Chronic Illness, Pain, and Anxiety
TUNE IN: APPLE PODCASTS I SPOTIFY I STITCHER
“Like many of us who experience hardship, we wish we could skip over the ugly middle and somehow arrive on the other side of our pain. But it was in the ugly middle where God met me and began healing me.” Mary Kate Brown
In Episode 15 of The All Gifts Podcast, I talk with Mary Kate Brown, a writer and homeschool mom of three little girls about her journey with the autoimmune illness Crohn’s Disease. Through the nine months it took to diagnose this inflammatory bowel disease, the birth of her third child, dealing with insurance, hospitalizations and major surgery, Mary Kate suffered.
At the height of her physical suffering, Mary Kate became aware that she was also battling emotional wounds. She discovered that her inner life was affecting her physical body. God used her condition to unearth unhealed areas of her life and put her on a path of spiritual, emotional, and physical healing.
I know firsthand how our inner world can affect our physical bodies. As I discuss in the episode and blog post, Leading Yourself Through Change and Disruption, three years ago, during a time of physical illness, I was forced to slow down and address trauma in my life that needed emotional and spiritual healing.
Additionally, my husband Joe struggles with gout, diverticulosis, and anxiety. Throughout our ten years of marriage, we’ve never dealt with them all at once. But in the past two months, Joe was hit with diverticulitis and several gout attacks right around the time he was diagnosed with the Coronavirus.
Me and my JoJo
Gout is caused when too much uric acid crystallizes and deposits in the joints. Joe’s gout is likely caused by not having an enzyme that helps him properly metabolize purines, substances that are found in many types of foods and alcohol. Most of which he doesn’t eat. And he doesn’t drink alcohol. So, it’s been hard to pinpoint and control. The attacks come suddenly and viciously with severe pain, redness, and swelling in his joints.
Diverticulosis is a condition in which small, bulging pouches develop in the digestive tract. Those pouches (diverticula) can become inflamed or infected (diverticulitis) which result in fever and abdominal pain.
We’d barely recovered from these attacks when we got the news Joe was COVID positive. Suddenly this monster we’d being hearing about for almost a year, who’d taken away our most treasured plans and time with our loved ones, had zeroed in on us. Like the monster hiding under the bed, it jumped out into our lives and left us shaking with fear. Would he recover or get worse? Would I get it? Would our kids who’d visited us over the holidays?
Day by day the symptoms morphed. And every day our anxiety grew.
Joe who’d been diagnosed with anxiety over twenty-years ago but hadn’t had a panic attack since was suddenly in full blown crisis. We prayed for rescue and healing. It didn’t come instantaneously. Some minutes/hours/days our faith stood in the balance. Yet, true to Mary Kate’s story and my own past experiences, the healing was gradual, deep, and beyond the physical.
We are still working through it. I have no doubt that one day we will be able to articulate special gifts that have come from this season. In the meantime, we draw ourselves back to the present moment. I feel that soft, tender place when his hand holds mine, ours dog curled up next to us on the couch, the soft duvet cover wrapped around us and I breathe. Remembering that in this moment, we are safe, we are loved, we are enough.
Be sure to download journal prompts for emotional processing to help you find the gifts in your challenges.
Meet Our Guest: Mary Kate Brown
After overcoming numerous health challenges due to autoimmunity, Mary Kate is passionate about helping others find healing and wholeness. She leads an online group teaching the basics of an anti-inflammatory diet, and inspires others to incorporate simple, nourishing, real-food recipes in their own homes. Mary Kate and her husband Brian are high-school sweethearts who recently left their lifelong home in the Chicago suburbs for a rural property in Western Michigan. Together they homeschool their three daughters, and are making plans for turning their new property into a small-scale homestead. She is a contributor for the Kindred Mom Blog & Podcast, and she works on the growth team at hope*writers helping to champion the words of other writers. She writes online at www.marykateb.com, her work has been featured on The Mighty and Red Tricycle, and you can catch up with her on Instagram @mary.kate.brown
If you are interested in learning more about hope*writers, book some time with Mary Kate: https://calendly.com/marykatebrown09/hope-writer-meeting
