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Thanks for visiting my diary. I've been journaling since 1984 and have chosen to share some of my entries online. They are not all positive thoughts, but I hope that reading them might be a blessing to someone who needs encouragement.
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Please also visit my music page, where you can hear samples from my debut CD, I Believe, which features songs written based on experiences shared in this journal.
I've got a nasty very painful scrape on my left arm (which happens to be my Meghan-working arm). Mom fixed me up with good bandages, and I'm just lying low for a while. I don't know how cold it's going to be tomorrow--maybe cold enough for me to wear long sleeves, and if so I'll make it to church. I'm admitting to not wanting to be seen with this huge bandage outfit, mostly because I am really having a problem with people assuming I can't take care of myself and I don't want to reinforce perceptions that blind people are fragile. Anderson is not known for its vast population of blind people, and when I'm hurting is not the time to educate people. So I may do cyberchurch and see if a new friend will come sit with me for a while. The main part of my house is in relatively good shape--I can shut off the bedrooms.
A few weeks ago someone suggested that I look into hooking up with a Stephen minister. Stephen ministers are people who volunteer to be available to people during times of crisis, and someone must have picked up on my crisis signals. At the time I reacted to it like I reacted to the idea of seeing a counselor when I was a teenager. "Oh, great! An assigned friend." I got brave and talked with the Stephen Ministries coordinator (also the pastor's wife), and she encouraged me to try it and if it didn't work out I could drop out and nobody's feelings would be hurt.
So I swallowed hard and decided at least this might be a way I could get out and have a bite to eat with someone once in a while. It's turning out to be a very good thing. The lady is a wonderful person who knows how to be truly encouraging and get me to examine things without making me feel condemned, and she's very good about emailing and calling just to see how I'm doing and letting me know I can call her anytime I need anything. So maybe that's what I need to do right now. I just keep having visions of the first time I went to this church when I was assailed by an elderly greeter who didn't greet me but gave me a barrage of blindness questions. My mom said I should use it as a ministry opportunity. I didn't want to minister. I was new and scared and timid, and her job was to greet! And I should have the right to not want to talk about something. I'm thinking of Jesus going away to avoid the crowds when he needed his time with God--when he needed to be ministered to. If Jesus can go away, I should be able to seek solace in the church without having to always be exhibit A on blindness.
My first reaction to falling like that yesterday was thinking how often I've been losing my balance, tripping, etc., lately and how I don't know other blind people who fall over things all the time. In fact, I used to have fantastic balance, and on a lot of days I still do. I can start falling over something, do a little happy dance, and never miss a beat. But give me a migraine or a virus or "med head" and watch me lose it all. And I was scared because I fell in such a weird position and initially hurt so bad in so many places that I didn't know if I could get up. That's happened to me before, and I've always managed to get out of the situation. So I decided to just be there for a minute and think about what I was going to do. Worst of all no one was home downstairs. I could have yelled till I lost my voice, but nobody was going to hear, and that's a scary thought. And all this about falling over a sleeping dog!
Poor Meghan got through the ordeal with no problem, and she came around and started sniffing me and sort of hovering. I've noticed she hasn't slept in the hall anymore. I finally got up and migrated to the bed in the office, where the sheets are a bit softer, to wait and see which pain would subside and which would not. Then I discovered there was a lot of blood on my arm. So I went in and washed up and tried to find the place where I was bleeding. I couldn't, so I made a make-shift bandage (because I didn't have the real thing in the right size) and made sure the entire pain area was covered. Later (much much later), I took it off and there was still blood there. I went downstairs, and Mom had gone to bed by this time. I woke her up, and she had some disinfectant stuff and the kind of bandage I needed. I actually needed two of the big gauze things that you tape on. So I'm bandaged up to about two inches from my watchband. Yippee. And to top it off, my favorite way of getting out of bed is to roll over, lean on my left arm, stick my feet on the floor, and push up. Funny how I don't think about something like that until I suddenly can't do it.
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