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Faith,Life

Headaches and Migraines

posted on : July 19, 2019 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I have written many times before about how I have had migraines for many years. I had my first migraine when I was 21. At the time I didn’t know it was a migraine. I was shopping and all of a sudden my head really hurt, I felt a little nauseated and my eyes hurt. Aspirin had always helped with my previous headaches, so I went home and took two aspirin. I was surprised when aspirin didn’t help. I continued having headaches, and I continued taking aspirin, and I continued to be surprised when it didn’t help. Being a poor student I didn’t have any money so I didn’t go to the doctor about it.

I graduated from college, went to graduate school and got two Master’s Degrees, all the while having headaches. I met and married a wonderful man (he’s still wonderful!), and had two children. One day I was reading a magazine article about headaches and the descriptions of the different types of headaches. I was really surprised when my headaches fit the description of migraines. It had never occurred to me that they were migraines. I did go to the doctor about them but there was little they could do until I was through having children.

I continued to have debilitating migraines and the funny part about all of this is that it didn’t occur to me to pray about this problem. Of course I usually prayed for help with individual headaches, but overall it just didn’t occur to me to pray about it. I think I was thinking that everyone has something to deal with and this was just one of my things to deal with. For many years I stumbled through my days trying to deal with my responsibilities with children, a home, a husband and well, basically my life.

Fast forward several years when I was pregnant with my sixth child. For some reason I decided to pray about a way to treat them. I’m not sure what changed or why it finally occurred to me to do this. By this time I had been having migraines for 18 years, and yes, sometimes I’m a little slow.

I started asking for guidance in my prayers. I asked to be directed to find a way to treat the migraines when they happened. I even hoped that maybe I could find some way to prevent them. I prayed about this for several weeks. At this time I was serving in the Young Women’s presidency in my ward at church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). We were having a presidency meeting when one of women in the meeting started talking about headaches she was having. Her doctor had told her to take an aspirin with a Coke and lie down for a while. When she said this I strongly had the Holy Ghost tell me to do this too.

Not being a Coke person I tried Pepsi with the aspirin. It worked! It worked fairly well most of the time. Sometimes it just dulled the pain and sometimes it didn’t work but this was the first thing I had tried that even came close to working. I did some research and found it was the caffeine in the Pepsi that worked so I switched to aspirin with a caffeine tablet. Later on I alternated between aspirin, acetaminophen and ibuprofen with the caffeine. This gave me the ability to function much better for several years. In hind sight I wish I had prayed about it many years sooner.

So the lesson I mostly learned from this experience is that God is often just waiting to bless us but that we need to ask Him. We need to humble ourselves, recognize that He is our Father in Heaven and ask (sometimes beg) for the blessings we need. We need to show our faith in Him by asking and then moving forward in faith knowing the blessing will come, when it’s the right time and in the right way. Sometimes this means it’s not the way or what we expected, but He will bless us. I recently read a talk in the May 2019 Ensign by Dale G. Renlund  about qualifying for blessings that God wants to give us. “Most blessings that God desires to give us require action on our part-action based on our faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in the Savior is a principle of action and of power,” said Elder Renlund.

Since then I have learned that sometimes I’m the one denying myself help from heaven because I haven’t asked for it. I have also learned to be more specific in my prayers, to ask with faith in Jesus Christ, and then watch for the hand of God in my life.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2019/04/41renlund?lang=eng

 

Faith,Life

Finding Comfort During Migraines

posted on : November 13, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

Last week I wrote about migraines and how they have plagued my life for over 40 years.  I also wrote about a 6 year time frame where I had migraines almost every day, most of them excruciating and so bad I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep on living.  Several months into this time frame I had an experience that helped me cope a little more with the situation.  It didn’t help with the pain or lessen it but it did give me a new perspective.  I had a migraine and was sitting in church at a funeral of a neighbor, and the speaker was talking about the scripture of how God has told us He will not leave us comfortless during our hard times.  I felt so forsaken as I sat there in great pain.  I was silently crying to myself and thought “You have left me comfortless.”  Immediately I had the thought come to my mind “I blessed you with a love for church music to help you through this time.”  I thought of how I have always loved to sing church hymns.  Even as a little girl I would go around the house singing them as loudly as I could.  I walked home from school every day singing Primary songs.  I joined the Ward Choir when I was 12 and was a dedicated member until I left for college where I also joined the choirs of the various wards I was in. As a teenager when I was bored in church I would read the words of the hymns and sing the songs in my mind. The words somehow filled me with comfort and peace as well as teaching me doctrine, and they sank deeply into my soul.  By doing this I ended up memorizing many of the hymns.  When I had severe migraines I would lie in bed or sit in the hot water of a shower and sing the hymns that I had inadvertently memorized. Sometimes when it hurt too much to sing out loud I would sing the words in my mind.  I felt comfort and my Heavenly Father’s love as I focused on the words and music of the songs.  At this funeral when I had this thought about being blessed with a love for church music I instantly felt humbled and chastened.  It taught me that for some reason that this was part of my Heavenly Father’s plan for me. It also taught me that He knew me and knew about my pain and the hardship I was enduring.  It taught me that He had prepared and strengthened me to be able to endure this affliction. It also taught me to look for the ways my Heavenly Father has quietly blessed my life to deal with the difficulties and challenges that I personally face.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2000/04/finding-a-safe-harbor?lang=eng

 

Life

Migraines and Survival

posted on : November 9, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I have been struggling this week with migraines which is why I haven’t posted something sooner.  This plague has been part of my life for over 40 years.  Sometimes I wonder how I have survived them so long because some of them have been so horrendous, that when I was in the midst of them I didn’t want to be alive anymore.  I have been to every kind of doctor to try to rid myself of this affliction, tried every kind of treatment and have prayed with faith and desperation. Yet, I still have them. After many prayers in which I pleaded for understanding, I received an answer as to why I have this terrible trial in my life.  The answer that came was so that I would need God. The answer was humbling and yet unsatisfactory. Wasn’t there some other way?  In fact it seemed like there were many other ways in which I needed my Father in Heaven.  I have many children with difficult challenges which I prayed and worried about. We’ve had financial challenges through the years and just normal life situations. All through these I have prayed fervently for help.  I also try to be diligent in scripture reading and saying my prayers and fulfilling my callings.  It seems to me I try really hard to be a good person and yet, I still have these awful migraines. No matter what I do, lurking in the background is the fear that I will have a migraine and spoil yet another family outing or that I won’t be able to measure up in some way.  I absolutely hate that these control my life. One particularly dark time started when my youngest child was almost 2 and my oldest was 17. For the next 6 years I had severe migraines every day and I lived in survival mode.  It was during this time I sought every doctor and treatment I could find and nothing helped.  I thought about dying because I thought that if my life offered me nothing but pain in the future, what was there to live for.  I thought about dying because I wasn’t useful to anyone.  I thought about dying because I hurt so much that I was existing and not really living.

Migraines obviously affected my family as well as myself.  Sometimes I would lie in bed knowing I children who needed me, a household to run and a life to live.  I wanted to be able to volunteer at my children’s schools and I wanted to fulfill church responsibilities.  I wanted to be reliable and I wanted to be free of pain.  I really wanted most of all to be a good wife and mother, and I couldn’t do any of these things.  Most days I was lucky if I could do some laundry and put something in the crock pot so my family would have dinner. During those 6 years, and in subsequent years I did learn many things to help me get through those dark days.  In future posts I will write some of the things I found helpful.  Maybe they will be helpful to you too as you deal with whatever is painful in your life.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2018/10/wounded?lang=eng

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/10/god-shall-wipe-away-all-tears?lang=eng

Church,Faith

Fasting When It’s Difficult

posted on : October 1, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

In our church, on the first Sunday of each month, we fast for 24 hours from food.  There are two main reasons for fasting.  One is that the money we would have spent on the meals is given to the church to help those in need, and we are encouraged to be very generous with our donation.  Another reason for fasting is to learn to have our spirits in control over our bodies, because going without food for 24 hours can be very difficult.  Since I have migraines I have had difficulty in fasting.  When I don’t eat I get migraines, sometimes very severe ones, which can last for days.  They not only affect me but also my family.  I tried eating lightly to still obey the essence of the fast but I still got migraines.  One time a friend told me that she got headaches too from not eating but found that when she started and ended her fast with a prayer she did fine.  So I tried that and got a huge migraine.  Obviously what works for one person does not always work for another person.  I struggled for many years with how to fast and be obedient to the principle. I felt like I was missing out on the blessings that come from obedience, even though I felt good that we were at least doing the donation part. One day a friend suggested there are many things I could fast from besides food, which hadn’t occurred to me before.  I started thinking about this and decided I could fast from technology-no games on my phone or iPad, no reading newspapers on my laptop, no TV and no radio programs. I decided I could still do family history and my journal on my laptop, because they were not entertainment based. Basically nothing that is entertainment oriented involving technology.  I have been doing this for many years now and believe it or not, it’s very difficult to do. It’s amazing how hard it is to not get my iPad out and play a game, or to watch a TV program.  In some ways it helps me realize how much time I actually spend playing games. Because it is hard to do it is actually a fast and something that my spirit has to be in charge of.  I have to remind myself what I hope to gain from fasting, which in part is to show my love for my Savior, Jesus Christ.  I would like to say that it has gotten easier over the years but it hasn’t.  Every Fast Sunday I still struggle with the no technology fast but I think that’s what makes it a true fast.  If it was easy it wouldn’t really be a fast.  I do believe that when I make an honest effort to be obedient to a principle, especially when it’s hard, the Lord blesses me for my efforts.  As I learn to master myself I gain greater strength to help me in other areas of my life. Fasting is another example of a commandment that is really designed to bless those who follow it.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/04/is-not-this-the-fast-that-i-have-chosen?lang=eng

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2001/04/the-law-of-the-fast?lang=eng

Faith,Lessons Learned

Migraines and Spiritual Growth

posted on : August 23, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I have had migraines for over 40 years, some of them so severe I didn’t want to be alive anymore.  I have been to every kind of doctor, tried every cure and done everything that seemed reasonable and even tried some things that were unreasonable in trying to rid myself of this plague.  There have been moments when I thought that if all my life offered was pain, it would be better to die.  At times I have thought that I couldn’t stand anymore pain and felt desperate to end the pain but it continued on with nothing I could do.  In desperation I have cried out to God many times for relief, knowing that He is the ultimate source of relief.  Sometimes I have had an immediate answer on what I could do for relief.  One time as I stood trying to relax in the hot water of a shower I was begging God for help. Quietly the thought “get into bed and relax” came into my mind.  I turned off the water, got dressed and got into bed, relaxed, and as soon as I did my migraine was gone.  I have pondered about this occurrence many times. God easily could have taken away my migraine while I was standing in the shower, so why did I need to get into bed and relax?  In the bible there is the story of the captain of a Syrian army named Naaman who had leprosy.  He came to the prophet Elisha to cure his leprosy and Elisha told Naaman, through his servant, to wash himself in the river Jordan seven times.  Did the waters of Jordan have miraculous curing powers?  Elisha could have blessed Naaman or cured him some other way, but washing in the waters of the Jordan required Naaman to act, to do something. For miracles to happen there must be faith and faith requires action.  Just as Naaman had to act to be cured, I had to show my faith by acting.  God could have taken away my migraine in the shower but He wanted me to show my faith through my actions.  He already knew what I believe and how strongly I believed it but sometimes I need to be reminded, I needed to find out how strong my faith is.  That night as I laid there with a grateful heart for the relief from pain I was also grateful to know I have a loving Father in Heaven who hears my prayers and gives me experiences to help my faith grow.  I absolutely hate migraines but I am grateful for the spiritual growth I have had because of them.