Sometimes healing's in the meds

There was a time when I fought taking medicines. It was at a time when the sermons were about what you say is what you get. Claiming your healing in Jesus' Name and getting healed: if you didn't, you lacked the faith to make it so. I now believe that this is unbalanced teaching and do not follow it. However, at the time it made me feel very guilty about taking my medicine.

I do believe that God heals today. And I do believe that faith can make you well. But I have lived long enough with chronic illness to know that this doesn't happen all the time and that most times our prayer should be "if it is Thy will, please heal me!" Faith teachings often miss the fact that God is God! His Will may not be an immediate healing...I don't know why: I just know that I must accept my health as being in His Will. To struggle against this is to make yourself worse through faulty and negative thinking. We are called to walk in faith, not by sight.

In those years, I felt extremely guilty because I suffered from depression that was caused by a chemical imbalance. I tried many times to come off my tablets, usually after a healing crusade, and I fell- straight into the Pit of Despair. This fall often required more medication than before to get me to the place of health I was in when I thought I had been healed. And it took many many weeks of feeling awful before they kicked in again. Not a good place to be.

As I grew in my faith and relinquished my health to the LORD, I acquired many more medications. All of them are vitally important to keep my heart functioning, my blood pressure normal, my blood thin, my cholesterol down, to prevent my kidneys from making kidney stones and to regulate my under active thyroid. Not to mention other things to keep my eyes from drying out and to minimise the pain of fibromyalgia and back problems and to reduce the gastric acid that some medications cause. And of course, the anti-depressants to normalise my neuro-transmitters.

Once I would have held these tablets in my hand and fought taking them. Not any more. I now adopt a spirit of gratitude as I take my medications, for without them I would not be alive for very long. I feel that my medications are a gift from God to allow me to love and serve Him a little longer here and now. Life is after all, God's Will and I am grateful for each new day.

I believe that God gave man the ability to make medications and that ensuring a better quality of life is in God's Will. For Christ came to give us abundant life. Laying in a sick bed with angina and pain is not an abundant life.

I would urge you to have a rethink about your medicines if you have been told that they aren't in God's Will for you. Try to adopt a glad and grateful attitude as you take them. Rejoice that you live in a place in the world where they are available and be glad. Joy and life are in the Will of God, or else why would we see Christ healing many ill and afflicted people? He told us He came to do the Will of His Father!

May you be well, no matter what it takes and may we bless the LORD together for His goodness to us!

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. Acts 10:38

And so this was Christmas

So, I am sitting here the day after Christmas. I have absolutely no energy and the paracetamol tablets have done nothing to alleviate my pain from my fibromyalgia flare, my back ache and my sore arthritic feet.

My fibromyalgia has been flaring for the past five months since we started life in the fifth wheeler: well, actually it was flaring before that as we sold or gave away all our extraneous stuff and packed the van and closed up our rented house.

Prior to that we had the search for the fiver and a tow vehicle, then finding someone to put in the hitch and then the long tow back from Ballarat to Pakenham. A long round about trip. 

Three months into the trip, I tore my meniscus in the left knee again, and that put paid to being able to manage the seven steps up into the fiver. I became housebound and gained quite a bit of extra weight. We had to find a new rented home with no steps. 

We have just moved into a renovated farm house in a small country township in East Gippsland. We picked up the keys Monday 23rd December and of course the next day was Christmas Eve. We had made plans to see our little granddaughter open her presents and that meant staying overnight. We honestly felt so tired that we wished we could just cancel Christmas...

Christmas Day I helped my daughter cook and we had Christmas lunch there and then made the long trip home. I was so tired that I fell asleep on the drive home and nearly garrotted  myself on the seat belt. Chris said I was snoring sonorously. I believe him.

As it is our summer here in Australia, the weather was hot and this gave me trouble with my heart and caused my feet to swell alarmingly. I was so glad to get home and ditch my shoes and lay by the air conditioner for a bit.

This morning I took my sugars and was shocked by the high reading. I think I should not have had the choc ripple cake but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Although we still  have stuff to unpack from the fiver and put in place here, the house is basically functional and very cosy already. 

I did pause frequently to reflect on the reason for the season: the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ. The best part is spreading love and spending time with family if possible. If they will allow it.

I cannot say how Christmas became so commercial and such a rush, but this year no one seemed very full of the festive spirit. In fact, most seemed flushed and rushed and to be honest, those we visited were bickering and fighting and that made me anxious.

As I pour myself the last of our egg nog and head to bed for a nana nap, I have purposed to stay at home next Christmas. It is time to accept that all the hype of what should be a holy and peaceful time, is playing havoc with my ageing body. 

The beauty of the Saviour's birth will not be lost on me, but I will lose the expectation of sweet family gatherings and realise that my family is dysfunctional. 

As I make my way to my room,  I bow my head in thanks for God's wonderful gift of His Son. And I pray for peace for my family and others like it. I hope you all had a better Christmas than we did.... and so, this was Christmas! 

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD. Psalm 31:24

Twelve years old today

Twelve years ago today, I had two stents and an angioplasty in my heart. I was so nervous but was glad that at last the day had come, especially that I was still alive to have it.

I had angina for a month previous to the procedure and tests were positive. I would need either stents or bypass surgery. I had 99% blockage in my heart vessels and I was told that I could literally drop dead.

Told not to get the heart stressed but to take things quietly, I was forbidden to go to my beloved step-father's funeral. He would have told me not to come if he was able. It was very hard.

As a public patient, I had to wait my turn for a bed. Not having had a heart attack yet, I was not on the top of the list. It was a long three weeks.

I was discharged a day after the procedure and I felt sore where they had inserted the stents and also in my femoral artery where my groin was bruised and swollen.

But I was glad to be alive. Ten years earlier, I would have been looking at open heart surgery like my father had.

Today, I still have angina. I am on blood-thinners and often have to put a nitroglycerin tablet under my tongue. Another angiogram later showed damage done from where they entered my heart, and it also showed I have a hole in the heart making it so that the blood does not oxygenate properly. My lungs are working overtime apparently. Which would explain my breathlessness.

One cardiologist told me I have the heart of a 85 year old. It could make me fearful, but I remind myself that God knows my days and He is in control. I will die exactly when He wills.

I remain grateful that I went to the doctor initially about a heavy weight feeling on my chest that woke me up. If I had ignored that, I most certainly wouldn't still be alive.

As I reflect on the advances in cardiology, I praise God for His mercy, and I raise a glass and offer a toast for my stents: twelve years old today. 

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

So teach [us] to number our days, that we may apply [our] hearts unto wisdom. Psalm 90:12 

Making personal hygiene fibro-friendly

I have been ill with fibromyalgia for about twenty years now. In that time, lots of things have changed, and one of them is my personal hygiene routine.

One would think that taking a bath or a shower would be an easy thing to accomplish, but if you suffer from chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, back problems or angina problems like I do, you would realise that it consumes a lot of your spoons. So I had to do a bit of rethinking of my daily routines. I've discovered that one of the places that takes a lot of my spoons is the bathroom.

Because bathing and drying and dressing exhaust me, I varied my time in taking a bath depending on how well I feel. If I have enough energy, I would bathe in the morning, if not I would take a shower before bed as Chris is home and he helps me get dried and into my nightie. (When you are chronically ill, you quickly get over being humbled by needing assistance- you are grateful for any help available.)

I have found that if I take a bath or shower in the morning I am left with no energy for the rest of the day. If I take my shower at night, I have just enough energy afterwards to get myself to bed, which works out much better.

Hot baths or showers leave me too exhausted and give me angina pain, so I take showers with only warm or tepid water. While I would prefer to shower every day, showering is best done every other day for me to avoid flare-ups of pain, fatigue and soreness. I have decided on some new course of action to make time in my bathroom more fibro-friendly.

One of the first things I changed was how I take a shower, or rather, the position in which I shower: sitting. Here I find those telephone type showers are useful. When I get out of the shower, I sit down to dry off.

I can no longer blow dry my hair so by necessity my hairstyle has been wash and air dry for years now. Time in front of the sink brushing my teeth or washing my face has been modified by resting one foot on a stool while standing. Because of spinal problems and being a short person, I have a glass in my bathroom which I fill with water and use for rinsing and cleaning my toothbrush without straining to reach the tap.

I no longer wear makeup, the standing in front of the mirror and the use of my hands in holding the various tools of the task, is now limited to special occasions only; it is too painful a task to do on a daily basis. Also, my face is so sensitive that it breaks out in red welts at the slightest pressure... which includes smearing on foundation. This is called dermagraphia.

The bottom line is taking a shower is a real workout now. In addition to modifying how I take a shower, I am going to follow these 3 rules: I will only take a shower at night, I will only take warm water showers and I will only take a shower every other day. With the employment of a good deodorant after each shower and a fresh change of underwear each night and morning, I have found that I don't offend anyone and remain feminine and dainty.

Life with chronic illness is complicated, but at least I manage to stay clean while living it!

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

So teach [us] to number our days, that we may apply [our] hearts unto wisdom. Psalm 90:12

Confessions of a sick housewife

As you probably know, I am trying to cope with heart problems, arthritis, fibromyalgia and back problems. That should be enough to cope with, but added to that, we are moving house tomorrow to become grey nomads and travel round Australia.  But right now,  I am totally exhausted!

Furthermore, as I packed stuff and cleaned the house, I was appalled at how dirty our home had become! In fact, I cried! I would be totally ashamed to sit at my kitchen table to share a cuppa with you with the state it has gotten in. As I scrubbed my stove top and cleaned my oven, it occurred to me that I had no right writing posts about homemaking when my home was so dirty! This realisation coupled with fatigue sent me in a downward spiral which the Evil One was only too happy to escort me to.

Seeking to refresh my lagging spirits, I listened to the Word on CD as I cleaned and I cried out to the LORD. Literally cried. Although I felt no physical refreshment, the Word ministered to my spirit. I felt amazingly and unconditionally loved and I can't say I heard the LORD, but I did receive a definite feeling of understanding and compassion in my spirit. This came as 'self-talk' but it was not from my self. You just know when God has spoken to your spirit. He always encourages you even when chastising, and even in chastisement, there is always a way out and a hope! This never comes from the Evil One!

I felt that I was being too hard on myself, given the circumstances of my ill health. I questioned if what I write is true, and it is. It is something that I aspire to, try to achieve and totally believe. The fact that I cannot achieve this at the moment is irrelevant. My heart and spirit are in the exhortations that I write. Therefore, I am not a hypocrite. You have got to believe me when I say that this ministered to me so much, that I felt the weight of false guilt just roll off my shoulders.

I am battling so many things right now. Including fear of the future, death, worsening health issues and pain.  I do so desire you to uphold me in your prayers and not to think too badly of me as I confess these shortcomings to you.....

I am sorry that I have disappointed some of you with this confession..... sometimes things get on top of me! Thank you to those of you who are praying for me. Perhaps it was these prayers that have led me back from The Pit.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks


But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Hebrews 12:8

Why yes, I do wear dresses only

Every woman eventually finds her style. Whether it be modest, immodest, fashionable, or vintage, she will find that which best portrays her belief system in her world-view and body image.

With being at the end of my 65 years, I have found a style of dress that suits me. And by saying "me" I also mean my husband, Chris. I try to dress in a way that he likes as I want him to like what he sees.

Although I would have loved to wear skirts and dresses a long time ago, it is only recently when I needed to replace all my slacks, pants and jeans that he agreed to me buying skirts and dresses only. It's no good me dressing how I want if he's not happy with it. 

Speaking of which, Chris would never comment negatively about my appearance, but I figure in spite of my large size, I owe it to him to try to dress attractively. As his wife, I want to be a crown to him and not let him down through looking like I had just been caught in a hurricane. I want to bring him honour and having a wife who looks like a crumb to my mind isn't very honouring.

Anyway, I found modest but pretty ankle length skirts and summer dresses with string straps,   which I partnered with cotton lacy bolero tops that covered my beefy arms and made me feel more modest without sweltering in our Australian summer.  For my Australian friends, I can recommend Millers who cater for plus sizes up to 24 and who accept Afterpay.  

With my ankle length skirts, in winter, I can wear leggings underneath them and top them with a cardigan or jumper (sweater). I team that with a matching scarf around my neck. You can see my picture here if you wish.

I also found a modest pair of bathers with a long skirt around them. This is a wonderful help to me because I am very self-conscious of my large size and prefer to keep as much unruly flesh covered as is humanly possible when I go to the hydro therapy pool for physio.

My lupus has flared and I am losing my hair again. It has grown to about 12 inches from below my shoulders but is very thin. So I have been sweeping it back off my face and putting it up in a pony tail. Sometimes I roll it into a bun or French roll to keep it off my neck. My fibromyalgia makes me itch so much if the hair touches my face, neck or shoulders, so I try to keep it up and off my face.

I am almost completely silver in the front of my head now with a silver streak down the whole side on one side only. As I am allergic to hair dyes I am not dyeing it. Fortunately, Chris quite likes silver and often tells me so as he puts my hair into a bun. Chris helps me for with polymyalgia rheumatica, I cannot extend my arms for too long!

Regarding covering my hair, Chris was not happy with head coverings, hair bands or scarves but encouraged me to grow my hair, which I have done. As I said, I keep it up. I am saving to buy some Lilla Rose Flexi clips... I love those but they are a bit pricey! 

Wearing only dresses and skirts is not legalistic with me. Pants or skirts are not a salvation issue. I believe as long as a woman dresses  modestly and femininely, it is pleasing to the LORD. But I feel more feminine in skirts and dresses and I love that the straight lines and length help hide my extra curvy hips and legs. Jeans and slacks accentuated my stomach and made me look like I was expecting- (Sarah the Second!)

I wear a little makeup on a good day and always have earrings and my wedding rings on. I cannot wear jewellery round my neck or wrists because of the fibromyalgia making me itch badly. I wear flat sandals, even in winter as my heart is failing and my legs and feet swell badly.  Overall, my style is not too fussy, but well kept and clean looking. I am happy with it and so is Chris. 

All in all, my style looks like the picture at the top, without the hat. What's your style?

© Glenys Robyn Hicks 

She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple. Proverbs 31:22

Taking my medicine gladly

There was a time when I fought taking medicines. It was at a time when the sermons were about what you say is what you get. Claiming your healing in Jesus' Name and getting healed: if you didn't, you lacked the faith to make it so. I now believe that this is unbalanced teaching and do not follow it. However, at the time it made me feel very guilty about taking my medicine.

I do believe that God heals today. And I do believe that faith can make you well. But I have lived long enough with chronic illness to know that this doesn't happen all the time and that most times our prayer should be "if it is Thy will, please heal me!" Faith teachings often miss the fact that God is God! His Will may not be an immediate healing...I don't know why: I just know that I must accept my health as being in His Will. To struggle against this is to make yourself worse through faulty and negative thinking. We are called to walk in faith, not by sight.

In those years, I felt extremely guilty because I suffered from depression that was caused by a chemical imbalance. I tried many times to come off my tablets, usually after a healing crusade, and I fell- straight into the Pit of Despair. This fall often required more medication than before to get me to the place of health I was in when I thought I had been healed. And it took many many weeks of feeling awful before they kicked in again. Not a good place to be.

As I grew in my faith and relinquished my health to the LORD, I acquired many more medications. All of them are vitally important to keep my heart functioning, my blood pressure normal, my blood thin, my cholesterol down, to prevent my kidneys from making kidney stones and to regulate my under active thyroid. Not to mention other things to keep my eyes from drying out and to minimise the pain of fibromyalgia and back problems and to reduce the gastric acid that some medications cause. And of course, the anti-depressants to normalise my neuro-transmitters.

Once I would have held these tablets in my hand and fought taking them. Not any more. I now adopt a spirit of gratitude as I take my medications, for without them I would not be alive for very long. I feel that my medications are a gift from God to allow me to love and serve Him a little longer here and now. Life is after all, God's Will and I am grateful for each new day.

I believe that God gave man the ability to make medications and that ensuring a better quality of life is in God's Will. For Christ came to give us abundant life. Laying in a sick bed with angina and pain is not an abundant life.

I would urge you to have a rethink about your medicines if you have been told that they aren't in God's Will for you. Try to adopt a glad and grateful attitude as you take them. Rejoice that you live in a place in the world where they are available and be glad. Joy and life are in the Will of God, or else why would we see Christ healing many ill and afflicted people? He told us He came to do the Will of His Father!

May you be well, no matter what it takes and may we bless the LORD together for His goodness to us!

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. Acts 10:38

My cleaning schedule

I have a monthly cleaning schedule which I try to adhere to. Generally, I manage to keep up with it, but there are days when fibromyalgia or angina kick in and I can't follow it.

I have included it here for easy access to it for myself, and in the hopes that it may help someone else who is trying to keep up with their own home. I am over feeling guilty for being ill. Sometimes we have to accept that we can't be the same as a healthier woman. Thank God, He knows my frame.

MONTHLY CLEANING SCHEDULE WEEK 1–KITCHEN /DINING ROOM Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY Church Laundry Fold/Put Up Laundry Fold/Put Up Sort pills Laundry Fold/Put Up Bins/litter Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes WEEK 2–ENTRYWAY /LIVING AREAS  SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY Church Laundry Fold/Put Up Laundry Fold/Put Up Sort pills Laundry Fold/Put Up Bins/litter Aldi and Chemist Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes WEEK 3–BEDROOM/OFFICES SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY Church Laundry Fold/Put Up Laundry Fold/Put Up Sort pills Laundry Fold/Put Up Bins/litter Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes WEEK 4–BATHROOMS /LAUNDRY ROOM  SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY Church Laundry Fold/Put Up Laundry Fold/Put Up Sort pills Laundry Fold/Put Up Change sheets  Bins/litter Aldi and Chemist Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes Dishes

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust  Psalm 103:14