Author: lifebeyondsurviving

The next step in getting out of Survival Mode is another practical idea: Planning.  Here’s what I wrote in my first article:

“7. Plan

Dinners were always my afternoon problem.  Planning out your menu for the week does help because you don’t need to think much about what to make, which I find takes the most amount of time.  Brain fog kicks in and has me running around the kitchen trying to remember what I’m making, much less find all the ingredients. Keep things with you in your purse that you might need when you are out.  If you are on a special diet, keep some approved snacks in your purse in case you find yourself in the middle of nowhere and you need to eat.  A little planning goes a long way.”

Planning is the best way to save yourself time, money, and frustration.  Plan out whatever you can: meals, housework, projects, appointments, etc.  The more you can plan for, the less you’ll need to figure out last minute.

Life happens and so you’ll always have stuff that will come up last minute that you’ll have to work in and fly by the seat of your pants.  Don’t worry, but if you remember step one is to be flexible, you’ll be able to work that into your plans.  The problems only intensify if you don’t plan out what you can ahead of time and then have to add in something else on top of that.  So…

Plan your meals out in advance for the week if you can.  Make sure you have those in mind when you go to the grocery store that week.  Cook up the week’s dinners in advance if you can on a weekend when family can help you.

Plan out your schedule so you don’t forget things.  I love my iPhone calendar.  I put all my dr appointments, kids’ events, and then reminders for things I’ll probably forget unless my phone dings and tells me (like to take my new meds or a dr appointment).  In addition to putting in what I need to do on my calendar/reminders, I also put in the address and, if possible, the directions.  That way I’m not scrambling last minute to find the doctor’s address.  I even have a wallet with directions to all the places I frequent so brain fog doesn’t set in and I have a panic attack trying to remember how to get to a place I’ve been to three times in the last year and get it confused with the six other doctor’s locations I’ve been to in between.

Plan out whatever you can ahead of time (when you have the time) so that you have at least those things ready to go.  Trust me. There will be plenty of other things that will pop up out of nowhere that can throw you back into Survival Mode where you will need to remember to be flexible.  Planning is just a way to help you avoid Survival Mode as much as is humanly possible.

 

Okay, we’ve had a week break from our series on Getting out of Survival Mode so let’s recap.  Step one was to Be Flexible. Step two was to Develop a Sense of Humor. Step three was to Be Open to New Things.  Step four was Don’t Discount the Silly Ideas.  Step five was Don’t Invest Too Much Time or Money on the Ridiculous.

Step six begins our practical ideas section and we start with Have Your Kids Help.  Here’s what I wrote in my original article:

“The Practical Ideas:

6. Have your kids help

Kids can be a big help to you and, generally, they LOVE helping mom out. They feel special and a feeling of accomplishment to help.  Little kids can get you a glass of water or bring you the laundry basket, or set the table.  Older kids can help the younger kids, do some of the housework, chores or even make dinner.  Teenagers can run errands, if they drive.”

There are really three parts to having your kids help when your family is in trial or you are struggling with chronic illness.

1) Children can and, in many cases, should help around the house and helping a loved one will teach them skills and give them a heart for others.

Having your children help around the house or with a loved one who is struggling with something is NOT child abuse as many in today’s society will try to tell you.  Back in the 1800’s that’s just how life was.  Everyone in the family had chores and most children grew up helping out with housework, field work (farming), and with the other children.  Just watch Little House on the Prairie and you’ll see little teens, Mary and Laura Ingalls, who stayed at home while their parents were away.  Most women got married and had children of their own at a very young age and nothing much was thought about it at the time.  My grandfather had to quit school in the 8th grade to go to work and help support his family.  It’s only recently when society began giving cart blanch to kids giving them nothing whatever to do besides going to school and playing with their friends.

Having your kids help around the house (assuming it means giving them age appropriate tasks with adequate direction and guidance) can actually be very beneficial for them.  They will learn how to do things for themselves so that, when they are adults, they will have a firm grasp on the life skills they’ll need to get along on their own in the world.

2) Kids should still have a chance to be kids so there is a danger in giving them too much to do or too much responsibility at a young age.

The danger comes in when children are given too much responsibility too soon.  Each child is different so each parent will have to decide what is age appropriate and what is enough responsibility for each of their children.  However, unless you are abusing your children by making them do what you can do for yourself or expecting them to do so much that they are not able to do their school work or are feeling pressure to carry more of the family responsibilities than they can reasonably do, this is not something you need to worry about.

I suggest that you discuss this with your children periodically to check in with them. See if they feel a burden or if they need to talk about their role or concerns about the family.  Sometimes there is no other choice, but other times there might be other options you may discover by discussing it with the entire family.  Even if there are no other options, just talking about it as a family can help to ease the burdens you all feel.

3) The battle inside you as you struggle with whatever trial you are in will frustrate you and make you feel guilty if you don’t get set rules and boundaries ahead of time.

My advice, after having decades of chronic illness and issues, is to decide what each family member should do, discussing it as a family and gaining support from each member, revisiting these responsibilities often as the kids get older or as your issues change, and then meeting those expectations as a family.

Now, that being said, let me say this.  Something just don’t need to be done. Some things can be made optional.  Some things will have to wait.  If you are not able to get to the laundry and cleaning the house, you can choose to do the laundry so everyone has clean clothes.  Let the housework slide for that week. Unless House and Garden are coming to take pictures of your home, what harm will it do to leave the dusting for a week?

Prioritizing the tasks can help you meet the needs of the household without having to stress or force a task that nobody is up to.  Some things just don’t really need to get done.  It’s better, sometimes, just to spend time with the family in a house that isn’t ready for the white glove test than to stress about getting the work done.

Either way, giving responsibility to your children can be good for them as well as for you.  Just make sure you open the lines of communication and discuss what needs to be done as opposed to what you’d really like to have done.  Then just have each member do what they can and sit back and enjoy what that brings to your family.

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If you’re living in Survival Mode for health or financial or any other reason, you’ve probably had people share some unbelievably ridiculous solutions with you.  Either that or you’ve found them yourself by trolling the internet in search of ANY answers.  While our answers can come from the most ridiculous places, it is wise not to spend too much time, and especially money, entertaining the ridiculous solutions because they may not actually be worth it.  As I shared in my original article, some things that sound ridiculous, actually are!:

5. Don’t invest too much time or money in the ridiculous

On the other hand, some things that sound ridiculous actually are.  Don’t spend too much time or money on things that don’t work.  I only try things that show a preponderance of evidence that it works.  And I only spend money on things that are reasonable given my financial situation and that evidence.  Otherwise you’ll be a broke and busy chronically ill person.

 

It may sound ridiculous to spend money on a training program that helps you earn money when in financial trial because you actually need more money, but that’s exactly what worked for us.  We spent money we had, but couldn’t really afford to lose on a real estate investment program and that is what made us money when my husband first lost his job.  It sounds a bit counter intuitive, but it actually worked.  What we had to decide was if we felt this was something we could do, would do, and that it could help us earn money in the very near future.  We did and it did, even though, as it turns out the program no longer works today because the rules have changed.  It did then and that’s all that mattered at the time to make our decision.

But some things that sound ridiculous, actually ARE!  Now the hard part is to determine what is ridiculous for YOU because the very same thing that will help your friend, may not actually help you.  Your circumstances, talents, aptitudes, and situation is different from anyone else.  Only you can weigh all involved in order to come to a decision for YOU.   That program we purchased, when we purchased it, would have been completely ridiculous if we had purchased it today, or if we weren’t really able or willing to work it, or if we didn’t have the cash available at the time.  Someone else may have found real estate too risky, complicated, or in some other way problematic.

Now, if you’re living in Survival Mode, you may feel one of two ways: desperate enough to try anything or disillusioned enough that nothing seems it will help.  Each can be both a blessing and a curse.  Here’s what I mean:

If you are desperate enough that you will give the ridiculous a try, you may either find your answer hidden in an unlikely place or you may find yourself deeper in trial.  If you are desperate enough, I caution you to evaluate the ridiculous as impartially as you can, get opinions from trusted friends and family who ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND YOUR SITUATION, and make sure you do your due diligence in research before you go ahead.

If you are disillusioned such that you can’t see anything working for you, you may miss out on something truly amazing, or you may, indeed, avoid a further tragedy.  My caution is the same.  Make sure you do your due diligence and research all you can find with an open mind.  Then, as open minded as you are able, weigh the costs and benefits against your situation.  Finally, get trusted friends and family to weigh in, but make sure they are friends and family who ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND YOUR SITUATION.

Your answers may, indeed, come from the utterly ridiculous. On the other hand, the ridiculous is called ridiculous for other than ridiculous reasons.

 

So far I’ve shared three steps for getting out of Survival Mode from my article, 18 Steps to Living Better with Chronic Illness.  Step 1: Be Flexible.  Step 2: Develop a Sense of Humor.  Step 3: Be Open to New Things.  And this week, Step 4: Don’t Discount the Silly Ideas.

Here’s what I wrote in my original article as it relates to chronic illness:

“4. Don’t discount the silly ideas

Those new things can sometimes come in the form of the ridiculous. How can some oil that smells like lavender make me feel better?  Does it make sense that drinking something to give you more stomach acid will help?  Well, yes.  What may sound silly or ridiculous to you, might just help you through something.  Lavender essential oil and other oils have actually helped me sleep better.  And my heartburn isn’t a result of too much acid, but too little such that I am not digesting my food. This causes other issues resulting in my heartburn.”

Some things sound downright silly. Some sound counter intuitive.  Yet others sound completely ridiculous!  I’m not saying you should try or even entertain every crackpot idea people throw your way, but I am suggesting that you look into every one of them a bit further to see if it might be something you should try.

Some things aren’t worth trying after you investigate them for one of several reasons.  They might be too expensive.  They might be something that clashes with your values or your body in the case of health issues.  They might present too great a risk for the benefit they profess.

However, some things, the more you look into them, might be worth a go.  Out of the unlikely places of the corners of the Twilight Zone sometimes emerges a helping hand.  Just because something sounds insane, doesn’t mean it is.  Just because you never heard of it before, doesn’t mean it may not be the answer to prayer.

Now, some things may seem to help or help only temporarily.  At the time I wrote my original article, I was sleeping a tiny bit better after trying essential oils. Unfortunately, it was very short-lived and may have been a fluke as I tried to repeat it night after night, I was unable to make any strides in my insomnia.  But it was definitely worth a try!  Many people report feeling better with essential oils, it had no chance of side effects, and smelled heavenly!

From the most unlikely of places sometimes comes a solution you’ve spent years searching for.  Here’s a small example of an answer to something that came from as unlikely a source as I could ever have imagined.  I’ve written a long post about my miracle story before, but the Reader’s Digest Version of it is this.

My doctor insisted I have a test to see if my fibroid was still there.  We were both sure it wasn’t as they tend to disappear after menopause and I was so close to the end after many years of peri.  I would never have agreed to have this test if I had to pay for it on my own, but I had insurance at the time so I consented.  While they found that it had, indeed, disappeared, they found a cyst on my left ovary.  It was the kind that can become cancerous so I had surgery to remove both the cyst and the ovary as they were difficult to separate.  During the surgery, my doctor decided to go the extra mile and remove the fallopian tube as well.  After the pathology report came back positive for cancer of the fallopian tube, I was scheduled to have a radical hysterectomy to remove EVERYTHING else.  Because the cancer I had was very rare and aggressive, they wanted to make sure it hadn’t spread.  It was so early in the diagnosis that I didn’t require chemo or radiation.  And it was very rare for a woman to survive this cancer because it is usually diagnosed too late for a cure.

If I hadn’t had the insurance at the time, I would have died.

If my surgeon hadn’t decided to be on the safe side and remove my fallopian tube as well, I would have died.

If my doctors all hadn’t moved as quickly as they did, they would have found it too late and, I would have died.

My cure, to a cancer NOBODY even knew I had, came from having insurance at the exact timing necessary and doctors who were careful and quick about something nobody would ever have thought to look for.

Be open to new things.  You never know where your solution may come from!

 

We’re up to step three in my 18-week series, 18 Steps to Getting Out of Survival Mode.  Step one was to Be Flexible and step two was to Develop a Sense of Humor.  Step three is to Be Open to New Things.

So I know how you feel.  I’ve been there before.  You’ve tried just about everything you could afford and remotely sounds feasible.  You’ve listened to friends and family drone on about how you “should do” this or that.  You’re probably tired of people telling you what you should do.  I’ve been there so I know how annoying it is to have people suggest the very same things you’ve just tried or can’t afford or are allergic to or whatever it is that prevents you from it.

But here’s the thing.  Here’s what I wrote in my original article. It’s not much, but it’s powerful. At least it was for me.

“3. Be open to new things
Sometimes you need to be open to the possibility that something new might help you–even if you’ve tried it before. Sometimes circumstances aren’t right and, as you gain more strength or balance your diet or meds, that new idea might just work.”

Sometimes we get to a point where we just don’t want to hear it anymore, but sometimes it’s the very thing we need to hear…just one more time.  Maybe it’s the way it’s done that’s different. Maybe it’s doing it in combination with something else. Maybe it’s just time.

I used to post on Facebook about my chronic health issues and had DOZENS of people PM me with the latest and greatest cure-all, sure-fire method to solve all my problems.  I seriously got tired of hearing it.  No matter what I did or took, I just couldn’t sleep longer than 3hrs at a time and four or five hours total each night. I tried everything but sleeping pills.  One day, my doctor recommended I take a melatonin and magnesium at night.  I just about had a purple conniption!  I’ve TRIED that before…and Valerian Root Tea…and several other things.  But she said to try it again with a muscle relaxer she was prescribing.  Well, it works for me!  I call it my Triple M!  Two things that never worked for me before along with one I hadn’t tried and SHAZAM!

Sometimes you need to stop the madness and not listen to the same things over and over again…to save your sanity.  But sometimes, taking the very same thing you did two years ago, just might work this time because your body has changed or because it’s taken differently or with something else.  Listen to your doctor, pray, and seek what your gut is telling you.  It might be telling you to be open to new things again…or old things in a new way.

 

We are in week two of our 18-week in-depth series on getting out of survival mode based on my article 18 Steps to Living Better with Chronic Illness!  Last week, I talked about step one: being flexible.  Step two is developing a sense of humor.  Here’s step two from my article:

“If you don’t laugh, well…you know the alternative. I make a joke of things. Makes me feel better. Makes others around me feel better too.  But for times when I can’t joke, I can usually count on some friends, family and my dh to say something funny to cheer me up.  Life can be hard, even if you don’t struggle with chronic issues.  Making your struggle into humor is just plain uplifting. I’m not saying to make light of what you are going through, but I am saying to make light of what you are going through.  Now before you ask me for the Jibberish Subtitles, let me explain.  I don’t ever say that what I’m going through is easy or fun, but I do point out the funny parts of it.  In that way, I’m making it lighter and lifting my spirits.“

Now in order to get practice in seeing the humor in your own struggles and trials, it often helps to see humor in something else first.  My default had always been to listen to Praise and Worship music when I was down, but when I was in a deep darkness, I found it difficult to listen.  The songs made me cry and, as you may have guessed, crying isn’t usually uplifting (However, see my side note below).  I found myself gravitating to the comedy section of Netflix and watching clean stand up comedians on YouTube for HOURS! Find something that makes you giggle, even if it’s watching the same I Love Lucy episode twelve times!

Have you ever been so stressed out that something seemingly just a smidge funny made you laugh uncontrollably for what seemed like hours? Then afterward you felt a bit happier and much calmer?  That’s what seeking out humor in your life can do for you.  So…after a much-needed giggle fest, I was able to see a bit more humor in my own issues.  You’d be surprised at the sense of humor life has when you’re primed to see it!

Another way is to just begin to do silly things with your friends and family.  I once went to a large park with sales booths and stores.  My sister and I walked around all day together just talking and laughing.  One particular store had hats.  Weird, odd, silly, pretty…hats.  We went about the store trying them all on and taking our pictures both separately and together.  It was such fun!  A great release and a much-needed giggle in my stressful situation and declining health that I was facing at the time.

Yet another way to get some lighthearted humor in your life is through me!  I’m a goofball by nature and I’ve been defunkifying myself for decades!  I’ve created over 570 humorous sayings about life-most of which come directly from my own struggles with various health, financial and life issues.  I call them JoJoisms.  I’ve turned several of them into small PDFs on a particular topic and posted several of them in visual format I call Visual JoJoisms. These have been sprinkled in throughout this post.

Once you have been able to lift your spirits for a short time by finding humor others bring to the table, you are ready to find it on your own.  Finding the humor hidden inside trials is something that has two parts:

1. You can never find the humor when your struggle is raw.  When you first find yourself in a painful situation or when you first find out about something that adds to a difficult situation, it’s hard to find ANYTHING funny about it.  But, if you give yourself a little time, you will be better able to see the humor sitting just below the surface of a frustrating situation.  How long a time it takes for something to heal enough to where you can see the funny side of it, depends.  Each person is different and each zinger life throws at you is different.  Tread lightly at first, but invite yourself to see the humor at various times during your trials.

Side Note: There are times when you just can’t laugh and you really want to cry…need to cry.  Do so!  Find a sad song or movie and give yourself permission to cry.  Afterward, you’ll probably be ready to find something to make you giggle. 

2. The more you practice this the easier it gets.  I was born a goofball. I’ve always been a goofball and I’ll probably always be a goofball.  But I know everyone else has a different gift as well as a different natural approach to life’s struggles.  The trick is to work with what you’ve got.  The more you see the humor or blessing or gift hidden (albeit sometimes FAR beneath) the struggles, the easier it will be the next time life throws you a curve ball.

 

I wrote an article a while back, 18 Steps to Living Better with Chronic Illness.  I thought I’d expand on these one at a time to share just how this works and how it has helped me.  Sometimes it’s hard to see things with a short blurb without really expanding the concept.  So over the next 18 weeks, I’ll be sharing one concept in depth. I pray you can see yourself and your family in these as they are some of the best ways I’ve found to live a life beyond surviving.

I started off with some ideas of attitude. The first was:  Be flexible and here’s what I wrote:

“Chronic illness takes twists and turns. No matter how well you plan and/or how faithful you are to your meds/vitamins/diet, you will have times when you won’t be able to do X.  Be flexible enough, if your work allows, to be okay doing Y or Z or M.O.U.S.E.  If I don’t have the energy to bounce back after a difficult or stressful weekend, I may need to devote Monday to staying in and even taking a nap if need be.“

Any time you or your family is in crisis/survival mode, you will have twists and turns.  It can be financial, health, or even family related.  Any major issue or struggle in your life will have ebbs and flows, twists and turns.  Even if God is working things for your good and the outcome will be deliverance from the trial, I’ve never found the path to be straight up.  It’s like that meme on Facebook everyone shares.  You may have seen it too.  The top shows a stick figure on a bicycle on a path with a slight upward grade and says, “Your Plan.”  The bottom shows the same stick figure on the same bicycle on that same slight upward grade but on a rocky path with ups and downs and pits filled with water and precarious narrow bridges. It says, “Reality.”

If you are not willing to be flexible with whatever gets thrown in your way (or flung in your face), if you are not willing to go with the flow when bad goes to worse, you will only succeed in frustrating yourself such that you will not be able to enjoy the in-between times when you are clearly on that slight upward grade with no pitfalls impeding your steps.  Frustration only leads to more and there comes a time when too much frustration will bring you to a place of wanting to give up.

First, let me say that life will give you plenty of times when you will need to stop, regroup, gather strength to go on without any help from you.  Those times are built for resting, but not for giving up.  However, if you heap more frustration upon yourself by not being flexible with your plan, you will come to that place much sooner and your brain won’t listen to your heart for God’s guidance that will allow you to continue.  It will lead you to a valley too deep to climb out of on your own.  When you are flexible, you flow easily between your plan and reality without benefit of fits.

So what does being flexible really mean?  You know how when you’re really looking forward to seeing a movie on TV, but you got the night wrong or the station goofed in reporting its programming?  It’s disappointing and frustrating because maybe you passed up an opportunity to go somewhere more exciting than what that channel is currently broadcasting.  But, what if just after you find this out, a friend calls that you haven’t been able to see in years and says she’s in town for only that day and has two hours to spend with you?  You’re no longer upset about the movie, are you? You’re delighted to be able to see that dear friend and happy you didn’t have other plans that would have made you unavailable when she called.

Life can be like that when you’re in survival mode.  You can think that your answer comes from one place and it can be devastating when that place is no longer available to you.  That resource is no longer attainable.  But where does our help come from?  The Lord is always at work and sometimes we need to be flexible enough to appreciate it.  Sometimes we are able to see that help right away in the place we expected it to be.  Sometimes we are able to see it around the corner from the place we expected it to be.  And sometimes it’s a long way down the road from where we expected it to be.

But if we spend our time frustrated that it wasn’t where we wanted it to be, we may not have our eyes on the road and miss it down the road…because our eyes were filled with tears.  There are times when we need to our tears to clear out our anxiety and help us focus on what’s next.  But sometimes those tears go on for so long that we miss what God has put in our path. It could be the very thing our heart longs for.