I never posted this. Oh well. It’s only been 6 months . . . It’s Christmastime! Can you believe it? I never do. Ever since I became a mom – 17 years ago – Christmas seems to come around on a faster pace. As soon as we pack up Christmas, it’s time to unpack and vice versa. As soon as little painted faces and costumed creatures come around in search for treats, I know that the starting gun is about to be sounded, and it frustratingly stirs up my anxiety. Isn’t that a shame? I truly hate how the celebration of Jesus’s birth is taken over by the onslaught of perfectionism for the ideal family celebration – basically well meaning but each area overdone; gifts, decorating, parties, traditions, etc. Each good on its own in a measured amount, but they all get hyped-up and completely distorted which leads to a complete distraction of the holiness of the season.  Maybe many disagree with me, but I sure wish we could turn the pace and the volume down a bit. I feel sad that I often feel relieved when Christmas Day is over, and then we can kick up our feet and breathe and hopefully remember to give God the glory he deserves.

I’m at my parents’ home right now. It snowed last night and it is so beautiful on their pond with a couple of snow covered mountains in the distance. My bedroom looks out to the snow through a plantation shuttered window with a Christmas wreath and big red bow framing the scene. Beautiful and peaceful.

I’m here recuperating. My parents home is just a couple hours away from ours and it’s our escape plan when someone gets sick or I get sick.  A few weeks ago it was our son, who escaped here to get over a sore throat and cough. Now it’s my turn. A couple of days after Thanksgiving, I ended up in bed for a week with a stomach bug, while also fighting a cold and experiencing extreme eye dryness with tenderness and occasional pain that was severe.

My stomach is clear now – thank goodness! Now I just have eye dryness and the cough from my lingering cold. It’s good to try to keep this at bay so that there’s no need to go to the hospital or let the situation worsen (which can scar my lungs – making my disease worse).

It’s been kind of a confusing year with my health, but overall I’d say I’ve improved. The last time I wrote, I had had an excellent improvement in some of my lung function testing. Then, the latest test in November showed that same area of testing was back to my original number – and my pulmonologist wonders how real the spring result was even though we retested it time and again bc of the great improvement.

I’ve been all over the map with the practical use of my lungs. At the beginning of the year I had times that I had to use my wheelchair and then at my peak in October I walked on the beach for 30 minutes while Jonathan carried a tank of oxygen on full blast. It was heavenly! If I can crank up the O2, I can do a lot more physical exertion. The practicality of hauling tanks and replacing them frequently is a logistical issue, but at least I can do it with pre-planning! I even walked in my neighborhood a few times this fall which has been years. Its really a canundrum since I can do those 30 minute jaunts when I plan it out, but then I get winded do the simplest task around the house b/c I can consistently bump the oygen up and down depending on every movement I make, so I usually try to consolidate my more physical times where I turn up the oxygen for a while and otherwise try to keep it at my baseline.

Despite the last pulmonary function test in November not looking as encouraging, I’m still praying