I'm plain and tidy

 

Each morning when I get dressed, I wonder what the day will bring. I have learned over the course of time that those days when I have a pyjama day, something crops up and I have to don days clothes in a hurry. So I try to get dressed early in the morning.

I don't worry with makeup and just brush my hair. I have dresses that have sleeves and some that don't. So I can dress according to the weather.

Not a great fan of jewellery, I just wear my wedding ring and usually I just wear some stud earrings of a matching colour as my dress. Usually I am home, so I have some pretty bibbed aprons that I match up with the colour of the day.

Most times because of foot swelling, I go around the house barefoot, but I do have some black Skechers I wear when I go out. I don't wear socks or stockings.

These clothes work well for me- tidy, plain and modest and easy to wear and wash. No ironing. 

I would love to have long hair but I lost a lot of it due to illness and now I find it easier on my arms to keep it short. So I wear it in a pixi style which is like my clothes, easy to manage.

I would say my style is plain but tidy. And when you are chronically ill and in pain, it is enough. 

It's a good job today's clothing is not reliant on stays and corsets and many buttons and ruffles, because I just couldn't stand long enough to get it all right and I just don't have the patience. Also, I need to breathe freely and I know I couldn't with a corset! 

I am comforted that man looks at the outside, but God looks at the heart. I really aren't that great to look at, but I look feminine and that and clean, tidy and modest would meet with His approval.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks 

But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for [the LORD seeth] not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7

I know how she feels

So, many moons ago, my ex-husband and I used to go every Saturday to see our eldest son play football. On inclement weather days, I  would sit in the car with a friend I had made. She came to watch her son play as well.

We would chat during quarters and half time and I had noticed that she had no wedding rings or jewellery of any kind. I knew she was married because her husband and mine would watch our boys together.

She was a bit of a sour puss to be totally honest. Perpetually moody and very negative. I couldn't understand why because she looked well and dressed nicely. There was something about her: she was a bit odd.

Anyway, during our talks she said she was perpetually tired. Bone tired. She didn't work outside of her house and only had one child and he was almost a teenager like our son. What could be making her tired?

Years before the mobile or cell phones came in, I asked her what she thought the time was. She pulled her watch out of her pocket and I couldn't help but ask why didn't she wear it?

She replied that she cannot wear jewellery of any kind. It drove her nuts. Her muscles ached constantly and she was in pain and was being treated for depression. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with her in spite of oodles of tests. 

For her treatment, she was under the care of a psychiatrist who said she had some form of mental illness that bordered on OCD as well as depression and fatigue. Then she was labelled as a hypochondriac.

She was on strong pain killers and also Valium and anti-depressants. Nothing seemed to help and she told me she had to force herself to come and see her only child play each week.

I thought she was rather weird to be honest. I mean why can't anyone bear to wear even a necklace or wedding ring or watch? Mentally, I lumped her in the acquaintances category, rather than a girl friend.

One day she told me she was having trouble sleeping and she needed to sleep off her medications but often felt groggy and muddled during the day. So, I offered to pray for her. Well, she blew up at me and screamed, "There is no God! If there was, he wouldn't have let my brother die in a fire on an oil rig!"

I was told not to pray for her again and as she was very vitriolic, I decided to sit in our car from then on. I didn't need her anger and aggressiveness.

This was in the 1980's and fast forwarding to 1999, with the identical symptoms as her, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia after many tests for Lupus. I had never heard of it. 

Psychiatric assessment wasn't even muted and I confess I felt a sense of relief at that. It was a medical condition for a nasty painful syndrome that I now know that poor woman had.

It all fell into place: a trauma that ended her peace, the body aches, fatigue, irritability, skin that could not bear being touched-and it excluding wearing jewellery, no restorative sleep, and brain fog with cognitive difficulties.

In those days, when fibromyalgia was not even heard of by the general population and doctors weren't trained about it, fibromites were treated with disdain and were labelled with munchausens and other neurotic labels and as a result were often overmedicated with anti psychotics and Valium.

After being diagnosed myself, I remembered this poor woman and I confess I too labelled her as a hypochondriac and malinger and possibly suffering from munchausens as well.

I am so glad that fibromyalgia is much more known and is treated as a real malady and not a psychiatric disease. Yes, we occasionally are still misunderstood, but not as much.

Since I found out about fibromyalgia, I still pray for that poor woman and I thank God that at last she would be heard. It's the least I can do for her, now that I know how she feels.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. 3 John 1:2