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“At the Lord’s command Moses recorded the stages in their journey.  This is their journey by stages”.  Numbers 33:2

Family history can tell a lot about us. Not only can it explain our neuroses, it can give us a possible forecast of our future health or the deterioration thereof.

For example, I am built like my mother, look like my mother, and therefore figured I would age like my mother. Logical, right? Logic has nothing to do with it. Neither does common sense, for that matter. My mother was a fairly healthy woman until age fifty-five. This is not to say that she didn’t have the occasional attack of diverticulitis after eating three boxes of Cracker Jacks (in one sitting). Who wouldn’t?  Or the varicose veins she earned by working the highest number of volunteer hours in the shortest amount of time at the community hospital. Or how about when she noticed “that middle-age spread” and asked my two brothers (then ages sixteen and twenty-one) for advice on exercise. They were more than happy to prescribe a series of exercises that resulted in a dropped uterus. As a result of her lack of common sense (and my brothers’), she never attempted to exercise again. Nevertheless, other than the personal abuse, she was considered healthy.

I figured I was good to go until about fifty-five or so and maybe longer if I did not repeat some of my mother’s unwise choices. You can imagine my disappointment when at forty-eight I started noticing a few things.

• I couldn’t hold my urine.
• My eyelids were so loose they hung down over my lashes when I worked in the garden and perspired, causing shadows, which at first I thought were bugs, but when I swatted at them I realized they were my eyelids!
• The bags under my eyes were so large they met my eyelids for tea every morning. (I dress by Braille these days.)
• My uterus decided to grow a garden full of cysts, fibroids, and tumors.
• As a result, my bowels went on strike and refused to move! (Don’t you hate it when the parts of your body team up in pure defiance?)

I was lamenting about this phenomenon to a friend of mine at work one day. She suggested that perhaps the onslaught of medical problems would wane at times allowing me to continue doing all the fun and energetic pursuits I had enjoyed in my younger days.  Well, I have long  since passed  fifty and I found out several things:

• Once it starts, it doesn’t stop.
• You can control some of the stuff some of the time, but you can’t control all the stuff all the time.
• Even if you fix it (cosmetic surgery), it’s inevitable that it will come back.
• My friend was wrong!

So here’s what I have learned and would like to share with you: family history is important to document because it can tell us a lot about ourselves. The times in our lives when we lacked common sense are also important to note.

Oh, and by the way, I inherited my falling apart from my earthly father.

Prayer:  Father, help us to learn all we can about our family history. Guide us to make wise decisions that will help us live healthy and long lives.

Thank you for reading my post.  If you have found it encouraging please consider liking, commenting or sharing it.  Feel free to even re-blog – may these words take flight!

I have additional insights I’d love to share with you found in the pages of my debut book: Surviving Medical Mayhem – Laughing When It Hurts.  To order a copy or learn more go to my website at www.lorettaschoen.com

Blessings for Health & Wellness.