Unknowns

Sigh.  I didn’t mean to abandon this blog, but here it lies, no update since August.  

I hope you understand, it’s not because my migraines miraculously stopped that I stopped writing.  It was because as one week dripped into the next, slowly, like a bag of saline, things changed.  Quitting my job last July was the most recent huge loss migraines caused in my life, but out of it came an adventure, a discovery of who this person is, the person that lives in my body now.

There is so much I could say to wrap things up, though I’m not sure if this blog has run its course fully or not.  I feel I’ve learned so much, looking back, and I want to tell you these things, but I don’t have words for it all yet.  But what you probably want to know, at least, is how I’m feeling nowadays.  “How are you doing?”  That infamous question. 

Things are still complicated.  Some days are great, some days are hard.  I’m in the middle of the very difficult process of weaning off some of my medications.  Because before this all began, before the incessant stabs and the constant headache, before the hospital stays and acupuncture and pills galore, back when things were “normal” and I was “healthy,” we had in mind to start a family.  Now, I’ve been on some medications for over a year, and though migraine is most common in women who are of childbearing age, very few migraine medications play well with pregnancy.  That’s a bit of a bummer, isn’t it?

We don’t know if I’ll ever manage to get off all of my meds.  It’s very much an open question.  Each step I take to wean off comes with pain and exhaustion, and doubts.  The doubts come in cold, fierce waves.  And the memories are difficult, too, the ones I have of darker times, of despair and hopelessness.

Perhaps you’ve had similar experiences with your open questions and unknowns.

I’m taking it slow, and showing myself a lot of grace, and learning more about what it means to have faith that God loves me in the nitty gritty, in the struggles that ebb and flow but are always coming, always looming.  This sort of faith can feel like hard work, it’s not natural or warm and fuzzy.  Looking back helps, seeing how much God has healed me, and how I’ve changed.  Thanking him for that whenever I can, whenever I remember.  And looking forward helps, too–reminding myself that God has a future for me, even if I always have migraines.  And I’d rather trust that future to an omniscient, loving Father than to little, messed up me.

Thanks for reading, friends and strangers alike.  Long live the yellow grippy socks!