I Hope This Isn't All The Better I Can Do

I've been trying to be a good Mennonite housewife this week.

I don't think I'm succeeding.

Monday I was tired from our Sunday activities, which involved early morning worship team practice, helping DrummerDude prepare for his first party, and helping host the party in the evening.

Which, by the way, turned out awesome. It's the first time our boys have ever had a young people party; usually we have family parties. This event involved guys and gals age 13 to 26 from three families, and they all got along famously. When they left they all said "We have to do this again! And next time mom and dad have to come!"

Which I think is pretty cool. How many teenagers do you know who want mom and dad to come to their next party?

So anyway.

I was talking about how STINKIN' TIRED I have been this week. It's just ridiculous.

I did manage to stumble around yesterday and pick up the good apples and pears off the ground under our fruit trees. Out of a couple of bushels of pears, we only had energy to get three --THREE!-- quarts ready to can.

Oh, please. It's got to get better than this. You have here a woman who in the past has been capable of canning twenty, thirty, even forty quarts a day. Not a measly THREE.

However, I also did Hubby's laundry, and baked bread, and made dinner, and supper (I know, big whoop, everybody makes meals, but it needed doing, and I DID it.)

I even took an afternoon nap, which, truthfully, I don't do very often. I limit myself to perhaps a fifteen minute snooze on the couch if I just can't keep my eyes open. But yesterday I slept for most of the afternoon, and I was still TOO STINKIN' TIRED to get much done.

Are you getting the idea? I'm STINKIN' TIRED of being STINKIN' TIRED!

But-- today is another day. The fruit waited for me all night, quietly rotting away, and today I will try once again to be a happy, untiring Mennonite housewife.

Ya Think?

I've been reading two new books I just got.

One is called Food That Helps Win the Battle Against Fibromyalgia--Ease Everyday Pain and Fight Fatigue.

The other is called Freedom From Fibromyalgia--The 5 Week Program Proven to Conquer Pain.

The first book is one part discussion of fibromyalgia, one part nutrition, and two parts cookbook. Very interesting, mostly the cookbook part, because each recipe has an introductory paragraph explaining the nutritional benefits of the ingredients. For example, the recipe for Zucchini and Mushroom Quiche begins like this:

Zucchini is an excellent source of the antioxidants vitamin C, beta-carotene, and lutein, which promote eye health and are anti-inflammatory. Mushrooms are probiotic and help the body restore balance and regain strength.

See, that's good, because that's information I can use any time I cook, not just out of this cookbook. I think it will be very useful. Plus, surprisingly, many of the recipes actually look tasty.

And a lot of them even use ingredients I already use, such as the How Sweet It Is Potato Gratin (sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, butter, Parmesan).

Not ALL of them of course. Like, I can't see myself making the Berry Buzz Smoothie (raw macadamia nuts, tofu, rice protein powder, D-ribose [huh?], bee pollen).

So that's looking interesting and useful.

The other book, the Five Week Cure, is also interesting, in other ways.

The two authors propose that fibromyalgia results when sensitive people have emotions and don't acknowledge them. Rather, those feelings get morphed into physical reactions, which cause very real, and very painful symptoms.

The cure then, is to learn how to recognize your stress and emotions. Sometimes that's enough-- just the recognition. Other times, you need to find an acceptable outlet for those feelings, and find a way to deal with them.

For example, you suddenly have a very bad recurrence of pain and after thinking about it you find you're angry with someone, like a boss who mistreats you, or a spouse who misunderstands, or a child who leaves his stuff all over. Sometimes just admitting that it makes you angry is enough to ease the physical pain. Sometimes you need to speak to the boss, or have a talk with your spouse, or tell the kids to pick up their stuff, it's driving you crazy.

The authors recommend taking one to two hours a day for meditation and keeping a journal, and simplifying your life.

I've been thinking, and I wonder...

About three years ago I made a decision to stop ranting when I was upset, and also to stop talking as much as possible. I thought that was the healthy, Christian thing to do. Stop complaining, stop being negative, stop speaking those words into my life, stop hurting the people around me with my frustration.

And then I took it one step further. I felt that I only got angry or frustrated when stress boiled up and over. But I also thought that what comes out in that situation was only what was there all along. After all, when a pot of soup boils over, you get soup.

I figured, then, that my problem was having the emotions in the first place. If I never felt angry or frustrated, then I wouldn't need to let off steam or boil over. My goal was that if I ever did boil up, all that would come out would be sweetness from the pot. So I tried to never feel anything negative. That way there would never be anything negative that needed to be expressed.

But something must have been wrong with my logic.

After reading the book, I realized that it was about three years ago that I began suffering from debilitating fatigue, extreme achiness, and sleep disturbances; and it's been gradually getting worse, especially when I'm under stress.

Obviously, my "solution" was not helpful in the long run and I need to find a more healthy option.