The Woman in Room Number 3: poem by Karen Brown

The Woman in Room Number Three by Karen Brown

Jesus I asked, would You please make me well, so I can find a new place to dwell,

Could You please heal my body, show me the way, I’m willing to do whatever You say.

Jesus I asked, could I just use one arm, this alone would work like a charm
To give me a life with so much less strife.

Oh Jesus, I asked, could You help me today to realize Your power in a whole new way?

Then Jesus responded, He answered me sure, showing me something I’d not seen before…
“My child I love you more than you know, and I’ve called you to be where no one will go,
In a place where I want My presence to show;
You see when you gave Me your life on that wonderful day,
I already had you walking the way that would reach those people who I wanted to touch;
How else will they know that I love them so much?

So smile your smile,
let them see My Life,
shown glowing in the midst of your strife;
And Oh My Child, you will very soon see, that you’ll be dancing with Me… for eternity.”

Thank you so much for giving your permission to share, author Karen Brown, and a special thank you to Nancy Belz.

Imaginative magic…..

I’m so pleased to share a favorite blog from a friend and fellow chronic pain warrior, “Pain in the Beck.” In the below post, she did me the honor of writing about how we first “met” online ♡ To me, she has been a butterfly emerging from the shell that illness couldn’t hold her in.
Follow PainintheBeck blog as she writes about her life in NYC as an artist, a student, a chronic illness warrior, and shares her adventures with family. You will be rooting for her, and you’ll be inspired to root more and more for yourself because of her.

(Read article in full at the link below.) Thank you for reading and following.

Every day is is Hope Day here at a Body of Hope blog, but every Wednesday is #HopeDay all around the web. Spread that good stuff around 🙂

painintheBECK

Hello friends!

I’ve been busy these last few days, trying to help my daughter get ready for her high school prom. Although I still can’t believe that she’s done with this chapter, I’m very excited to see what’s next.

We attended her final high school concert last Friday evening. It was fantastic. The students performed music, danced, sang. It was a fun night. And I got some costume ideas out of it. The best, however, was seeing our gal, on the stage singing “Rebel Rebel,” with her class band as backup. This, while playing the electric ukulele.

My husband has been a musician for most of his life. Our daughter, however, never played an instrument until high school. In a mandatory freshman class, she started with guitar. The expression, “like a fish to water” comes to mind. After exceeding the complexity of the class, she taught herself advanced skills…

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Shattered: Art and Coping

In the last 2 years I have learned more about digital art and adapting my creativity to technologies I can participate in with my new health challenges. It’s unfortunate that many artists still don’t recognize digital art forms as “real art.” If you are one of those artists, I encourage you to reconsider by taking the time to evaluate mixed media further. I’ve always loved working with my hands and being artistic, but when my CRPS pain condition went from my leg to also causing problems with my head and brain, ongoing migraine, intense eye pain, sensitivity to light, passing out disorder, heart, etc., it has kept me from participating in the arts like I used to. If you are an artist or crafter, you may understand the need to move around while doing your work- this I can no longer do.

I belong to a group on facebook called Chronically Inspired that encourages people with different types of disabilities and limitations to use art as a coping tool and provides a supportive sharing community. The group has helped motivate me a great deal; I feel the projects themselves have been therapeutic in my mood and overall recovery. Because of this group, I feel more free to share my work and I’m excited to show this piece to you, kind readers!

I created this project for Nervember/ Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Awareness Month. It was inspired by this awesome piece of art by Rosalie Gascoigne called “Party Piece” from 1988 (as seen below). She cut and pieced together reflective road signs- I loved the idea.

Rosalie Gascoigne’s “Party Piece”

To begin my project, I created an InfoGraphic (a digital image conveying information) that both met the needs for my project as well as expressed information about CRPS/RSD for Awareness. Surprisingly, my infographic as seen below was shared and displayed by many people throughout November even though it was only created to be cut up. I used Picmonkey.com for the first time to create this poster.

CRPS Word Poster

Lastly, the most fun part, was cutting up the above poster and piecing it back together. (I used both Picmonkey.com and Powerpoint.) I knew it would be a tedious project, but I didn’t realize it would be so cathartic. I was cutting into pieces a poster I had spent time making look visually appealing- now it was a mess in pieces all over my computer screen and I had no idea how to reassemble it. The assemblage took so much longer than the above poster, it’s much less visually appealing and makes a lot less sense- yet the effort was so much greater. It reminded me of living with chronic illness.

RSD/ CRPS, and chronic illness cuts us into pieces, too. We have to rebuild our lives and figure it out as we go. Hopefully, we make sense of it along the way. It may not look pretty or make sense to others, but that’s ok. It probably won’t look the same as before, but we can make something new and special once again. I hope this piece is a reminder of how far you have come in making a way on your own fractured journey.

My favorite part of the finished piece is that new words and meanings emerged- if you look closely, you may find some new meanings of your own within the mess. Enjoy looking!

“Shattered” Poster CRPS RSD

Thank you for allowing me to share my work with you. My 2 posters I created are free to be shared or Pinned.