Salty Zebra

  The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18  I am so grateful for the truth shared in this scripture and the rest of the suggested reading today. I highly encourage you to read along through Psalm 34:4-10 and 17-18 . I sought the LORD's help and he answered me   How wonderful that we have the Father’s ear, that He deigns to listen to us. Scripture gives us so many examples of people doing this, even Jesus Himself, but I am especially touched this morning by the invitation to do it myself. Seek the LORD’s help and he will answer you. What a privilege! What a wonderful opportunity! He delivered me from all my fears Those who look to him for help are happy; their faces are not ashamed. This oppressed man cried out and the LORD heard; he saved him from all his troubles. The LORD's angel camps around the LORD's loyal followers and delivers them.   The passage doesn’t say that God fixed everything in the a...

 Ten years ago, our Homeschool PE co-op that had been operating for decades ended due to the YMCA's new policy about allowing people to use the locker room they most identified with. Our little girls seeing naked men change next to them was only one of our major concerns with this policy and after pursuing every possible means to find a mutually agreeable solution, we ended up having to dissolve our group's long-standing relationship with the Y. It was a tragedy for my kids who had been going to the Y for sixteen years for everything from Toddler Gym to swim team.   So, with this background, seeing the sign above in front of the ALL the bathrooms in the D terminal at the Seattle- Tacoma airport this weekend made me a little anxious. I'd seen lots of all gender side rooms, and that seemed like a good solution to me, but to be fair, I'm not their target audience. The building our Primary Care Physician is in has restrooms that were previously standard (one has a urinal in...

 Last year about this time, I wrote to you all asking for a little help from my friends , and you showed up! We raised $357.68 in donations over the month and I wanted to share with you today how that has influenced my blog this year.  First, it showed me that there were real people out there reading what I was writing who actually valued it enough to contribute financially. That means more than I can possibly express! I love  writing, but it's hard when you put things out into the blogosphere day after day and you wonder if anyone sees it, if anyone cares, if it's making a difference. When you all showed up for me last December, it encouraged me to keep writing, to keep traveling, to keep learning and sharing things with you. THANK YOU!!!  Next, by having some level of financial income, my blog was legitimized as a business. This enabled me to open five different credit cards and two bank accounts earning me 365,000 points/miles and $1,200 in account signup bonuses....

 Well, this is a post I never thought I'd be writing! I'm going to start with the backstory, which I didn't get until we were pretty far into this but which I think will help it be clearer for you to understand.  Evidently my nephew who lives in Tennessee has been up to no good. For quite some time he's been driving around baiting people of other races (he's white) with terrible racial slurs and trying to get them to fight him, presumably so he'll feel justified in shooting them. Yeah, that's pretty awful! He's been posting his shenanigans on social media, and while Facebook took his videos down, X has left them up for everyone to see.  As you can imagine, this has caused quite the backlash. People who are offended by his behavior and those that support it, have grouped together and continued the hurt and violence. The group in opposition to him decided that it would benefit them to post his family's names, phone numbers, and addresses on the interne...

  Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.   Ephesians 4:2-3  Seeing this passage transports me back in time to February of 2019. At that time, I was a part of a beautiful ministry at our church that had brought hundreds of people that wouldn’t have darkened the door of a sanctuary into a space where they heard about God’s love. The thing is, we have an enemy that doesn’t like such ministries and so he sowed seeds of discord in our church over it. A small, but vocal, group decided that what we were doing in the ministry (Christian Yoga) wasn’t in line with what they thought the church should be doing, and they actively, vehemently, went about seeking to destroy it. I talked with them, shared my teaching and lesson plans, invited them to sit in on classes, and at every step they agreed that what I was sharing was completely Biblical, and yet they continued t...

  Sometimes life isn't ideal. Let's face it, most of the time it isn't! So, we do what we need to, to make things work. In my "Making It Work" posts, I share life hacks and ideas that have helped me so that, maybe, they can help someone else too. I hope you enjoy!  Today's culture would like to have you believe that there are supports and accessibility options aplenty all around us. Many people I've spoken with have the impression that if you're in a wheelchair you get to skip the line wherever you go - especially in Disney parks. People have seen allergy information on menus, so most think that allergy friendly food is offered at most restaurants. The bad news is that just isn't reality. Yes, there may be options available, but it isn't likely that anyone will offer them to you. Yes, you sometimes get to skip the line, but that's only if you know to ask. And no, most restaurants are not  allergy friendly, and those that are usually only ha...

7:29am - Wake up and attempt to claw my way to consciousness, but failed 8:26am - 0.0/20 points Wake up and take my stability score. I check this each morning and it lets me know where my body is at and how I should pace my day. A 4/5 is pretty good! It is supposed to mean that I have been pacing well lately, and I have been. 8:35 - Actually get out of bed, Use the bathroom and brush my teeth. I used to brush my teeth after  breakfast in the morning, but since I've been wearing a retainer at night (the last seven years or so) I need to brush that and my teeth before I eat. 8:48 - 0.6/20 Fix coffee and breakfast then do my Bible study while I eat, or at least start it... 9:40 - 1.2/20 - Actually starting Bible study after being distracted 10:18 - 1.6/20 - Restarting my Bible study after being distracted (it's really hard to get things done with my husband around sometimes). Switched to the couch where I can sit with my back supported better now that I've finished eating. 11:...

Image Credit Canva Dream Lab  Congratulations! You've been officially deemed disabled. Welcome to a life of luxury and ease living off the government! Wait, you mean that's not the case? You're telling me I've been misled by the internet AGAIN!!!  Yep, hate to break it to you, but disability's not all it's cracked up to be! Turns out it's much  harder to qualify for this than you could ever imagine, and even if you do, you're not set for life.   Disability law has become big business in America. Why? Because nearly EVERYONE, even a paraplegic, is denied disability upon their first application. I say nearly because there are few exceptions that make the rule, but for the majority of people, even with a totally legitimate claim, they'll receive a denial. This has created a whole contingent of lawyers whose entire career is made up of helping people receive the disability benefits they need. I don't know about you, but that seems pretty messed up to...

Yet another post told in memes, not because it's funny, but because if I don't laugh, I'll cry... On a recent trip to Texas, I experienced several of the more "tropish" interactions of being an ambulatory wheelchair user and I thought I'd take the opportunity to share so that you can avoid making someone feel like I did. Ableism, it's a thing. It's real. People don't realize they have it. Educate yourself! "You're walking! It's a miracle!"   So, I'm sitting on the shuttle to the airport and my husband loads my wheelchair on. The driver looks around with a confused expression and asks, "Whose wheelchair is that?" I awkwardly raise my hand and he throws his hands up in the air and says, "It's a miracle!" I think he thought he was being funny. He wasn't. The reality is, if I couldn't get out of my wheelchair we couldn't use their service because IT IS NOT ACCESSIBLE. Shame on them, not on me fo...

   In case you didn't know, as I didn't until recently, May is brain tumor awareness month. I decided a while back that I would be honoring this month in a variety of ways, and as I was working on putting these wheels in motion, I also found out that May is Ehler's-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) awareness month AND Lyme Disease awareness month as well! Being that these are my three main diagnoses, I was pretty surprised to find that they all had the same month where they were highlighted. You'd think I was born in May, but I wasn't, I was born in July. At first I started to back pedal my brain tumor awareness agenda for my blog and Facebook, but then I began to feel more and more clearly that this year I was just supposed to focus on brain tumors, and so I will. Who knows, maybe next year I'll be highlighting Lyme Disease since that is the one I've written about the least?  Brain tumors are not as rare as you might think, and more than one million people in America a...