Oreo balls, sleepless nights, and a little more

Well I got to go to church last Wednesday! It was good to be there, but overwhelming. The energy level there is 10 times normal which is hard to deal with when you don't feel good.

Thursday night was very long. I slept for maybe an hour.

On Friday I got to go to senior lunch with the youth group and youth ministers! That is one of my favorite times of the week. It's so much fun! Then after lunch I went to see my friend at the hospital during her treatment. I headed home after that to rest. Later that night, I was able to go to dinner with another friend!

After dinner, I came home to a house full of people. We had a missions retreat this weekend at our house. The missions committee from church met at our house to discuss things. It was from 6:00-10:00 Friday night, then 9:00 Saturday morning until noon. We had lots of great food and I think it went well.
Again on Friday night I did not sleep hardly at all. Thankfully we had lots of coffee on Saturday for the retreat! Once the missions thing was over, I started to make Oreo balls for Sunday morning youth group class. I'll explain later what they were for!

Oreo Balls

Saturday afternoon/night we had thanksgiving with my dad's side of the family! It was good to get together with everyone.

We got home around 9:30 and I finished the Oreo balls. I then went upstairs thinking I would sleep since I was so exhausted. I was wrong. HGTV has saved my life. Last year when I didn't sleep for so long, I discovered that HGTV is the only channel that doesn't start the infomercials until 2am. Most channels start them earlier. Aren't you glad I enlightened you with that information? So I've watched house hunters until 2 am ever since Thursday.

It's amazing how spastic I am when I don't sleep. All through Saturday night, I just felt so spastic. Then before church Sunday morning, I drank lots of coffee and it worked for a while! I was oddly wide awake even though I had no sleep. So-about the Oreo balls. For class, 8 people made different finger foods. There were donuts, sausage balls, hamburger cupcakes, puppy chow, pigs in a blanket, cheese cake, little smokies, and chocolate covered pretzels. We had to make enough of our food for 30 people. The lesson was about how we are selfish. At the end of the lesson, Phil (youth minister) finally revealed to everyone what was covered up on the tables. No one besides the people who made the food knew what it was. In honor of thanksgiving, we had a "feast". Every person got to pick 1 think they wanted to eat. BUT there were some rules...

You could not get your own food. Someone had to ask you what you wanted, you could not tell someone to get you something. You could not get up if someone was getting your food. And you could not get food for the person who got your food. You couldn't eat until everyone at your table got their food. It was really fun and a special treat!!

I loved getting to go to church! I hadn't been in 3 weeks. My dad had to go to both services because he talked about missions and all the good things happening. For lunch I got to go eat with one of my friends! That was very fun!!

I went home to rest for a couple hours before I had to leave again. At 4, I went to the prayer meeting that the youth group has every week. It's such a wonderful time. Every week more people come. Yesterday we did something different than we have. Someone read a story from the Bible slowly, 3 different times. The first time, you are supposed to picture yourself in the story and what that would be like. The second time, you listen for 1 word or short phrase that God wants you to hear. After the second time, we shared what word stuck out to us. The third time, you listened to how God wants that word to affect you this week. After we heard it the third time, we shared how we can take that one word, and use it this week in our lives. This was the passage.

"As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

-Luke 10:38-42

I underlined the phrases that people said stuck out to them. In this passage, Martha is STILL preparing her home for Jesus, even when he is already there. How many times do we keep preparing for God to use us, and not focus on the present? He is already here and we are busy working for the future. The word listening stuck out to many people. We are so busy in life and don't take time to just listen. That's all God wants us to do. There is so much we learned from each other yesterday, just listening to each other talk about what stuck out and how we can apply it.

The forth step in this is to pray the word or phrase that stuck out to you, back to God and to continue to do that. It was such an encouraging time yesterday!

My brother Landon is in 6th grade. Every year, the 6th grade boys lead worship one Sunday night. Last night was that night! Landon led a prayer and did such a great job!! I'm pretty sure I could never get up in front of thousands and do that..all the boys did so good.

By the time church ended, I was feeling so bad. Once I got home, I got a migraine. Soon after that, I got so nauseous and my side started hurting a lot again from the cyst. It just suddenly got extremely worse. I cried for a long time until we could get the pain under control. I was on so much pain medicine. My vision was blurry and when I got up, I stumbled all over the place. It was a terrible feeling. It took quite a while to get the pain under control. I finally was able to go to sleep!!! I slept until 1am and was up for an hour or two but then went back to sleep. The pain is better today if I keep up with my pain meds. I had stopped taking them last week, which was a nice break from them!

 I hate that I have been on pain medicine more days than not for the past 3 months. I don't think I've gone a whole week without needing it for something. And I'm not someone who just takes it when there's a little pain. It's not worth the side effects. But I have needed them a lot. Hopefully it will all get better soon. 

As to why I've had trouble sleeping, we think it's just the Lyme. When my gallbladder started having problems, my Lyme doctor told us to stop treatments. He wanted me fully recovered before we started treatments again. Again, he stressed that for someone with an already complicated disease, removing an organ is a big deal and treatments would be way too much. So we just haven't started back on the treatments because several things keep coming up. Since we haven't attacked the Lyme in a long time, it's probably attacking and that's why I can't sleep. We are working on getting my medicine schedule so that I can start back up. Bodies can't heal without sleep. Also, did you know bodies can't heal when they are in pain? The immune system can't fight other things if you are in a lot of pain. I thought that was interesting.

I'm making another video about the past year because on December 3rd it will be 2 years since I was diagnosed and started treatment. So be looking for that! I hope you all have a wonderful thanksgiving!

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever." 1 Chronicles 16:34