Oh My Herx!

I feel like I'm running an eternal marathon against life.  I run in one direction, as my dreams continually whisk further from my aching and overexerted body.  How do you follow your dreams when your body is constantly fighting against everything you ever wanted?  I feel as though all odds are against me and I'm ready to collapse in a defeated heap.

A herxheimer reaction is the immune system's reaction to toxins and bacteria being killed within the body.  It's usually the reaction to a Lyme patient's treatment.  Lyme doctors and patients usually refer to herxheimer reactions as "herxing."  There were many days and nights that I watched my mom suffer through herxing as I silently suffered with her as an emotional reaction to that heartbreaking image.  Now as I experience it myself, I realize how miserable life can really be. 

When I was little I would come home crying with a scraped knee, and as mom provided adequate comfort and healing my tears would slowly fade away, along with the pain that enveloped my knee.  Oh how I wish life was that easy now.  Along with extreme anxiety comes the feeling of abandonment, heartbreak, and discouragement.  As the tears come, they don't fade so easy.  Neither does the pain that is reminiscent of a knife gouging out my heart.  At times I feel as if I've fallen in a deep hole of total darkness, and there is no way out.  There's times when I'm stuck in utter despondency and I feel my heart being crushed under the pressure of reminders that I'm sick, useless, and undesirable.  Severe anxiety isn't something to take lightly.  Not when utter despair surrounds the very soul that you base your entire existence around.

Herxing doesn't just come in physical pain.  Although, that's also a major part of it.  A herx for me is like a knife to the heart along with all of the physical pain that comes with it.  Dizziness, nausea, headaches, weakness, trembling, chills...  I'm feel like I'm losing my mind at times.  As if it's slowly fading along with my body.  I'm exhausted, and simply tired of being tired.  After all those years of watching my mother suffer and not knowing to the full extent what she was going through, I agonize with her now because I'm literally feeling her pain.  My mother is so graceful and eloquent in her method of suffering, and this disease has truly made her stronger and gloriously beautiful.

 I want to fight this thing.  I want to fight until my fighting capacity is weakened to almost nothing.  I want to fight until the light of healing pierces through me.  I want to come out alive and strong, just like my mother.  I truly believe that I can beat this, and be completely healed with proper patience, long suffering, and enduring to the end.  As I once lay awake in the middle of the night I thought to myself, "Through this trial I will cleave to my Savior so hard that no intangible substance, no person, and no illness can cut me down.  And through Him, my burdens will be lifted, peace will flood my soul, and I will be healed."  I'll never forget that spiritual confirmation that all will be okay in the end.  Just because things are bad now, does not mean that they will be for forever.  And even through my darkest of times I still believe that life is beautiful.  I still believe that beauty and light can be found in every minescule crevice that life has to offer.  There is light everywhere, it just has to be seen.  Life is beautiful, and so is suffering.