Facing the fear

Sisters, I am SO thankful for your comments, your encouragement, your prayers, your compassion. They mean more to me than you know.

I have to admit, it's been a rough week. Well, kind of a roller-coaster week. I'm in the middle of an intensive week-long summer course, so that's included a lot of good stuff but it's also been draining. And then I'm coming home from class every night at bedtime to face the prospect of an injection.

I had a bad experience last night with the injection. Won't go into details, but made it REALLY difficult tonight. I knew I needed DH's moral support this time around, but I felt bad asking cos my class had gone 30 minutes over (!) and I was home late and he really needed to get to bed.

I actually offered to skip the injection tonight, cos I knew I couldn't do it without him but I also knew he needs his sleep. But he said, "That's not gonna happen. You need your medicine, and I'm choosing to stay up and help you with it."

So went through all the preparation steps, got in position, held the injector up to my skin ... Trying to psych myself up to press the button was so hard. I knew I could handle pressing the button, but I was afraid of the moment right after that: I was worried that it would hurt going in and I'd reflexively jerk the device away from my skin (which happened last night), which would be dangerous AND waste expensive meds! And what made it worse is that I was frustrated with myself for being so weak, and for wasting DH's time, and I was sitting there trying to reason with myself and praying and asking God to be my strength and to let His strength be perfected in my weakness.

I would think I was ready, and try to press the button, and then chicken out. So I'd ask DH to do it, but the minute he moved the injector toward me, I would take it away from him and say, "No, I need to do it!" And on and on. He and I would both logically talk me into it, but at the moment of truth, something inside me just screamed, "No!" and I couldn't go through with it.

But I finally did.
And as much as I hated the idea of pressing the button, of having to get daily injections from now till who knows when, of having MS, period ... there was also a part of me saying, "I am NOT going to be defeated by a needle."
And I wasn't.

And afterwards, I snuggled up with DH (ice pack against the injection site) and he just held me. And said silly things, trying to make me laugh.

I have to admit, I don't understand yet what's going on inside me.
And that frustrates me. I want to understand, to overcome, to experience that sufficient strength and grace overcoming my weakness. It's embarrassing to be so needlephobic.

It's also embarrassing to write the way I do on this blog, unedited ... yet in this season I feel the need to just get it out. Uncensored. Raw and real. And let God do with it what He will.