Let’s Reflect : 2018
The year that showed us all flames. Honestly I’ve had about 3 back to back years where I’ve struggled to reflect. Too many emotions, too exhausted, too weary. I can’t really remember if the last 3 are just bad because they are the most recent, Or if they really have been the pinnacle of 28 years of what I see as a crazy life. But it’s mine. So here is My year in My words. I’m not sure how this will go and I don’t plan on doing any editing as usual; so bare with me. I started the year: sick. Like really sick. I was given my first official diagnosis in 2011 and have been navigating life while “not completely healthy but functional” ever since. Honestly a lot of it started at a much younger age, undiagnosed, but that’s another story for another time. I am what you call an anomaly when it comes to the chronically ill: I hold down a full time, physical job and I take 0 meds. Only vitamins. Ok so that’s not the entire truth. In 2011 I started out on meds. And between 2011 and 2014 stopped and started and stopped. In 2015 when I started work in JHB I went on a 2/3 year battle of going medication free but living a normal life. I racked up huge debt due to alternative medical care options. Come 2018 and after all the hard work : I crash and burn. New symptoms worse than ever came in the form of gastric intestinal dysfunction, some bladder dysfunction (which I still am not completely addressing : one thing at a time) and severe chronic fatigue. So that meant : new Dr, new tests, new meds (natural), new and everything free diet, new debt. This journey has been grueling but I don’t actually think I’ve processed any bit of it. I just had to keep going. From the initial Myasthenia Gravis scare. To the actual diagnosis of leaky gut syndrome: a new term in medicine, not understood and not even accepted as a diagnosis by many. I had another thing that made me feel so alone and so out of place. So initially I started to feel like I was dying. I can’t explain it. But I was convinced the end off 2018 on this earth, would not see me. I drew up a will. Told my best friend what I wanted for my funeral. Wrote letters to my family members. I prepared for what I thought must be the inevitable. Death never came. Well at least not in the way I was welcoming it. So I begged for death. I see-sawed between these two: feeling like I’m dying and begging God for death. This all seems crazy to think of now. The death that did come was the death of all the things that have tried to define me. Essentially the Roxanne Eleanor Jason that entered 2018 did actually die. I try to explain it in this way: ever since that first Bad Thing happened to me as a little girl, I started the becoming of the broken, messed up, hard hearted woman who walks around today. She is not Roxanne - Dawn. She is not Doe. So these past few years have been the unbecoming of the becoming of me. 2018 was a big year of death and resurrection. So let’s get to a bit of the resurrection. This year God resurrected in me what has always been a core part of my being: Music and writing. Now I am a worshipper (it’s taken a lot to say that with confidence) but when I say that; I am not talking about Music. We are all made to worship. So we are all worshippers. We just use different mediums. And worship different things ( more on that some other time). My two main mediums happen to be writing and , yes, music. This year I came back to a “primary school aged me” obsessed with the arts and spending all of her time writing, at choir rehearsal, at band practice or at piano lessons. That was before high school where I convinced myself that I was not good enough for the real world. This year I started a Poetry Group at church, it’s a small gathering and we don’t perform anywhere (yet), but it is one of the most important things in my life and I love nurturing people’s art and their words. I stepped on stage as part of our vocal team at church, after a year of not wanting to leave the rehearsal room and constantly convincing myself that 2 years of grooming would be sufficient before I ever became a backing vocal. (I’m really good at hiding). I started learning to play the keyboard. Which at first was just to have a hobby but has turned in to a passion that’s fire blazes so bright it scares me. I wrote a song. ( ok well I collaborated with Jesus for that one) Then there is the relational stuff. This actual requires 2 separate blog posts but I will try and some it up in 2 sentences. Most of this year I struggled with unrequited love. And then briefly this year I pursued a relationship that was not of God and almost cost me my calling. It’s tough when you put your all in to loving people and find that you fail dismally every time. So love lessons kind of wrapped up the year for me. All in all 2018 was filled with trial after trial and test after test. Even the victories felt like battles. A crazy guy named James (also my scripture for this year was the entire book of James, my word was : Faith) wrote this once that I think gives a bit of perspective to it all. “Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith produces perseverance” James 1: 2-3 And that’s a little glimpse in to a year that will go down as one for the books (and may just feature in a book one day) Remember Love and light Always Does
