opens, I have no idea what will come out. I meant to say “doctor’s appointment” but what came out was “McDonald’s.”  I love the collection of facial expressions I receive when my words don’t match the context of the conversation.

Sometimes I wish that my ears were like a mood ring.  When different levels of the fibro symptoms occurred, my ears would turn a different color.  At least that way someone on the outside could have somewhat of an idea of what I am battling on the inside.  Can you relate?

If I had dark purple ear lobes, that would mean I’m in a lot of pain and my fibrofog is so bad that you may need an interpreter to understand what I am saying, or at the very least, give me five minutes to process what you are saying, so I can come up with a semi-intelligent response.

By the time I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, I dwindled down from a newly professed, on-fire Christian to a lukewarm puddle collecting at the bottom step after a spring rain.  I took God off of His throne and determined He wasn’t big enough to handle something as life-transforming as this.  How could He be?  My life suddenly went from saved to impossible.  Wasn’t He supposed to protect me from this?  I  had just made the decision to become His child after all.

If this sounds even remotely like you, don’t listen to this lie.  I listened for too long and I can tell you the outcome.  I became bitter and lived in a world that I didn’t like or understand.  I stepped into a place that enveloped me in a cold embrace, and I stayed there out of spite.  I didn’t want to believe in a loving God who would allow this to happen.  It just didn’t make any sense to me.

God does love you, and this is not out of His control.  When we left Eden, we entered into a home that has broken our DNA.  Unfortunately, what shakes down from this manifests itself in different ways in different people.  Some people have arthritis, some people have depression, some have cancer, and some have our plight.  The combinations are endless, but our suffering isn’t.  God created perfection in Eden that we evicted ourselves from.  We chose a place He never intended for us to stay and made a way for it not to be our forever home.  We will suffer, we will have pain, and we will have sorrow.  What we have to decide is if whether or not we will have faith: Faith that He can hold us and carry us through, faith that He will never leave us and carry us during our most difficult moments, and faith that He knows our name even when we feel forgotten.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future'” (NIV).  God is holding you in these moments, and our broken DNA isn’t enough to break His promises.  We aren’t in Eden with all of its perfection, but God in His perfection chose to be with us.