Alaska Stories: Pruning for Greater Growth
It was 65 degrees below zero wind chill as I walked to school in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
Wolf’s fur around my hood could have avoided the frost build up, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy a pelt. They hung around the general store, the “Farthest North Grocery Store” in Alaska. Other teachers, my peers, felt no discomfort about buying wolf pelts. I never quite fit, it seems, into the survival mind set. I wrapped a scratchy wool scarf across my face so it wouldn’t freeze off.
Crystalline air glowed around a few street lights. The still darkness was broken only by the crunch of my boots on ice-crisp snow. A porcupine moved leisurely across my path. I could hardly see what it was until I crept up close. Whew. It was too close for my comfort.
The Dillingham city limits included wildlife and tundra.
During “break-up” the snow melted and refroze in spots. I fell twice despite my care…dislocated my shoulder…couldn’t sleep for 3 months. Students had to do my writing on the whiteboard.
The romance of the northern lights was dimmed by pain.
On top of that I struggled with mysterious illness which made me feel like some alien had sucked out my blood and replaced it with water. Teaching became a nightmare.
Every spare dime was spent on medical expenses: I flew to Anchorage for medical care several times. The principal told me to leave mid-year but I needed the income and fought leaving through the teacher’s union. I slept on the floor of my supply closet as soon as school was over so I could get up again to do schoolwork before collapsing again at home.
I failed my first year of teaching in Alaska. After 19 years my career was over.
I was not a pioneer. In June I left teaching and moved to Anchorage where there was more medical help.
My diagnoses included mercury toxicity, Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysregulation, fibromyalgia, Epstein Barr virus and adrenal exhaustion. Doctors shrugged their shoulders and tried various means to make me functional. None worked.
I slogged through trying to work off my co-pay until my insurance ran out.
I became disabled, homeless, and unable to do anything for more than two or three hours a day. I felt like a broken doll face down in a muddy ditch. I considered and rejected suicide.
I was convinced that God had a plan for my life. Four years passed with no relief and no answers. I sold my car to a couple who defaulted on the payments and disappeared.
A few kind people helped me. I slept six weeks on my doctor’s home office floor.
Most of my peers misunderstood the nature of my illnesses. I didn’t look ill.
They pressured me to be like them, to get over it, to straighten up. They told me to work harder, spend more, move on.
Perhaps they thought I was lazy or mental. I thought that at first. A nurse who had rented me a room in her large home told me to leave when my money ran out. I went to the Anchorage Rescue Mission in tears.
Other posts detail the first 18 months of disability, homelessness and ten months of down time in bed.
Where was God during that time? He was pulling me through, although it was a tough road to travel.
Why? He never explains Himself to people in the Bible. I couldn’t understand if He tried to tell me why bad things happen. God was silent, but He gave me hope on the shoulder of life’s highway.
Insights and Applications
Listening to three or four radio sermons daily focused my mind on "things above" my own misery. It was essential to pain management to put my thoughts somewhere besides on myself.
Ten years later my life focus has completely changed. I am still disabled, but have grieved the loss, then learned more ways to manage and enjoy what I have. I may never have the stamina to teach full time, but I manage 48 apartments instead.
I have learned to pace myself rather than seek the highs and lows of kamikaze living. Previously, I would run full speed in an emotional high, collapse from exhaustion, run full speed again, collapse again.
Now I walk, enjoy the sights in depth, rest, meditate, listen.
I don’t know what is next. I see greater growth through the pruning God has fostered in me.
John 15:1-5 and Jeremiah 29:11 have become so important I read them over to myself again and again.
