I can not believe it has been a year since I posted last. In my defense, adding the second child to the mix is quite the adjustment! Add a health scare and a new business and you might say I have been quite busy! Mostly just doing my most important jobs which are serving the Lord, trying to be a great wife, mom, sister, aunt, daughter and friend. Wow! Just reading that paragraph lets me know why I have been so busy!
Another reason I have not posted is because I was on a journey since my last post (more on that below). I am A girl that has to think through what I am dealing with and come to terms with it before I can talk about it. I have a few close people that I share "me" with but mostly it is God and I who work through things. Not that I am too strong to get help but it has always been my way of coping and working through things. Often times it is after The Lord and I have worked through something that I am able to discuss and then the feedback I receive from my trusted others helps pull it all together for me. Anyway I had to get all of this together enough (certainly not all the way because it is a process) to even be able to post. I thought about this blog often and hoped everyone knew i was still "kickin' it!" but I just didn't have any of me to give outside of what I was giving to my family, friends and my healing process. I felt the Lord leading me to post but It wasn't until one day when He spoke to me through a devotion that I realized what I was doing. It basically said that when we don't share our struggles with others- 1) others can't benefit from our journey 2) God can't receive the Glory by others seeing Him work through our struggle and bring us to victory. I remember sitting there and knew that was just from Him to me that morning. I LOVE those times!! You know!? It's those times that you are like "okay! I hear you and I know you are talking to me!". I had never thought of it that way. I had just always wanted to take care of others and encourage them so I didn't want to concern them with my struggles so I always went to the Lord and we worked on them together. I never realized that I wasnt helping others by doing that nor giving God glory. Whoo! Those are the two most important things to me so I knew that I was being urged to do things a little differently. Now with that being said, after 31 years of doing something one way (or however long you are actually working through issues haha) its hard to stop the habit. So that's why I am back blogging. I can't be anything less than my best for this blog nor can I not be transparent ( it just isn't me!) so as hard as it is, I'm going to give you everything I got. Forewarning: I have been told I talk in circles and I REALLY like to drive in my point so you'll have to bear with me!
Now that I have explained my thought process, let's get back to the story......
To my surprise, and out of the blue, I had a rough 1 year anniversary of my SCAD events. I was rocking along doing so well! I was even able to come off of my anxiety medicine that I was told by my cardiologist that I may never be able to after the events. I was feeling great. I was exercising, had no chest pains, started a new business and was enjoying the summer with my family and BOOM!!! The anniversary rolled around. Anniversaries are supposed to be great occasions. They are milestones and should be celebrated but all I could do was maintain through the day. Praise the Lord my mom was here to help with the girls and to talk to me because it was like nothing I had ever experienced before.
I have learned through my trials in life to be somewhat of a Mind over matter person better yet, a God over matter person is more like it because I know my peace of mind and strength comes directly from Him because this girl is nothing without Him! I could not get my mind to relax. No matter how hard I tried and prayed. It started out with some deaths of people that I knew. I would cry thinking about one's short life and the other's children. I guess it was some form of survivors guilt. Then the sound of an ambulance would make me have flashbacks and then it got to where when I was replaying the events on the anniversary dates (you know the good ole "at this time last year, I was..." ) it was like I was there. I could even smell the hospital sheets. I know you are thinking "she was loosing it" and quite frankly, I felt like I was that and having another heart attack. I would become so anxious that my heart would pound out of my chest Nd even send pain up my neck. Oh no! Guess what?!? That's one of the signs of a heart attack! More panic! As I type this, I get a little tickled because since my heart attacks, I have had several instances like that. Some are hilarious now because the symptoms would not be anything like a heart attack but yet my mind would go into over drive and I would be almost convinced it was and then thankfully common sense would kick in and I would be able to calm myself down. Not last August though. It was crazy! Initially my mind was fine but my body was over reacting to the anxiety and after a few days of that, my mind became tired and my emotions were all over the place. I spoke to my sister (physician) who advised I needed to get back on anxiety meds. I spoke to my cardiologist and we discussed what was going on and I was diagnosed with Post Tramatic Stress Disorder and back on Paxil I went. Praise the Lord! It started working within days and I started feeling like Jessica again and my body started acting as it should. It was tough to know that I had to take the anxiety med and still is a bit today but I realized I had to be kinder to myself. I asked myself if one of my sisters were going through that would you tell them to take the Paxil? Yes I would. Would I think they were weak? Not for a second. So in that, I was able to cut myself a little slack and know myself well enough to know that I had done all I could but just needed a little help. Praying with time that I can stop the Anxiety med but if not that is okay to because I have come to find that so many people are on them. Not that that makes it all better but a little easier to accept.
