Introduction - Living in a Fog

We all have difficult things that we face in our lives.  Broken relationships, illness, death, poverty.  I have not had to walk a very hard path most of my life, but I have had struggles.  I have faced tough times and been brought through a few fires.  I have relied on my God to bring me through these things.  His grace is unmatched.  I would love to share my story with you and give a voice to what daily life is like living with fibromyalgia and fighting it!

My journey with fibromyalgia began in November of 2011.  After living with severe pain in my legs & feet for over a year, getting worse as time went on, my husband convinced me to see a Dr. and figure out what could be wrong.  I was tired all the time and felt like I was living in a fog.  Whatever was going on was really interfering with my life & my ability to be a parent & keeper of my home.

At the time, I was 33 and stay at home mom of a 13, 10 and 2 year old.  Every day I would wake up and feel like I’d been hit by a truck.  Everything hurt.  I felt swollen and achy from my feet to my fingertips, up to my neck, jaw and top it off with a headache some days.  My joints were the worst.  I could tell what kind of day it was going to be by how much it hurt to walk down the stairs.  On the bad days I felt like my bones would snap as I took one step at a time gripping the railing for dear life.  I would get kids off to school and then sit on the couch and try to wake up for around 2 hours, or go back to bed for a few hours depending on how late my 2 year old would sleep.  Once I actually felt awake around lunch time, I could usually get ONE thing done during the day.  One errand, clean One area of the house, One playdate.  It wasn’t good if I tried to do more.  I often pushed myself though.  Just get one more thing done, or run in the store really quick.  That always led straight to a crash.  I was always forgetting meetings, or phone calls to make, appointments, or some other household tasks, or cancelling plans because I just couldn’t leave the house.  I tried to play and engage with my 2 year old, but more often than not, I couldn’t do much.  I couldn’t even take him to the park.   Just the thought of that made me tired.

For me, when I say I feel “tired” that usually means that my entire body is SCREAMING at me to “Stop Stop Stop!!!  Sit down!  Rest!  You can’t go on!”  It’s an all-consuming feeling of being overwhelmed and exhausted.  My mind would fog over & I was done.  Out.

I don’t know how I made it through dinner time most days.  Usually around 4pm I would start to head downhill.  Just in time for the older kids to come home and need help with homework (that I couldn’t do because I couldn’t even think) or be driven to some activity. The pain in my legs was more than I could bear by that time of day.  My husband would come home from work and watch me as I literally cried just standing up & walking some nights.  Forget cleaning up dinner.  I would park myself on the couch after eating and there I would stay until bed time where I would become so stiff and sore it hurt to move.  I was exhausted, yet I would dread going to sleep because I knew how bad I was going to feel when I woke up.

This is how I lived for a year.  Feeling like a failure at life.  Ineffective for ministry.  Wondering if this was just “getting older.”   I was ready for answers.  I was ready to have my life back.  I had hope.  I know that God can heal.  I myself have experienced a miracle in emotional healing.  I just didn’t know how long my journey with this would be.  Would you like to walk out of the fog with me?