God can use and redeem my scar for the benefit of someone else.  In all of this, we might know Him and pass along the comfort of Christ.  Pass along grace and what the Lord is going in your life ****[EVEN if you feel not ready]****” 

I am 1 in 10 women in the world who struggle with an “invisible” disease called endometriosis.  (source here)

March is endo awareness month, so I thought I’d take some time to share my story with you.

I still remember being in high school, and doubled over in pain on the floor in Mrs. John’s room during math class.  I remember in college, skipping out on a day or two of all the fun to lay in bed in pain.  It didn’t end when I became a wife, and working woman – it was the only time I called in “sick”. As a mama, you can imagine how difficult this STILL is when all I can do is care for myself but I have three little people to care for.   PAINFUL periods don’t even begin to describe it.  Can’t move, can’t walk, feeling like knives are sharp shooting into my uterus.  other symptoms? pain during sex (which that is a whole other story for another day), and pelvic pain all month long. (have you seen this commercial??)

You can usually find me “that time of the month” curled up with a heating pad or in the bathtub.  and that’s not even touching the emotional “side effects”, or the years of infertility I walked through.

for the longest time I knew what I was going through wasn’t normal, but it literally took begging my OB to perform the laproscopic surgery to confirm my diagnose: stage 4 endometriosis.  I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say for the next 5 years I had multiple surgeries, fertility treatments, shots, one miscarriage, and lots of hope lost.  If you’ve been following me for long, you remember this 7 year long season.  I shared about it in the middle of it, and I wasn’t afraid to tell people I was praying everyday for supernatural healing.  I was looking for answers, praying for healing, all the while still begging God to put life in my womb.  Infertility is something that affects a lot of women who have endo, and I was no different.  My mom had it, and took her 5+ years to get pregnant me.

I truly thought that having a child, and giving birth to her vaginally would help cure my endo, but alas it is back.  that’s why I”m sharing this story – to help RAISE AWARENESS because I’m sure many of you suffer from this, but just aren’t aware.  If you suffer painful periods, pain during sex, heavy bleeding/clotting, and/or infertility – ask your doctor about endometriosis!  while there is no cure, there are things you can do to help – and there is HOPE.  I have fought the past few years, and am still currently fighting and researching ways that I can help the physical and emotional symptoms of this sometimes dihbilitating disease.

I would LOVE to share some of the natural ways I have fought this, through cleaning up my lifestyle: mostly cleaning out the toxins I was putting on my body (which is our biggest organ) and also oils and supplements for both emotional and hormonal support.  I KNOW that the diet is a huge part of it, and I’m slowly working my way towards cleaning that up as well (why is it so hard??)

“A lot of the chemicals in the make-up, soaps, and laundry detergents that women use have xenoestrogens that exacerbate endometriosis; if you have endo, I suggest that you try natural bathing products for 3-6 months and see if you notice a difference in your pain levels.  Do not use anything on your skin that has parabens or phenoxyethanol.” source

 my girl Valerie and I are are going to be sharing LIVE on instagram Thursday, March 22nd at 8pm CST and we’d love for you to join us.  she’s seen huge progress in her DIET this month, and I can’t wait to learn from her.  and then I”ll be talking about all the oils, supplements, and emotional part of endo.

join us!!!

looking through old posts, I came across a few things that might encourage you!

 this:

Over the past 5 years of our infertility/endometriosis journey, I have been prayed over many many times.  I can recall every single instance someone prayed for healing over me, and those powerful moments in prayer with my brothers and sisters around the world will forever be etched in my memory.  Last Sunday as I was visiting my good friends, the Gibsons, church with them, I felt led to go to the front during prayer time to ask for praying for healing.  again.  I told the two precious women who were praying for me, that I’ve been asking God to heal me for a few years, and even though he hasn’t physically healed me yet, I still have faith that He is able to!  One of the women, after I finished, said “so you want us to pray for you to have a baby?”  and I said, no, I mean that would be a great bonus to the healing work God could do in my body but that wasn’t what I was requesting prayer for.  After the prayer time ended, she looked at me and said “I know what I heard”.

and this

I nervously tried to tell them about my endometriosis in a way they could understand, and pleaded with them as mothers to pray for God to heal me and open my womb.

It had to have been at least 20 minutes of praying before we said amen.  Mostly in Amharic, their native language, and even though I don’t know exactly what words were offered to God that morning, I knew in my spirit.  I felt the prayers.  These women all had their small children with them, as they often do when they work, and at the beginning of the prayer session they were all hunkered by their mamas, and towards the end of the prayer time, they were all huddled by me.  Yall, at this point, camp + asher were not mine yet.  It was a beautiful picture to me, of how God sees me.  Well, just simply that he does in fact see me!  After the praying, Mulu said she had a word for me.  We opened up my bible, and read from Luke 1.  “And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren.  For nothing will be impossible with God.  And Mary said, “behold, I am the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word”

GOD IS GOOD MY FRIENDS.  don’t give up hope, you are NOT ALONE!