A Personal Update

It’s a good thing we got into the apartment when we did because some of these days have been downright chilly. We would have been miserable sleeping in the van. It was so cold last week that we decided we needed to buy winter coats and hats and gloves before it got any worse.

This week I was able to finish transferring all of our stuff from the van into the apartment. Yay! I’m still getting used to all the cleaning and vacuuming but I’m hoping it will become second nature after a few more weeks.

I also have a few extra jobs to do before I can settle into a more relaxed routine. The van was quite messy from our impromptu trip to Nebraska and really needed to be cleaned. Brett vacuumed it out earlier this week and I was able wipe down the front part yesterday. Now I’m working on washing all the bedding and the curtains. I still need to wipe down the main area and the cabinets and drawers. We want to have it clean and ready to go in case anything ever happens with the apartment. Not that we’re expecting anything to happen. The leak is fixed and I’m doing great!

Brett and I took a swing dance class on Wednesday and had a lot of fun! I was able to keep up quite well. I could tell I was tiring more quickly than the rest of the class but I don’t think anyone else could. Judging by how sore I was on Thursday, I still have a long way to go in building back my strength! I think to really rehabilitate all my muscles I might need to do some targeted strength training like Pilates.

My main focus for this next season is to keep healing physically, build back my body’s strength and start working towards emotional, spiritual and intellectual healing. When my body was in a state of chaos I couldn’t really grieve or ask the theological and existential questions that tend to arise during intense suffering. All my energy was going towards survival and maintaining some semblance of sanity and cheerfulness. Now that my body is healing it’s time to start on a second journey of soul healing.

I’ve tried so many times to start that journey only to be interrupted by a sudden spike in symptoms or the appearance of new symptoms or a change in the environment. I’m hopeful that this time it will be different.

As part of that process, I want to start reading more books. I want to reflect on the last 5 years in a more intentional way. I want to try to reconnect with people I’ve lost contact with. I want to spend more time on writing, both privately and for the blog. I’d like to go over all the feedback that you guys gave me a few weeks ago in more detail.

If you’re still reading this, I just want to say thank you so much for following my recovery journey. It is my desire to keep sharing things that will inspire courage and hope in all my readers whether you’re chronically ill or healthy, religious or not. Brett and I even filmed some videos of our daily life as van-dwelling mold avoiders that I’m hoping to share soon. I just need to figure out the technology side of things. Stay tuned. 🙂

By the way, Brett and I made a beautiful PDF of my favorite resources for suffering souls. I created the content and he made it look fancy with his superduper graphic design skills. It’s available for free to my email subscribers. Click here to sign up and receive 5 Resources for the Suffering Soul.