{"id":3021,"date":"2016-05-12T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T06:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mops.org\/?p=3021"},"modified":"2016-05-12T00:01:14","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T06:01:14","slug":"health-in-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/health-in-moments\/","title":{"rendered":"Health in Moments: Embracing Motherhood With an Autoimmune Disease"},"content":{"rendered":"

I divide the timeline of my life as pre-disease and post-disease. But this is a new division. Just over six months ago, the same week my book\u00a0\u201cOvercomer: Breaking Down the Walls of Shame and Rebuilding Your Soul\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>was released, I woke up unable to walk. Fingers, hands, elbows, knees, ankles and big toes were swollen to the size of watermelons. My pain level was so high that I could only put a feather\u2019s weight of pressure on my legs.<\/p>\n

After a trip to the ER, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease \u2013 one that is chronic and lifelong. And while many people live with this illness and find relief in medicines and dietary changes (I know I will too), for now I\u2019m just trying to wrap my brain around this initial diagnosis.<\/p>\n

\n

Acceptance<\/em>: a word I\u2019m trying to grab a hold of, roll around in my tender swollen hands, make dents in with my achy fingertips, and mold into something that makes sense to me \u2013 something that could perhaps even pass as beauty.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I recently read that in any type of loss \u2013 physical, emotional, spiritual \u2013 one has to make a list, an inventory of the important things that have gone missing. Doing so equips you to say goodbye, to grieve, to reckon. I won\u2019t depress you with my \u201cThings Lost List.\u201d It\u2019s long and sad and would probably bore you. Instead I\u2019ll share a piece of another list I recently started, a list to help me find my way towards that acceptance: \u201cThe List of Things I Have Not<\/em> Lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

That list contains people like my supportive husband, my friends and family. But it also includes moments \u2013 like the moment in the morning when I sit on the couch with a cup of coffee filled to the brim with luscious and thick vanilla creamer. I stare out the window at my neighbor\u2019s perfectly manicured backyard. With all those vegetables, herbs, daffodils and almost-in-bloom hydrangea bushes (in the backyard of all places, where no one can even see them!), well, he\u2019s just showing off.<\/p>\n

I sit on the couch sipping my coffee, trying not to be jealous of my neighbor\u2019s emerald thumb, until one of my sons sneaks down in his pajamas and bare toes. He snuggles next to me on the couch and asks me to read him a book or begs me for screen time before school. We burrow under blankets, poke each other and giggle, and comment on the neighbor\u2019s self-important tomatoes and lettuces. We wonder: Should we sneak over and steal some for a morning omelet?<\/em><\/p>\n

Our stomachs growl and we decide that we\u2019d rather eat donuts than omelets. But we don\u2019t have donuts, so we make oatmeal. And we giggle some more and then my other boys wake up and join us for oatmeal. The morning rushes towards school and the bus stop and homework and dinner and bath and bedtime.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019ve had that moment in the morning. And there on the couch with my coffee and my snuggly-son, I\u2019ve forgotten that my hair is falling out and that my weight is packing on. I\u2019ve forgotten that it still hurts to stand. There on the couch, my son doesn\u2019t even notice those things. To him, I am still silly mommy in the mornings.<\/p>\n

\n

A therapist\/blogger I admire, Dr. Kelly Flanagan, once wrote, \u201cIt turns out, peace doesn\u2019t happen when you find what you\u2019re looking for; peace is what happens when you call off the terrible\u00a0search for what you already have.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the thing we\u2019re all searching for is to finally stop searching.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I\u2019ve decided true health is for me \u2013 for just a few moments each day to call off the search for my former self, my pre-diseased self, the \u201cLost Things Self.\u201d In the mornings on the couch, with my coffee, the window and my pajama-boy, I\u2019ll pause my reckoning; I\u2019ll note these instances of beauty and entwine them to the newly divided timeline of my life.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Aubrey<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Aubrey Sampson is the mom of three crazy-hilarious sons, which is also to say that she spends most days in her pajamas drinking entirely too much coffee. On the days she manages to get dressed, Aubrey is an event and retreat speaker, a blogger, and the author of Overcomer: Breaking Down the Walls of Shame and Rebuilding Your Soul (Zondervan, 2015)<\/em>. She and her husband, Kevin, just planted their first church in the Chicagoland area.\u00a0You can find and follow Aubrey at aubreysampson.com<\/a> and @aubsamp.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I divide the timeline of my life as pre-disease and post-disease. But this is a new division. Just over six months ago, the same week my book\u00a0\u201cOvercomer: Breaking Down the Walls of Shame and Rebuilding Your Soul\u201d\u00a0was released, I woke up unable to walk. Fingers, hands, elbows, knees, ankles and big toes were swollen to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":3022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[411,412,115,56,402],"class_list":["post-3021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness","tag-autoimmune-disease","tag-disease","tag-health","tag-motherhood","tag-wellness"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}