How Great Thou Art

Healing Oils

   I had mentioned a while back that Gillian had received two new diagnoses and a new medication, our 9th anti anxiety medication  in a year (http://relatabletogether.blogspot.com/2018/02/id-like-to-sove-puzzle.html).  Well, that medication was not our golden ticket. It was terrible. It made her worse. I emailed her psychiatrist to let her know and her response was to take her off the meds for three days and then just given her half a pill a day instead of a whole one and then let her know how she was doing in two weeks.  Seriously?!  I didn’t want even a crumb of this medication in my child.  It was making her crazier then before so what, half a pill would just make her a little less crazy?!!  No thank you!  I was mad.  Mad at the doctor for not really helping us, for not giving us any kind of hope that one of the millions of medicines she had was going to help our daughter.  I was mad that she didn’t really seem to be getting just how bad things were for Gillian and how horrible our home life was.  I felt like she didn’t even care. We were just another patient to her, a medical record number and that was it.  

   I stood in the kitchen that night feeling just completely hopeless. My heart was in tachycardia (as it does after a stressful day), my body was exhausted, my emotions were exhausted, my brain was exhausted.   Chris walked in and I looked up at him with tears streaming down my face (again) and said, “If we don’t find something that helps her soon, I am going to die from a heart attack or a stroke.  My body can’t take this anymore.”  I was completely serious.  Years of stress has had a negative affect on my body.  Heart issues, adrenal fatigue, TMJ, back pain, neck pain, anxiety, complete exhaustion.  I was at the end of the rope hanging on by one little thread that was fraying really fast.  He asked me what I thought we should do and I told him that I thought it was time to get her a medical cannabis card and try CBD and THC oils.   He agreed.

    We had talked about trying cannabis oil on and off for the past year but never felt God leading us in that direction.  We had only heard great things about others using them for their special needs kids.  It wasn’t something new to us but it was something new to our home. I don’t know why God didn’t want us to explore this option sooner but when we had talked about it before I never felt a peace about trying it out.  A year ago I had all the appointments lined up to get Gillian a medical cannabis card and an appointment at the dispensary to talk to someone about what we would use.  Literally an hour before the appointments God gave me this totally unsettled feeling so I canceled the appointments and that’s when we started with our psychiatrist and our long journey of anti-anxiety medications.  Now, here we were a year later having exhausted almost every route but this one.  Suddenly I had an overwhelming peace that this was exactly what we were supposed to be doing.  

I kept Gillian home from school the next day and off we went to the doctor to get her cannabis card.  The doctor was a very kind man, who looked over the big pile of medical papers describing all of Gillian’s diagnoses and understood exactly why we were there.  He signed all the paper work and off we went to the dispensary.  In all honesty here, people, this was my first time in a cannabis dispensary and actually my first time even being near any type of marijuana.  I was so nervous when we walked in.  Here we were, a red-headed white lady with her chatty, disabled daughter.  What a pair!  At the entrance was a security guard and a “bouncer-type” guy checking people in.  He was a big guy with tattoos from head to toe and a long beard.   For those of you who know Gillian you know that this is just the type of guy she likes.  She immediately started telling him that she liked his beard and his tattoos.  I was telling her to be quite.  Geesh, child.  There was some logistically issues with our paperwork since I have conservatorship over Gillian and have to be on the paperwork as well so “bouncer dude” had to call the owner, Jason, out.  Honesty again here, I was shaking like a leaf at this point because I was so nervous and had no idea what the heck I was doing.  I was such a rookie.  Jason came out and I told him who I was (we have mutual friends) and why I was here with Gillian.  Oh my word, you guys, he was the nicest guy ever!  He told “bouncer-dude” to handle the paperwork because we were legit and then he took me to the waiting area where we sat and talked about all that had been going on with Gillian for over half an hour.  He got it.  He gets it.  He has a special needs child as well and cannabis has been a life saver for his child. 

Jason explained what THC and CBD do and what the difference is between them.  I was liking what I was hearing and getting excited about trying something new.  He then told me what the side affects are...eating, sleeping and being happy.   What?!  Seriously?!  So basically you’re telling me that this is going to help my daughter eat, which she was rarely doing much of these days, sleep, she has never slept though the night in her 19 years on earth, and be happy , which I would give anything just to see her happy again.  Is this for real?!  I laughed and told him that those are my kind of side affects.  As we were getting ready to leave Jason told me that he knew that this was going to be the start of healing in Gillian and in our family.  He guaranteed it. I was speechless.  No doctor had ever told us that.  No doctor had ever given us any kind of hope for Gillian to be happy and they never even cared about the affect it was all having on our family.  All we ever heard was, “ this medication has some bad side affects but maybe it will help.”   Hope, someone was giving us hope.  It was amazing!

Now normally after an appointment with the psychiatrist I would get in the car and cry because I was so stressed about trying another anti-anxiety medication and nervous abut the side affects we would have to endure.  When I got in the car after leaving the dispensary I cried tears of joy because someone actually cared enough to give us hope.  Someone had been where we are and they had found healing and now they were helping others find healing to and we got to be some of those people.  I immediately called Chris and told him about the entire wonderful experience and the little bottles of hope I now had.  I couldn’t stop smiling.  I was overjoyed that my family, our home, was going to find peace again.  

   It took about 48 hours of Gillian taking the oils and she was a completely different person.  Within a couple of weeks she was sleeping through the night (without us having to give her Unisom) and she was having only about 1-2 tantrums a week.  Peace was being restored in our home.  Laughter was back and everyone was just overall happier.  It was wonderful.  It is wonderful.  It hasn’t been perfect, we occasionally have days where it seems like the oils aren’t helping but she is nowhere near being that horribly anxious person she was before.  

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Now I have to tell you about how awesome all the people at Jayden’s Journey and Kase’s Journey are..........

As Jason, Gillian and I sat on the couch in the waiting area, Gillian kept waving to the security guard and calling him a police officer.  This was cracking every up who worked there and Jason proceeded to tell Gillian that he was just a rent-a-cop.  Oh my word it was hysterical.  They were all totally loving Gillian and commenting on how awesome her fedora was.  She informed them of how much she liked Michael Jackson and the next thing I knew, they had Michael Jackson blaring out the speakers in the dispensary and they were dancing with Gilly.  Remember “Bouncer-dude” the guy who totally intimidated me when we walked in?  Well as we left, Gillian was giving him a big hug and telling him once again how awesome his tattoos and beard were.   When we went back to the dispensary a couple of weeks later “bouncer-guy” saw Gillian and got a huge smile on his face and told her happy he was to see her again.  He’s really just a big teddy bear!  

The first time I visited Kase”s Journey, “rent-a-cop” was there and he remembered Gillian and I and got a big smile on his face and just laughed.  He loved that she called him a police officer and that we all got to joke with him about it.  The people who work at both of these dispensaries are the most amazing people who’s desire is to help people find healing and hope through cannabis.  They know their stuff and are always patient with me as I ask a million questions about the oils and the dosage Gillian is taking.  I now visit one of the dispensaries once or twice a month and they are both such welcoming places.  I laugh now when I think about how nervous I was that first time..  I am so grateful that God has brought us to the place of hope and healing and for the people He has placed in our lives who fight the fights for cannabis.  

Anger Management

I have anger issues.  I’m sure I’ve had them all my life but the first time I remember anger actually talking over me was when I was 18 years old.  I was angry and I picked up an empty box and chucked it across the room as I was running out of the room.  It felt good at the time.  Later I regretted it as I heard someone say, “I knew she had an anger problem”.  This person was looking for every bit of negative in me at the time and I just gave them more fuel for their fire against me.   It sucked.  Throughout my adult life I would continue to have anger issues which usually ended with me breaking something.    In our first year of marriage I put a hole in the wall.  Howie’s awesome response to that was, “you’d better call your dad to help you fix that because I’m not doing it.”   Talk about embarrassing....”ummm....hi dad.  I just put a hole in the wall because I was mad.  Could you come help me fix it please?”.   Fortunately my dad was a very kind, understanding man with very similar anger issues (ya, it runs in the family) and came over and patched up the hole.   

I didn’t start working on my anger issues until I was in my thirties.  It had really come to a head in the years that we were going through the worst times of our marriage.  I broke quite a few things, vases, pictures, cups, plates.   It always gave me this release when I would just break one thing, but every single time afterwards I would regret it.  While working through my anger in my early thirties I focused just on the anger and how I responded in that anger.  The Bible specifically says in Ephesians 4:26, “Be angry, and do not sin.” That was my focus, to not let my anger turn to sin.  To calm myself down before I started yelling and threw something.  I found verses that I could recite when I started feeling my blood boil:

-Proverbs, 19:11, “The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger, and his glory is to overlook a transgression.”  

-Psalms 37:8, “Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not fret- it only causes harm.”

-Proverbs 14:29, “He who is slow to wrath has great understanding, but he who is impulsive exalts folly.”

-Ecclesiastes 7:9, “Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.”

-Psalms 103:8, “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy.”

-James 1:19, “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath.”

-James 1:20, “For the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

I wrote these verse on note cards and had them everywhere to remind me and to help me get control of my anger.  When I would feel the anger start to surface I would pray and ask God to settle my spirit down and then I would go over the above verses until I felt myself calm down.  It took a lot of work to get into this routine and get my anger managed, but God was faithful through it all and got me through it.  It’s been a long time since I’ve broken anything. Well, actually about a year ago I threw a glass and broke it all over the floor of our bedroom.  My rage had come out of nowhere and took me completely off guard.  I immediately texted three of my closets friends to have them pray for me because I was still feeling full of rage and anger and I was so confused about where it was coming from.  Turns out I was actually having a reaction to barium.  I had had a procedure the previous day and they had used barium and some of the side effects are irritation, anxiety and confusion. It was crazy and barium is now listed on my heath record as a drug I am allergic to.  Needless to say, I don’t count that broken glass as part of my anger issues.  I do still occasionally have moments when I feel the anger rising and I really want to break something but they are few and far between now and I always remember to go and pray and meditate on my anger verses and that always brings be back down to reality. 

Now I am forty and God has recently revealed a new side of my anger issues to me.  A couple of weeks ago the hubs and I had a bad week over a tough issue that brought up a lot of past triggers for me.  We spent the better part of the week going back and forth on the issue and I was angry the whole time.  I thought I was angry because he wasn’t hearing my side of the issues.  He wasn’t getting what I was saying nor was he understanding my feelings and this was making me mad. I said a lot of mean things and yelled in this time of anger.  It all came to a head one morning as we were talking and right in the middle of the conversation, right after he had said something that was new information to me, he abruptly had to go because he had a meeting to get to.  I hung up the phone and the flood gates opened (does it seem like every one of my stories involves me crying?  Geesh. I am an emotional gal.).  The tears flowed and pain came pouring out of my heart.  I was hurting because of this situation we were in.  All the triggers were bringing up past hurts and I just ached.  I immediately wanted to close the flood gates, shove the hurt back down, grab my phone and play a game to distract myself.  As I reached for the phone I heard God say, “nope”.  Ugh.  Really, God?  Now?  Do I have to?  Of course I do.  I not only had to I needed to.  I sat in the pain and cried it all out right onto God’s shoulder. And do you know what happened as I allowed the pain come to the surface?  The anger went away!  I realized that day, right there in the parking lot of the gym that my anger was masking my pain.  I was allowing my anger to push down the real feelings I was having.   It was easier for me, at least I thought it was,  to just be angry  then to feel the real feels.  But oh my goodness, I was a whole new person once I  let the pain out and the anger just rolled right off my shoulders.  

This past week I found myself angry again over a situation.  I allowed anger to consume for a couple of days before I realized that I needed to dig deeper and figure out what the anger was hiding.  It didn’t take long to figure it out.  I pinpointed the real feeling (It was abandonment this time) dug deeper into the feeling and all of its triggers and once again the anger just rolled away and I felt like a new person again.  

People, can I just tell you how freeing and how healing this new realization is for me?!  I wish I could go back to my twenties with this knowledge and re-do all the broken things I threw.  Take back all the angry things that I yelled that I never meant and find the real feelings that needed to come out.  But, alas, that was not God’s plan.  He chose to wait until I was forty to give me this illumination and I trust, I know, that His timing is so much better than my own.  So I take my new found information and I press on with excitement at conquering a whole new level of my anger.

What is your angry hiding?  How are you using anger in your life to fight against feeling the real feels and dealing with the deeper issues? In your anger are you sinning?  Yelling at your kids or spouse, breaking things?  Is it out of control?   Do you need to write the above verses down on notecards to help remind you to calm down and turn to Christ?  It might be. A lot of hard work for you to get your anger under control but let me tell you, IT IS SO WORTH IT!