Hypothyroidism and "Hope in His Steadfast Love"

A few weeks ago I was hiking through deep snow. Then at the end of April I enjoyed the walk in this YouTube Short.

But now it is once again hard to walk as far as the garden, so I am grateful to remember a couple of sitting exercises we learned from a PT back when Aunt Dorothy broke her neck and spent a couple months in a halo. Learn them in my newest Short: 2 Simple Ways to Get Moving! [even if stuck at a computer or couch-bound]

There were years where I couldn't even manage this much exercise. So I can be grateful for this ability even though I recently found out my current form of thyroid medication hasn't been absorbing for a couple months. And since I don't have a thyroid, [see part of that story in this post] it may take a while to get back to my normal.

As my body and brain struggle through the slough of deep hypothyroidism once again, it is a good time to remember that "[God's] delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love." (Psalm 147:10-11)

Winter & Spring Walks

We have already had a few memorable walks in 2023.

In March Elsa asked out of the blue if we wanted to go snowshoeing for the first time in many years.





It was a joy to spend a couple hours on a mild afternoon out in the woods of a local state park!







Then on April 21st we combined another outing with trip to choose lumber to be milled for our basement build-back. The world was extra beautiful with several inches of fresh snow covering what had mostly melted to mud.



Destination: Itasca State Park
Headwaters of the Mississippi River!



It had been more than 10 years since Elsa and I had visited this childhood haunt. But I couldn't forget tradition of getting my toes in the River no matter the temperature!









Another highlight was plowing our own path through the snow to get a look at the historic Clubhouse which Grandpa and Grandma rented for the whole family many years through the 1990s.







Then on to the Old Timer's Cabin on a favorite little hike across the bog.

What a joy! Neither of those special days would have been possible if we hadn't begun learning tools to heal our limbic system impairment and lower the chronic stress response which extra activity and exposures have triggered ever since our bodies crashed 9 years ago.



More recently, walks have been taken on our gravel road... sometimes only within the shelter of our tree line so the spring winds on the prairie don't blow us over!

5 Reasons to Take a Walk Outdoors:

#1 Breathe Fresh Air
#2 Stimulate Lymph Action
#3 Strengthen Eye/Brain Connections
#4 Make Discoveries [such as the moose tracks marching past our place in photo above!]
#5 Lower Stress & Boost Healing Hormones

All the More Beautiful

This week brought to a close my 19th year of teaching piano students. Family and friends gathered for a cosy evening recital with a dozen fun, short pieces by my three young students as well as a chance for them to turn the tables and quiz me on keyboard skills as I had done so often in their lessons through the year.

A couple days later I came across this quote by a Victorian English missionary who gave up what promised to be a career at the top of the art world of her day in order to show people God's love in difficult places.

 

"All the more beautiful will be God's triumph when it comes. The highest music is not the music where all goes on simple and straight and sweet, but where discord suddenly resolves tensions with harmony."

~ Lillias Trotter (12 February 1905)

 

This reminds me how my young students comment from time to time on how a note or chord in their music "sounds wrong." They hear discord and want to "fix" it... not understanding why a composer would ever purposely choose to stray from tuneful harmonies.

But to those of us who have lived longer with great music, it is easy to hear the purpose of dissonance - to set off the beauty of harmony far more.

The same goes for dark shadows in art and the climax of crisis in good stories.

Yet, no matter how many years of experience we log in this world, sometimes we may still find it not-so-simple to accept the various trials that come throughout each day, as well as the bigger ones that last for years.

And so we remind ourselves along with Lillias "All the more beautiful will be God's triumph when it comes."

And with an ancient author we say,

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”

~ Lamentations 3:21-24