I have written about strange coincidences happening in my life to show me good things happening and being on the right path, but the opposite can happen as well. Right now, I have entered into a period of time that I really don’t like. I have been getting a occipital nerve block each year for my migraine headaches and it has been working great, except when it wears off about a year later as it has done recently. The nature and duration of my headaches changes. They seem to last longer and instead of being painful they make me more anxious.
It’s difficult to explain, but it feels as if everything in my life starts to go wrong. Little things and big things just don’t work out the way they should. It feels like everyone around me is suddenly acting thoughtless and rude. Everything starts not working right. Almost none of it could possibly be related to a headache and yet, I have to take it on faith that it is.
Here’s a perfect example. I had a Zoom meeting scheduled with someone yesterday. When the time came, he didn’t show up. I waited fifteen minutes and went on to do other things after texting and emailing him. I got really upset more than I should have. I had gone to feed my dogs and I was sitting on the kitchen floor watching them eat. At the same time, I was crying because my head hurt, and the meeting didn’t happen. It was then that I got an email from my friend. He apologized. We got on Zoom and had our meeting. I didn’t mention crying to him or being upset because deep down inside I knew that it just wasn’t missing the meeting that was causing my response.
Normally, I don’t cry that easy. A missed meeting isn’t something to get really upset about; it happens all the time. It had to be something more. The thing is a missed meeting has nothing to do with a headache. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with how I am handling the headache. It isn’t like because I am not handling my headache well, my friend would purposefully miss a meeting. And while that is true, they are related.
When I don’t handle the headache well, it is like having an exposed nerve open to the entire world and instead of floating in the water, every time I feel anything come near me, I jump and create waves and move my body all around. Then, it takes effort on my part to calm down and get back to where I can just go with the flow and float in the water again.
I can tell that I am getting very tired because the more I jump the more tense I get and every time something else comes up, the more I want to jump. There’s two places where I need to have faith now. First, I need to have faith that when I jump it isn’t so much that everything is going wrong in my life as much as it is that I am in pain and that is what is causing me to jump and have trouble just floating and flowing with life. Second, and this part is the hardest, I have to have faith in God to get me through it. When something touches me and I feel like jumping and causing waves, I need to just turn towards God and ask him to hold me in the water, lift me up, and help me float. To be honest, I’m not good at it and I don’t know if I will be able to do it, but I am willing to try because I am willing to put my life in His hands.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
