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Last year, on the day before Thanksgiving, I found out I have a terrible, rare, progressive and often fatal lung disease.\u00a0 Nobody – not one of the experts, not one of the scientists, not one of the doctors \u2013 can tell me how many years I may have left to live.\u00a0 But I get that – who but God really knows anyway?\u00a0 However, the one thing they ALL seem to agree on:\u00a0 I have a lot fewer years left than I did just two days before Thanksgiving – when I didn\u2019t know I had Lymphangeileomyomatosis.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Last year, on the day before Thanksgiving, I found out I have a terrible, rare, progressive and often fatal lung disease.\u00a0 Nobody – not one of the experts, not one of the scientists, not one of the doctors \u2013 can tell me how many years I may have left to live.\u00a0 But I get that – who but God really knows anyway?\u00a0 However, the one thing they ALL seem to agree on:\u00a0 I have a lot fewer years left than I did just two days before Thanksgiving – when I didn\u2019t know I had Lymphangeileomyomatosis.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nIt\u2019s called LAM for short, because, let\u2019s be real \u2013 no one is going to remember Lymphangeileomyomatosis.\u00a0 LAM.\u00a0 Seriously, God?<\/i>\u00a0 That\u2019s my new moniker?\u00a0 A LAM(b)?\u00a0 Of all the animals on the planet that might be fun to be named after \u2013 I get to be called a lam(b)?\u00a0 A lamb is a pokey, wobbly, helpless baby sheep.\u00a0 As if being called a BABY of any animal isn\u2019t enough, I get to be a baby animal from the sheep family \u2013 who are most widely known for their dim wit!\u00a0 Ask anyone what they think of sheep and they\u2019ll reply \u201cstupid\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 Because of their confused and moronic tendencies, sheep have even been known to follow each other right off the edge of a cliff.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
At the most frail and freakish time of my life, I get to be a lam(b).\u00a0 Not even a full-grown sheep who has learned a bit about sheepdom, but a shallow, immature, dependent little baby sheep.\u00a0 How poetic. \u00a0\u00a0And then the real irony is this: \u00a0I actually feel<\/i>like a little baby sheep, too.\u00a0 I feel<\/i> dim-witted, confused, sheared, exposed \u2013 and most of the time I want to run \u2013 to flee, sometimes right off the edge of a cliff.<\/span><\/div>\n
But then I read up a bit on sheep and sheep-things \u2013 and I found all kinds of reasons that make me proud to be one of them.\u00a0 Here they are:<\/span><\/div>\n
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- \n\u00a0Sheep are known to follow their leader \u2013 the CLEAR leader.\u00a0 Even blindly, without any understanding of where they are being led and why, sheep will follow their leader<\/u>.\u00a0 Likewise, the most important goal in my life is to follow my leader, Jesus, wherever and into whatever He leads me.\u00a0 I want to have as much faith as my sheep-friends, so that I will follow Jesus blindly, even when I don\u2019t understand where He is leading me.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
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Sheep have such incredibly strong peripheral vision, they can actually see behind themselves without turning their heads.\u00a0 <\/u>If I am living my life as fully engaged as possible, I need to be able to learn from all that is behind me.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to live in<\/i> the past, which would only weigh me down, but I just need to be able to see<\/i>the past to know how to navigate the future and prevent recurring mistakes.\u00a0 The ability to see behind ourselves – for both me and my sheep friends – could actually spare us all kinds of pain.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n- \n
\u00a0Sheep become stressed when isolated<\/u>.\u00a0 When I first got my diagnosis, I began wallowing in self-pity and since I knew not a single soul with the same disease, I could not commiserate my misery with anyone.\u00a0 The more I isolated, the more stress and anxiety I experienced.\u00a0 Apparently, sheep have learned that which I still struggle with \u2013 we were not meant to do this life alone.\u00a0 We need<\/i> community.\u00a0 We were created <\/i>for community.\u00a0 Community is good.\u00a0 And once I reached out to family and friends – my people\/my flock – I felt the stress just wash away.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n- \n
Domestic sheep have a life expectancy of 10 \u2013 12 years, but some live as long as 20<\/u>.\u00a0 When I first got my LAM diagnosis, I raced to the internet and Googled it.\u00a0 Of course I did \u2013 it\u2019s always our first move in the 21st<\/sup> century.\u00a0 I was devastated to discover that most literature cited LAM as having a 10 year prognosis.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve investigated further, many people are currently suggesting the internet data is outdated, and that with earlier detection and possible lung transplant, LAM patients are now very capable of living 20 years or more \u2013 just like my sheep buddies. I don\u2019t know how long I\u2019ve already suffered from LAM, it could be I\u2019ve had it for many years already.\u00a0 But because I\u2019m definitely a domestic sheep and not a wild one, I am praying and choosing to believe I could live for at least 20 more years.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n- \n
Sheep have been used, both in ancient times and in modern religious rituals, as sacrificial animals<\/u>.\u00a0 Is there any possible way that God Almighty allowed me to get this disease in order to call attention to it, raise awareness, potentially leading someone to find a cure, so that ultimately other young women might live?\u00a0 Or bigger yet, is there any possible way that God Almighty allowed me to get this disease, asking me to glorify Him even in the midst of suffering, so that others might be drawn to HIM?\u00a0 Oh my, even the thought of that takes my breath away.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nSo today, today <\/i>I am embracing my inner sheep.\u00a0 I am a LAM(b) who is choosing to accept that I am quite dim, that I definitely NEED my leader and I definitely NEED my community, and that I have been called into this suffering and that\u2019s not a terrible place to be.\u00a0 Because of those choices, I refuse to be a quiet little LAM(b).\u00a0 I refuse to surrender to hopelessness and despair.\u00a0 I refuse to accept \u201cno cure\u201d.\u00a0 I am choosing to stand up and shout.\u00a0 I choose to be a ROARING LAM(b)!!! <\/span><\/div>\nAs you get older you care less and less what other people think about you \u2013 so you say whatever you want.\u00a0 When you\u2019re dying it gets even worse. My kids are constantly cringing around me because they never know what I\u2019m going to blurt out next.\u00a0 So here I go:\u00a0 I am unashamedly going to shout from the rooftops that LAM is snatching young women\u2019s lives and it DOES NOT have to be this way!\u00a0 \u00a0LAM is under-researched, under-funded and under-known.\u00a0 I believe there is a cure and we only need to find it!\u00a0 And so this roaring lam(b) \u2013 with a ton of help from my flock – is doing one BIG thing this summer to create awareness:<\/span><\/div>\nThe 1st<\/sup>Annual LAM Awareness 5k
\nWalk\/Run in Hudsonville<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/div>\nAugust 9th<\/sup>at the Hudsonville Baldwin Street Middle School Baseball\/Softball complex<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/div>\n7:30 a.m. Registration begins<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/div>\n9:15 a.m. Walk\/Run begins<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/div>\n$32.50 registration fee (Because the average age of onset of LAM in women is 32.5 years old); 5K t-shirt, snacks, prizes, and FUN included<\/span><\/b>.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\nRegister on-line at:\u00a0 <\/span>http:\/\/thelamfoundation.kintera.org\/faf\/home\/default.asp?ievent=1113636<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/b><\/div>\nWon\u2019t you please come join me, my family, friends, and community, and help to create awareness for a little-known, but devastating disease?\u00a0 All proceeds will go to the LAM Foundation – <\/span>http:\/\/www.thelamfoundation.org\/<\/span><\/a>– a 501c3 and the sole organization working to raise funds to further awareness and find a cure for LAM.<\/span><\/div>\n - \n