When I became displaced from the last church that I was connected to, there was one community that helped me stay afloat. It was not something that I had an opportunity to participate in as often as I liked but it was truly life giving and really important at that point in my life. There were so many great people that I met through that web of friendships. Many of those people shaped my life through that transition more than they can possibly know.
Gradually, I was pulled into the orbit of this life-giving community by some people who knew what I had been through, where I was at, and shared my hopes and dreams for the future. While they did not have to, the created a wide and generous place for me at their table.
Last month, I attended what may be the last event I will attend with this group of people and it was extremely difficult for me. It was like losing my last handhold to any meaningful ecclesiastical community. It was like being displaced. Again.
I have spent the last few weeks thinking about next steps and I am still not sure what they will be or where they will lead. I have been doing a lot of writing lately and have several books in the queue. I am hoping to get to that soon.
But first, I am hoping to find a day or two to spend in a Rocky Mountain trout stream.
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It has been a while since I have updated my battle with Meniere’s Syndrome. I was feeling pretty hopeful that the worse was behind me. I started a new medicine regimen a few months back when I began to see a specialist and I had not had anything higher than I mild vertigo episode since then. At least, until a few weeks ago…
About three weeks ago I had a symptom that I had never experienced before in the four years of fighting this. I was sitting in bed and with no warning felt my world turn sideways and I fell hard to the left. The feeling only lasted a few seconds but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I could not help but think how much worse it could have been if I would have been doing anything other than sitting in bed. Since then, I have been anxious and nervous to do anything at all for fear that this “drop attack” will occur again.
This past week I had to work late on Tuesday and ended up having a pretty good vertigo attack while working. Started with blurred vision, then the world began to spin. I got motion sickness, threw up and then gradually started to feel better. Then the fatigue set in.
Today, I was at my daughter’s volleyball tournament and could tell that a vertigo episode was coming. I went to the car to lie down for a long while and started to feel better. When we were getting ready to leave, I moved Janell’s car to get us a bit closer to the door. I backed into a parking spot, put the car in park and was instantly hit by another drop attack. I fell to the left, into the car door and could not remember if the car was still in gear. I pressed hard on the brake and white knuckled the steering wheel until the attack passed (about 10 seconds). If it would have hit 5 seconds earlier than it did I probably would have hit a car or worse.
Needless to say, the fear of attacks has worked its way into my head. I have decided the time has come to move beyond treating this with medicine and begin to explore surgical options.
You can read more about the various symptoms of Meniere’s here.
Or different surgical options I am looking at here.
Will be consulting with my doctor soon…
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Sometimes it seems like I am on some strange ecclesiastical, merry-go-round where there is a lot of movement and motion but no one ever really gets anywhere. The same conversations seem to crop up from time to time – gender issues in leadership, sexual orientation, pacifism, paid clergy, “what is Gospel?” Lately it seems that everywhere I turn there is discussion about pluralism.
This is all good because, with the exception of the various “leadership” discussions that do not interest me, I usually learn a lot of things and am challenged to think about things from a different perspective. Like most people who attempt to stay relevant I think a great deal about pluralism. Like many others I have read Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
; and enjoyed it. But lately I have been struggling at a personal level with some of the pluralism discussions. I wonder what is the telos of the Christian’s commitment to pluralism? Towards what end are we living as Christians in our pluralistic culture?
I think it is easy to see the many ways that some narrow strands of the Christian tradition have refused to accept that pluralism is a reality that we need to learn to live with at some level. But for some of the more progressive Christian traditions I wonder what the aim is for the ways we live into this ubiquitous pluralism. Some say we need to learn to listen better to the “other.” Or that we need to better embody the will to embrace and the posture of love. I don’t doubt that we, as Christians, need to be less empirical, coercive and unidirectional in our attempts to share Gospel with a world that does not embrace our theological convictions. I agree with Vincent Donovan that there are ways that the church needs to be evangelized by the world. But I am curious to know what all this language really means where the rubber of our convictions meets the road of the geography of the real world.
I have read some things recently that seem to suggest that we need to get better at agreeing to disagree, or ignoring those who only want to continue the conflicts and are not willing to accept the reality of religious pluralism. Some will say that in either case we need to respond in love and I suspect that is true enough but I am not sure what it really means. Agreeing to disagree or avoiding people who aren’t as “enlightened” as we are hardly seems to lead towards reconciliation. And just how are we to love those who don’t share our own vision of pluralism? How do we share our lives with fundamentalist in our own or other religious traditions who want to wipe the existence of thoughts like ours off the face of the earth? And, if we’re honest, aren’t there a few ideologies (and maybe a few people who hold them) that we ourselves would like to eliminate?
Finally, I struggle with what is it that makes Christians distinct from the “others?” Certainly most of us believe that there is some important nugget of truth at the core of our faith that sets us above apart from all the others. And many of us, following in the footsteps of the previous generations we are currently emerging from, see our mission as encouraging everyone else to see things our way. The only difference is that now, with our commitments to pluralism, we aren’t quite sure what to do when they don’t see things our way. If we think that their eternal souls are at stake it seems unloving to agree to disagree or ignore them to avoid conflict. And if we don’t think that their eternal souls are at stake because we hold to different views of soteriology, anthropology and harmitology than our more narrow-minded sisters and brothers then it begs the question. In the end, what is it that identifies us as Christians and toward what end to we live into our faith in the midst of this pluralistic reality? If there is nothing of internal significance for us to offer the world, and nothing unique enough in our faith to see it as better than the other alternatives in the present why should we hold it at all?
There is an excellent book that will be out in September that will give some great answers to these questions and think about them in creative new ways. But in the meantime, I must confess that I am really struggling with some of these questions at a deep, personal level. Nothing life shattering or faith-killing but certainly challenging me to step off the merry-go round.
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Thanks to God and the fruitful work of my sister-in-law Nichole and her husband Craig I am once again a proud uncle.
Everyone is doing fine.
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Today I received my hearing aid to help with the hearing loss in my right ear due to Meneire’s disease. I have not been in any situations yet to really recognize the before and after difference but I am excited and hopeful that this will help me get more connected to the world around me.
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When my oldest son was about five I took him to a local park to teach him to ride a bike. It was one of those moments I think every father looks forward to, and I was no exception. We made it a couple of blocks to the park and began a long, escalating fight. No doubt, I was not patient enough and was not able to build his trust enough for this task to end well. So twenty minutes after we set out on our grand adventure we were storming back to the house. When we came in, both of us in tears–his from being wounded by his father; mine from anger at myself and him–we each marched to our rooms to let out our emotions in private. My poor wife did not know what to do!
That story has been one of those stories that defined our relationship for a long time. When ever I would find myself being impatient or holding unrealistic expectations I would think back to the time of trying to teach him how to ride a bike. Every failure to communicate or arguement would add more weight to the story that seemed to sharpen the focus on my inadequacies as a father.
Gradually, I tried to change how I would communicate and relate to my son. We learned new ways to navigate tasks together, but the defining story was always lurking in the back of my mind. What I think I need is a new story to displace the old one. And on this past Monday, I think we finally started writing it together. The Saturday before, he passed his driver’s permit test! So on Monday Janell and I took him to the DMV to get the official permit and sign the paper work that will allow us to ride as co-pilot. Later that night we went for a spin through the neighborhood. He did great. He is going to be a great, thoughtful driver. But more importantly, we enjoyed our time together navigating the streets of our neighborhood. He needs to get 50 hours of drive time to meet the requirements of taking the driver license test. And while he continues to imporve his skills behind the wheel, I will be writing a new, improved story.
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This morning I was supposed to go and get my hearing aid. Unfortunately, I woke up feeling ill so rescheduled that appointment and went back to bed. Slept most the day but still not feeling great. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.
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I took two vacation days and with the President’s day holiday I am getting a 5 day weekend. I am looking forward to most of it. Tomorrow morning after meeting a friend for breakfast I will be going to the audiologist to discuss hearing aide options for the loss of hearing I am having in my right ear due to what is diagnosed as Meniere’s disease. This diagnosis comes from a long period which all started with trying to determine what was causing my vertigo.
About two years ago, I started getting hit with vertigo. Usually it would last anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple hours. Occasionally it would last a day and make me so ill that I would be stuck in bed and then vomit. The only sure way to get it to go away was to sleep but in the hieght of the vertigo attacks, sleep was hard to come by. The first yea these attacks lasted about 5 weeks and went away as mysteriously as it appeared. At the time my doctor and I thought it was due to an inner ear infection.
The following year (last year) the vertigo attacks came back. The second round was worse than the first. The attacks seemed more frequent and lasted longer. A new health insurance brought a new doctor and a new diagnosis of vestibular migraines. Treating that did not help and after more diagnosis the current verdict of Meniere’s was arrived at because this second round also included extreme pressure in my right ear accompanied with popping, occasional ringing and hearing loss. The vertigo attacks lasted about 3 and a half months and again went away but the hearing problems linger on.
So, as I mentioned, tomorrow I will go talk about hearing aides. But that does not really concern me too much. What is slightly troubling to me is that for the past two weeks or so the slight and subtle feelings of vertigo have been coming back. They are mild and brief but they are occurring once again. The thing that puzzles me about this is that for the past two years the vertigo symptoms have all started at around the same time of year (late February to March) and now it looks like it is happening again.
I have my suspiscions that my current diagnosis is not entirely accurate. There is no question that my right ear has issues but I am not 100 percent confident that is the total cause of my vertigo. If the vertigo symptoms get worse over the next few weeks I may be back to the drawing board. That is very frustrating to me.
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Last Thursday at around noon I had another episode of vertigo, and then it mysteriously went away and I did not have any all weekend. This morning I went in for some tests with an ENT to see if we could figure anything out. I had a full ear/hearing test and some positional tests to try and trigger the vertigo. Nothing.
Last year when I had vertigo it lasted for a total of about 4-5 weeks and then just disappeared much like it arrived–with no signs or warnings. I was beginning to suspect that maybe this go around was over, but then today at about 2:30 it hit again. I have been feeling slightly off balance most of the evening.
At the ENT this morning we found that my ears are working fine and nothing out of the ordinary with my inner ear. However, I do have some hearing loss in my right ear that could be related to the Vertigo. The ENT suspects that I could have some Vestibular nerve damage causing both. I will be getting an MRI and ENG tests over the next few weeks.
Most of the time this is simply frustrating and annoying. Occasionally it gets so bad that I get motion sickness and vomit. When it gets that bad all I can really do is lay down and try to get to sleep. Usually when I wake up I feel fine and go about business as usual until the symptoms crop up again.
My PCP thinks that the Vertigo is caused by MAV and that may be caused from Vestibular Neuritis or Labyrinthitis.
I will be glad to finally get to the bottom of all of this as there are more important things I would love to talk about and an excellent book
I need to review.
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