Mania cannot cloud the Real Purpose of life.

Gardening, cleaning, laundry, painting walls, hanging pictures, hand laundry, mending clothes, cooking, shopping for children's and household needs, and endless organizing.

Trying to control outside because I feel so chaotic inside.

Even though my mistake of when the surgery was supposed to be, bought me a few more weeks, it didn't help calm my nerves. I mean, anyone going in for surgery would be nervous. But, me? Just imagine. Actually, you can't. Nobody can imagine anyone else's emotions. In my case, though, I feel even more removed from most people's experiences because most people haven't had any of my experiences.

Sometimes, when I am walking on a leg so sore that each step becomes a concious decision, or when I crawl into bed at night with a pelvis hurting so much that I can hardly move, I am grateful that I decided to do the surgery and fix what can be fixed in there. Our electrician recently had shoulder surgery. He came the other day to do a job for us, and I asked hom how his shoulder is. He responded that it is great. No pain, working well. He asked me why I seemed surprised... he said "you do surgeries to fix things that hurt, then they don't hurt anymore". "True", I said to him (he doesn't know my story). "Yeah", I said to myself, "keep that message as truth". Surgeries are to fix things, and one can come out with less pain and the problem fixed. That is the goal.

It is just scary when one shoots for the goal, and misses. I know of so many stories, and so do you (well, you know my story, and I'm sure others as well).

So, the "mania" of doingdoingdoingdoing things, ending up over exhausted and in pain, unable to sleep until 2 or 3 am is what has been happening these past few weeks. Yesterday I had a low-level migraine, and my babysitter did, too! She didn't come, and I had a frenetic, frustrating day with driving, shopping, and kids. Each of those three things challenged me to the frustrating maximum. By the end of the day, with my body, also, challenging me in many more ways than pain, I had *nothing* to give to my last child to go to bed. Thankfully by then Robert was home, and he took over getting her to bed.

There was one completely awesome, Godly moment that happened yesterday that I hold in my heart as the reason yesterday was hard. I had the opportunity to do a REAL "tikkun", which is Hebrew for the concept of fixing the wrongs of history. History can, and does, repeat itself. That is true of parenting, also. Yesterday, I got the gift of fixing my own history. I was thrown into an exact replica of what I experienced... exact... and I got to fix it. And I did. And therein lies hope. (The concepts of tikkun and faith are THE central themes in my book, weaving understanding, sense and wit throughout my story of medical trauma).

Maybe that's why I got the gift of rest today. I am quite sure that Tikun Olam, the concept of correcting the world, *is* why I was thrown into this chaotic and traumatic road of being a survivor of NF. It has been an invitation.

Yesterday I got sucked into a traumatic day, and was given the gift of doing a tikun with one of my children.
Today I got to rest. The Maker of the Universe gave me a day off (Robert was supposed to be out-of-town today, it got canceled, and my babysitter already told me she couldn't come...). Is it because of recognising the importance of snatching the moment to do a tikkun? Maybe. I know that that moment yesterday, when I decided to apologize to my son and tell him about this tikkun, it was when things turned around. He loostened up, and it was a relief.

I connected with God yesterday, and I did His work. *That* was yesterday's purpose, and through all the frenetic frustrations the day carried, nothing else matters except that tikkun.

Thank God.