Recovery Day!

There are many realities that I have to accept about having a chronic illness like MS and one of those realities is that I need to pace myself and limit major activities to one or maybe two a day to be able to maintain a reasonably consistent energy level during the week. Another reality is that I can’t always control what a day will hold so on the days when I can’t avoid scheduling multiple major tasks I need to make sure to plan time during my week to recover - especially when I have multiple busy days in a row like this week. Today was supposed to be my recovery day and boy did I need it!

On Saturday we had a family gathering to celebrate our daughter’s upcoming 16th birthday. She asked that her birthday lunch be at Qdoba so that’s where we went as soon as our guests arrived. As an aside, at a previous visit we had mentioned that we would be back for her 16th birthday and they were excited, asked details and said they would push tables together and reserve them for our group. When we got to Qdoba on Saturday we found tables pushed together with a shiny table cloth on it and decorated with a sign and balloons. They gave us free chips and queso for our party and our daughter’s entree was free as well. They really went the extra mile to make her day special!

After lunch we went back to our house for gift opening and for dessert (she requested angel food cake (which I baked on Friday) with strawberries and cool whip). Family members stayed and even played a round of Uno before heading home. It was a fun day. I actually felt really good all day, even that evening when everyone had left I still had energy!

The next day was Sunday and aside from church there was nothing major going on. I didn’t even have to prepare a meal because we all had Qdoba left-overs. So I got a LITTLE bit of a break Sunday afternoon.

Monday morning I got some more rest but my Bible reading kept getting interrupted by my husband. Thankfully, he decided to get into the kitchen and make a delicious soup (which we had for dinner that night) while I finished up my reading. The afternoon was a little nuts once the kids got home from school because we had to eat dinner early and head to our daughter’s school for her Spring choir concert. The concert started at 6:30pm but she had to be there by 6pm. It went until 8:30. We went home without her because she went with her choir to Dairy Queen afterwards. I picked her up at around 10:30pm.

I didn’t get to bed until almost midnight on Monday night and Tuesday morning came much too quickly! My husband left town Tuesday morning which was also our daughter’s official birthday and I had a big list of things I needed to accomplish before noon because I was planning to pick her up early from school that day to go to the Department of Licensing to get her driver’s license and her friends were coming over to our house at 4pm for her party and my daughter had requested a taco bar.

So, Tuesday, already behind the 8-ball on sleep, I dropped the kids off at school and went shopping for taco bar ingredients. I was so tired that I decided I really needed to spend time with the Lord once I got home. Sounds counter-productive but time spent reading my Bible and in prayer always energizes me! So, after some holy rejuvenation, I started doing some cleaning and decorating. Then I made a quick trip to Qdoba (yes, again) to get a huge catering bag full of their fresh made chips and a couple of tubs of queso for the party as well as an order of chips and pico de gallo (for my son who wasn’t invited to the party.😉). After that I went and picked up some lunch for my daughter at Chick-Fil-A and headed to her school to pick her up. We ended up waiting a little over an hour to get her license but she got it and then we left to go pick my son up from school.

Then the REAL work began! I spent the next 3+ hours in the kitchen cooking taco meat, Mexican rice, black beans, warming tortillas, chips and queso, setting up the taco bar and cleaning as I went. While the girls were eating tacos I was cutting up strawberries and preparing everything for the strawberry shortcake my daughter had requested. I took food up to my son at about 6pm and I ate a little after that. I had to take a break for a few minutes with a cup of tea upstairs while the hilarity happened with the girls downstairs. I love my daughter and her friends but I also get sensory overload around them sometimes- especially after a busy day on reduced rest!

The party ended at 8pm and then it was time to clean up. Thankfully, I was able to push through and get everything cleaned up and kids to bed. And guess what? Everything got done even though I took a good 45 minutes out of my busy schedule to spend time with the Lord - 45 minutes I didn’t think I could spare when I got up that morning but then discovered it was the only way I was going to make it through the day.☺️ I was in bed by 10:30.

I didn’t leave any clean-up for myself to do today because I knew I was going to need today to recover from all the busyness of the previous several days. It was awesome to just come home after dropping the kids off at school, get some coffee and spend an hour of un-interrupted time with the Lord, reading my Bible and praying. I wrote a letter too and then I ran a quick errand to exchange one of my daughter’s gifts and then back home for a hot shower (which usually gives me an energy boost) and then lunch.

The respite ended there though - my son had early release from school today and it was chore day for the kids - so he cleaned (under my supervision) and then took a shower and when that was done I left to go get his sister from school. I dropped her off at home to do her cleaning and then took my son to the bowling alley to meet his friend for a fun time bowling and playing in the arcade. Then home at about 5:45 and it was time to fix dinner and pack lunches.

I then took my daughter (she drove but we aren’t letting her drive alone yet even though she has her license because we need to talk with her about the rules and we haven’t had a chance to do that yet) to Old Navy because she has a birthday party to go to next weekend and needed to buy her friend a gift. I told her I needed rest so we could go but I was staying in the car.

It is now 9:30pm and the day is over. My son is in bed and my daughter is drying her hair after a shower. Surprisingly, I don’t feel to badly considering I didn’t get as much rest as I had hoped for.

Tomorrow (Thursday) I will get an hour of time with the Lord in after dropping the kids off at school and then an unsaved friend (and former boss) will be knocking on my door to come inside and have coffee with me. I pray I will be a good testimony to her and that I will not be yawning through our time together- sends a bad message! Her husband is the son of a former elder at our church whose wife asked us to “pray for our boys” before she passed away). I have tried to maintain contact with them and they live just up the road from us. I pass their house every day taking the kids to and from school. I pray for them often as I pass by their home - especially when I see them out walking or getting their mail. In any case, I am looking forward to a chat over coffee - but it will require focus and energy and I am praying I have recovered enough by then - and that my time with the Lord in the morning will give me the additional boost necessary to be an effective witness and a compassionate friend.

I don’t know how long we will have together. But I will need to run a load of laundry at some point tomorrow and gather up the garbage and take it out. After school I have a meeting with my son’s special education case manager to go over his IEP plan to determine how it might need to be modified for next year.

I am trusting the Lord to carry me through the rest of this week and then there will be a 3-day weekend and that hopefully means a more prolonged rest period.

I am exhausted but I am extremely fortunate because I am still able to push myself to get things done, albeit more slowly and clumsily when I’m fatigued. There are MANY people who suffer with MS who frequently hit a brick wall and physically can’t push themselves further. I have hit that wall before and I never quite know when it might happen again so I really try not to over-commit myself. Generally what happens to me is I can keep going physically long after my brain stops being able to process and help me communicate. As long as I have a list of things that need to get done, I can usually finish it - I just can’t speak coherently while doing it which can be extremely frustrating to anyone trying to work with or help me.

This is a long post and I need to get to bed. But the point of my story is that God is faithful and if you make time for Him, He will make time for you and help you to fulfill your obligations. Don’t neglect your Bible or quiet time with the Lord - you need it more than you think you do.😊