We All Need a Little "Adjusting"

I have probably written and re-written this blog post about 5 times now.  It never fails…sometimes, you know you have an amazing message to share, but no matter how hard you try, the words just don’t come out right.  So just for shits and giggles, let’s call this attempt number six.

For starters, I haven’t been roping much since I won my saddle.  I kept telling myself it was because I had worked so hard all year long and now that I FINALLY won something, it was ok to take a break.  I told myself that…and I even believed it for a while.  But then I got an offer to go spin a few for some friends one Sunday.  First of all, that day did not start out well at all.  I was told (on the way to church) that I was a very negative person, I’m extremely opinionated, and all I do is bitch all the time.  Considering it was someone that I care about very much telling me this, it was the equivalent of having  Madison Bumgarner throw a brick at my face (how ‘bout that guy, by the way!  If you watched the World Series at all, you know exactly who he is and I just want to point out that he is THE man!)…it hurt like hell, and quite frankly, it pissed me off a great deal.  I spent that day mostly in silence, reflecting and reminding myself of his words over and over and over again.  “Am I really that negative?  DO I really bitch all the time?”  I know I’m opinionated as all get out, so no need to ask myself that question.  I chalk it up to unbridled passion.  People often mistake passion for opinionated…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!  Anyway, so we went roping.  I wasn’t roping bad, but I wasn’t really roping good either.  To be real honest, I wasn’t feeling well at all.  This has been going on for quite some time now.  Every time I get on a horse, I get shaky and dizzy, my skin gets clammy, I feel nauseous, my head hurts like hell, I feel weak…it literally feels like my body is shutting down.  I would rope a few and then get off, sit down, and drink water but nothing seems to ever make it go away. 

 

As my avid readers all know, over the 4^th of July I bought a new horse and the day I bought him, he and I had a little wreck.  I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I am pretty sure my negligence is what led to me feeling the way I am feeling now.  The night after my wreck, I was dizzy and disoriented.  I had a pretty bad case of the spins and it wasn’t from one too many beers.  Like an idiot, I went to sleep that night as I normally would.  The next day, I was very dizzy, I had a severe headache, I blacked out a few times, and I was pretty sick to my stomach.  Again, I am a fool and I didn’t go to the hospital.  My thoughts were that if I went to the hospital, they would tell me I had a concussion (tell me something I don’t already know) and then they would tell me I couldn’t rope for a while.  Well, I drove all the way to California to rope and I wasn’t about to sit in the bleachers and watch!  Sometimes I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree and I’m more stubborn than rogue bull being pushed out of a field of heifers.  Don’t worry, I’m not a complete ding dong…I sat out from roping ONE WHOLE DAY!! 

Well, I guess one day wasn’t enough.  I noticed the shaky, dizzy, nauseous feeling when I roped long before I ever won my saddle.  But I think I was so ambitious for a win that I kept pushing it to the back of my mind and toughing it out.  After I won, it was easy for me to come up with an excuse why I didn’t want to rope.  I’m burned out…I’ve been working hard…I finally won.  But that’s all they were…EXCUSES.  The truth is I just haven’t been feeling good.  I never would have admitted it to myself if it weren’t for my roommate pointing it out to me.

You see, after being called negative and not feeling good all day, I was pretty dang emotional when I got home.  Ashley has seen me cry a handful of times, but I was wrecked pretty much all weekend so she knew something was up.  After talking me through several different things, she straight up asked me, “…and why don’t you want to rope anymore!?  You always want to rope.  I understand that you are tired from work, but that has never stopped you before!”  It was a slap in the face.  I had to examine myself to see what was really going on.  It was only then that I admitted out loud that I hadn’t been feeling good.  Everyone else could see it…I was just too stubborn to admit it.

Last weekend, I had my friend, Elizabeth, over to work on my horses.  Elizabeth is an amazing equine chiropractor and massage therapist, so if you are in the north Texas area and your horse needs a little work, holler at me and I’ll hook you up!  Anyway, I called her over because Kid Rock had started bucking again and it was obvious that his back was hurting him.  As she was working on him, she told me that because he was out of whack for so long, the slightest jerk can put him back out (to where his back is used to being) very easily, therefore he needs consistent adjusting.  That got me thinking…first of all, it had become pretty clear to me that I have been out of whack both emotionally and physically lately.  I needed some “adjusting” in both areas.  I got one pretty good emotional adjustment by having it brought to my attention how negative and opinionated I am!  But more than that, I get my consistent adjusting through Christ (you only thought I wasn’t going to bring Him up, didn’t you!?).  While having my negative attributes brought to my attention was enough to get me thinking, it was the tears that I shed while hitting my knees in prayer that night that really opened my eyes to the kind of person that I want to be.  I prayed for answers, for help, and most of all for the STRENGTH to truly give my problems to God and thoroughly trust Him in every, single aspect of my life.  For a control freak like me, that is NOT an easy task. 

 

The next morning, I woke up with swollen eyes and a broken heart.  The fact that I had something going on with me physically and no real answers as to what it could be, filled me with fear.  “Give it to God…Give it to God,” I told myself over and over again.  The first thing I did was make a doctor appointment and the second thing I did was make a chiropractor appointment.  It’s now been a week and I have visited both.  My doctor is concerned about several different things (which I won’t get into until I have more answers.  No sense in speculating until I have real results).  My chiropractor on the other hand…well, this is a long list, so try to keep up!  My C1 vertebra is rotated to the right and tilted down on the right side, my C2 to the left and up on the right side, and my C3 to the right and down on the right side.  I have a condition called “cervical hypolordosis”, which means the spine in my neck is straight as an arrow.  This causes severe tension headaches and increases my risk for injury (I should probably end my career as a bronc rider).  My lower back, from my T10 to my S1, is all shifted to the right (scoliosis) and the vertebrae are all rotated to the right.  Finally, my right hip sits slightly higher than my left.  Therefore, I am a jacked up mess in the “back” department!  But according to my chiropractor, with quite a bit of adjusting and massage, and a lot of stretching and exercise, I should be able to fix most of it.  That doesn’t explain all the symptoms I’ve been experiencing, but it explains some and there is hope for me to feel better…so I’ll take it!  I plan on taking a few weeks off from roping, just light riding, and hopefully, I will come back stronger than ever very soon!

These are not my actual x-rays, but this is what my spine kinda looks like!  OUCH!

So, what is the moral of the story?  Good question!  A bible verse suddenly just came to mind, which tells me that God has put it on my heart to share it with you.  Matthew 7:7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  We have to ask for things sometimes.  We have to seek out the answers and then they will be provided to us.  It requires a lot of prayer, and even more importantly, a lot of paying attention, being still with the Lord, and LISTENING to what He is trying to tell you.  If I didn’t listen to what the Lord was telling me and kept on playing tough with my health, who knows what kind of mess I would have gotten myself into.  But, I prayed on it, and I did something about it, and now I am finally getting answers and hopefully will be as onery and feisty as ever (and back to taking your money at the jackpots), in no time at all!

I want to share one more story with you guys before I check out for the night.  God has a funny way of doing things.  The other night, my roommate and I went down to church for College and Careers night.  It’s basically a time of worship and bible study for young adults…and it doesn’t hurt that they give us a delicious free meal either!  Well, there is a young lady that goes there every Monday.  She is also a member of the choir on Sundays.  Now I, being a fairly new Christian, just automatically assume that most people who go to church on Sunday, and certainly most people who are really active in the church, have their crap together when it comes to God.  I never imagined that a sorry little sinner like myself would be able to offer anything up in the faith department to a lifelong, God-fearing Christian woman.  However, that night, Ashley and I left church and headed to Walmart to get a blender.  I know what you’re thinking…it was not intended for margaritas!!  Anyway, so as we are walking through Walmart, this young lady from church approaches us and we start to visit.  It wasn’t long before we realized that she had a lot going on in her life and she was really struggling with a lot of things.  Low and behold, we ministered to her right there in the middle of Walmart.  We talked about the love of God and Jesus right there in the middle of the Halloween aisle at 10 o’clock at night!  But the most important part about this whole story is that I was telling her the exact same things that I had to tell myself just a few nights before!  “Be still in the Lord.   Listen to what He is trying to tell you.  Quit trying to control every aspect of your life when all He wants is for you to trust Him!”  I don’t know if we made her feel any better…I pray that we did…but I can’t even begin to tell you how amazing it felt to speak love and protection over this girl, right there, for all the world to see!  We are SO BLESSED to be able to worship freely in this country!  We SO take that for granted!  So, with that being said, I just want to say, don’t think that just because you haven’t been studying the bible your whole life that you can’t minister and be a light to others!  You don’t have to know every story or know every verse to speak love and life on others!  It is an amazing feeling and I encourage each and every one of you to give it a try sometime.  It will blow your mind how great it feels to talk about the love of Jesus!  I used to laugh at people who would say, “Jesus is my drug”…but seriously, Jesus is like crack for my soul!  Can I say that?  Eh, I just did.  And I meant it.  I have never felt a high like when I talk about the love of God! 

Dang!  See, just that little spiel got me so excited!  I’m all wound up now!  I just want to give a lot of love to anyone that reads this blog.  I know that I am pretty long winded sometimes, but I really love sharing my stories, thoughts, and adventures with you guys.  The positive feedback that I get just leaves me feeling so blessed that God gave me this gift of BS!  Hopefully someday, He will call me to write a book!  Please note:  I have partnered up with another amazing woman of God and extremely talented writer and singer!  Her name is Bobbi LeAnn and you can follow her blog, Ridin' On Faith, at http://bobbileann.blogspot.com/  I also would like to give another shoutout to my amazing equine chiropractor, Elizabeth, at Casa de Equissage http://casadeequissage.com/   Have a blessed evening, friends, and until next time, God bless you!