MS

Soooooo I've been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.  The irony is deafening.  I made such an idol out of sports and exercise but now I have an autoimmune disease that will inevitably leave me disabled someday.  It is just another pride lesson.  Fitness is not that important; well at least as important as I made it.   But now I will use my experience and knowledge to combat and delay the effects and symptoms. 
Somewhere in the middle of January, I woke up to a very strange feeling in my left arm.  The whole thing was numb and tingly, all the way up to my spine and up my neck.  I had lost some feeling in my finger tips and my trapezius, a large shoulder blade muscle, was completely dead.  It would not engage/fire whatsoever.  That bothered me but I was stubborn.  I didn'ttttt need no docccccccc.  Right.  I finally went a couple days later and this guy said it was a pinched nerve.  Ok sweet.  They gave me a steroid shot and some pills.  This definitely helped reduce the inflammation of the nerve endings, which moderately relieved the symptoms.  But more time passed and it still wasn't getting completely better, so I went back.  They took my co-pay and five minutes later told me I need an MRI.  They kept asking me what my pain was on a scale of 1-10.  I was like, 'zero, maybe a one.'  It was uncomfortable, but it didn't hurt.   Being stubborn again, I did not want to pay for it.  I finally got an MRI and not 30 minutes after they called me to tell me the bad news. 
In the meantime I started going to a chiropractor I know from church and he has done wonders.  The MS I have comes in waves, so I'm currently still recovering from that relapse.  Before I went and saw him, I couldn't even really play basketball.  My coordination was shot in my left arm, which meant I couldn't dribble or catch a pass.  What bothered me even more was when I did a simple test that I used to do on clients.  You stand on one foot, stick your arms out, close your eyes and try to touch your nose with both middle fingers.  I did that test and with my left arm I touched my chin, instead of my nose.  Having my back worked on a couple times a week has had unbelievable results.  I'm certainly not back to what I was on the court, but I'm a lot closer.  Before I couldn't even touch the rim and now I can grab it with both hands.  And I can catch the ball again.
There is no cure for MS and no one knows what causes it.  It is more prevalent in females but it usually shows the first signs between 20-40 years old.  The drugs are pretty powerful.  And expensive.  I'm supposed to begin treatment soon.  Some of the pills you take and they last for months.  Others require you to stick yourself every other day.  I'm not worried.  Bring it to me.  I'm about to play the cards I've been dealt with a smile on my face.  There is no sense crying and whining about things you can't change. God has a plan.  Romans 8:28 says,"²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who^[a] have been called according to his purpose."  That's all I need to know.
It has been interesting to me the response I have gotten.  The people around me are definitely more concerned than I am.  My attitude is kind of like, 'ahhh whatevs.'  I love the people in my life and greatly appreciate their support, but I'll walk away from someone super concerned I just told and be like, 'yeesh, I'm not dead.'  Unless you knew me really well or watched me hoop, you wouldn't even be able to tell.  My neurologist gave me a bunch of packets of different drugs I could take.  If there is one thing I hate, it's anything that would fall under the category of paperwork.  I don't want to look at that junk, reading through all the side effects and such.  Just tell me what I gotta do and I'll do it. If she wants to know what I feel like I should do, I'll be like, 'you're the doc.  You tell me.' 
The only thing I'm apprehensive about is my commitments later this year.  I would like to show up able to do the things I said I could physically do, as well as the person my references made me out to be.  I do not want to have a relapse in the midst of a tour or disaster relief. But like I said, I'm not worried.  I mean by rights, I am fallen, I am a sinner and I completely and fully deserve God's wrath. It's only by the grace of God I'm even alive, let alone fortunate enough to function as well as I do.  And heck, it's about time something bad happened to me.  I'm soooo blessed.  I've had every need my whole life taken care of, I have two college degrees, a wonderful family, awesome friends, my parents aren't divorced, decently fit, I can see, I don't go to bed starving, etc.  Life was just too easy. I'm not arrogantly saying I want bad things to happen to me because I was too awesome before.  I'm saying I have been fortunate enough to never have been through rough trials.  I feel like that has made me soft.  I can't wait for all the lessons I'm going to learn and how I will grow through this ordeal. 

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself."
Eleanor Roosevelt

The Butterfly of Matamoros

I made a friend during my Spring Break in Mexico.  He was there Monday-Friday, remodeling the room with Z and I.  You can see him in some of the pictures on the previous post.  He was 24, married and not living in the greatest situation.  He dropped out of school in first grade and currently is unemployed.  He lives in an area similar to the dump that I talked about in another post.  He is very skilled at construction and the types of things that we were doing, so Z understandably decided to go get him.  He of course doesn't have a phone so we had no way of getting a hold of him.  We just hopped in the truck and started driving to where he lives, hoping to run into him.  That lifestyle of doing things that way fascinates me.  It's so different than the on-time culture that I'm used to.  We got to where he stays but there was no sign of him.  Z asked some of his neighbors if they had seen him. Nothing.  One thing I've noticed in foreign countries is people just chilling.  Or maybe it's an urban thing.  People just stand or sit by the road, doing nothing.  I don't know if they are relaxing or life has them in a state of despair and they don't care about anything nor improving their situation. 

If I didn't know Spanish, there is no way this connection would have been made.  He knew maybe 10 words of English, just things he had picked up.  He was probably one of the biggest factors in my development of Spanish that week.  In the house I stayed in, we spoke mostly English.  But of course, I still spoke a lot of Spanish just in general, at church, on the street and such.  Working with this guy was great.  It wasn't a loud environment, there weren't any disruptions or other people to deal with; it was just him, Z and I so it was perfect to practice Spanish.  When he got tired of this gringo stumbling through Spanish, he couldn't just walk away; he had to converse with me.  I had plenty of time to stop and think about my sentences and I was having whole entire conversations about his life.  It took a couple days before he got used to actually trying to help me and slowing down his words so I could hear better.  One day we had like three straight solid hours and after that convo I was feeling pretty confident.  At the end of the week, I was definitely multiple steps ahead of where I started.

Andddddd now, I'm back down.  I think this trip has put me at peace with my Spanish.  I hate wasting.  I don't want anything to go to waste: money, half a napkin, a trip somewhere, etc. I think one of the reasons I was a personal trainer for too long was that I didn't want to waste my degree.  Naturally I felt the same way about Spanish.  It put me on edge.  But now I'm cool with it.  I know I'm not good at it.  People that don't know Spanish hear it and they think I'm good at it, but that doesn't mean much to me because they don't know any better and can't understand what I'm saying.  In order to be fluent you have to have an intense need to learn a second language and/or you have to be immersed.  I'm completely open to serving in a Spanish-speaking country someday and re-learning.  It would not be difficult for me to practice and build off the base I have developed and start again.  But for now, God has me here.  And with that said, I do not have the motivation, desire, or perseverance, nor time it would require to put several hours of work into being fluent.  Before this trip I would not have been able to say or feel those things. 

Back to Matamoros.  My friend and I had fun, exchanging banter and such.  He never remembered my name, which is hard for them to pronounce anyways, so he just called me 'gringo.'  That was the very first thing he said when he saw me, 'gringo!!'  I don't mind; I was just surprised at his forwardness.  The general disposition of Hispanics towards Americans is one of timidness or indifference.  A lot of them are just flat scared but he had no fear and I liked it.  All week he would randomly just say, 'gringo, gringo, gringo.'  It was funny.  I started calling him 'la mariposa de matamoros,' which means butterfly.  Or he liked to sing with the radio so I stole a line from a guy I used to work for and asked him what he did with the money his mom gave him for singing lessons. 

As I got to know him and hear his story, I just really felt for him.  The only way he had to make money was to smuggle weed across the river to the States.  He made about $200 to swim 'mota' to Brownsville, which is a lot of money to someone like him.  He said he's never been caught but gringos have seen him three times.  He knows it is wrong and smoking it everyday is also wrong.  And he knows he runs the risk of being put in a US jail for two years.  But it's such easy money and it is difficult to find other ways to earn money.  I thought it was ironic that my tax dollars are used to keep him out of my country and here I was being friendly and using my resources to help him.  The only way he can get around outside of walking or grabbing a ride, is to take the bus.  He said he needed to get a bike but couldn't afford it.  It didn't take me long to offer to buy him a bike.  He didn't really take me seriously at first, or even for a couple days, but I was completely serious, especially since 'bicis,' like most everything else, are cheap.  I've been wrestling with the idea of handouts and how it doesn't help a person learn to work hard for themselves.  But I got to know him and felt obligated to help him because I knew he was trying, not to mention I witnessed his work ethic all week, while we were working.  And he didn't ask for it, I offered.  On Friday we finally went to the market and got him a bike.  Z told me that I should let him buy it because as soon as they see my white skin "they'll want a million pesos instead of 800."  I laughed as I was used to this.  So after going to a couple places, Z found an all but brand new one for 700 pesos, which is about $60.  $60 is almost nothing to an American but now he has a way to get around, to go look for jobs, to go buy groceries, etc.  He was definitely grateful.  I prefer to give when a need arises, rather then when they beg or plead for help and money. 
Then we started talking about God.  He wore a hat and had a tattoo of St. Jude so that's where I started.  I told him if I was going to buy this bike, he needed to go to Z's church and he agreed to.  Then I asked him if he had ever had a bible and he said he didn't.  At this point, I was already in the mindset of I do not belong in the realm of Espanol, so I knew I wasn't going to really need or use my Spanish bible anymore.  I brought it the next day and gave it to him.  I totally thought it would collect dust but to my surprise, he came back the next few days telling me he had read Genesis 1, then chapter 2.  He had never owned one and was definitely interested in reading it.  I then immediately thought about how I didn't even considered whether he could read or not, but in prison he got six months of schooling.  We talked about God and I explained that you can't pray to St. Jude and Jesus.  He agreed.  We had good talks.  I do not know what will come of that, but hopefully a seed was planted. 

I own a car.  And a Macintosh computer.  And tons of other things.  Why?  Why am I so blessed?  Why was I born into the American middle-class, which puts me among the richest 5% of the world?  I'm beginning to lean towards calling it cursed, rather than blessed.  It has made me soft.  I have never had a need that wasn't provided for me.  I have little idea what real struggle is like.  I feel like I would fit in much better with that type of people. 

I love Texas.  I really do.  It has been wonderful to me.  But the longer I am in this American culture, the more obvious it becomes that I do not belong here.

 

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
― Charles Dickens