Bite My Tongue

Bite My Tongue

by Matthew Thessien of Relient K

I was going to spell it out in full detail
But, I dropped the call before I spilled my guts
But your floor stayed clean like my conscience will be
Cause if you heard anything you didn’t hear if from me
And I’m sweeping up the seconds that tick off the clock
And saving them for later when I’m too ticked to talk
And I need some time to search my mind
To locate the words that seem so hard to find


Sometimes I say things that I wish I could take back
The most crucial thing I lack is a thing called tact
And if You’re always so intently listening
Then the smartest thing to say is to tell myself not to say a thing


Yeah, I gotta keep quiet, quiet; don’t let it all come undone
Cause if I dare open my mouth it’ll just be to bite my tongue
Bite my tongue


It seems I’m always close minded with an open mouth
And the worst of me seems to come right out
I’ve never broken bones with a stone or a stick
But, I’ll conjure up a phrase that can cut to the quick
Cause sometimes I say things that I wish I could take back
And the smartest thing to say is to tell myself to keep


Quiet, Quiet; don’t let it all come undone
Cause if I dare open my mouth it’ll just be to bite my tongue
Yeah, I gotta keep quiet, quiet and listen to Your voice
Because the power of Your words can repair all that I’ve destroyed


And when I finally do let it come from You
The peace of understanding grips my soul
You’re the reason why I’ve found meaning in this life
So I’ll swallow up my pride and give You control…give it to You

MPT, Part 2: The Doctors

I saw Dr. Lipsmeyer at UAMS. I was not impressed. She ordered some x-rays and I went back for her to tell me what the x-rays showed. She said nothing. I had no signs of RA. I asked her what was causing the iritis and she said she didn't know. And that was that, at least with her. All she could suggest was more testing. And so the great testing period began...

I saw so many doctors for the next few years, so many doctors that just shrugged their shoulders when the tests came back negative and sent me on to another doctor. And that doctor would send me on to another, and another, and another...most of them smug and all of them telling me that I was a hypochondraic and wasn't really sick. I began to wonder what God was doing, what He wanted Joshua and I to learn, what kind of test this was...

Through those next few years the only doctor that was a constant in my life was my ophthamologist, Dr. Blair. That was because I still couldn't wean off the stereoid drops. At this point Dr. Blair became concerned about my sight in my right eye (the only eye that was effected by the iritis). During this time our family was attending The Bible Church of Little Rock. One of the members was Dr. Torin Gray. I got in to see him and God began to show His Sovereignty...

I can honestly say that, if not for all the other reasons that Joshua and I acknowledge, God placed us at BCLR at that time, as part of His Sovereign plan, to meet Dr. Torin Gray. I went to my first appointment with him not really knowing what to expect. Even though I knew him, he was still a doctor and with my history with doctors, it made me nervous. But, I soon found out that God's timing is awesome...

MPT, Part 1: The Symptoms

In November 2005, right before I got pregnant with my daughter, Ruth, I started getting these very strange eye infections. My ophthamologist diagnosed me with iritis (inflammation of the iris). These infections were reoccuring. I would use stereoid eye drops, wean off them, stop using them (because the infection would go away). Then, the iritis would come right back. This happened off and on for at least a year.

Besides that, earlier in the year I was starting to notice fatigue and lower back pain...I just felt blah all the time. And I never knew what caused it and I had always felt that way to some degree, so I just played it off to stress, exhaustion, etc. I also had weird symptoms like mouth ulcers, multiple UTIs, dry eyes (along with the iritis), frequent infections and sore throats. All spread out they were just symptoms, but put together they were...well, still just symptoms. :)

Dr. Blair, my ophthamologist, said that there had to be a reason why I couldn't completely stop using the stereoid drops. Her first suggestion was that I had lupus. I remember sitting in the exam room and tears flowing down my face at the suggestion of having lupus. Why I was so scared and emotional was partly due to being pregnant (and not knowing it) and because I knew so little about lupus...

So, she sent me to my PCP, who was at that time, Dr. Kevin Hiegel, to do some blood work. Before that appointment, after my appt with Dr. Blair, I found out that I was pregnant with my daughter. He confirmed it with the blood work and confirmed that I had positive genetic marker HLAB27. He said that this was common in people who had rheumatoid arthritis and was a genetic marker for most autoimmune disorders. I found myself a little confused. I didn't really have any symptoms of RA...my joints seemed fine. I had never had any kind of stiffness in my joints at all. And, as far as I knew, I didn't have any family members with RA specifically.

His suggestion was to have some x-rays done and referred me to Dr. Eleanor Lipsmeyer, a rheumatologist, at UAMS. But, because I was pregnant, I couldn't do the x-rays. So, I waited until after Ruth was born to embark on a journey that I would soon find out had no destination...

My Physical Testimony (MPT)

Over the next few posts I am going to attempt to do tell my testimony, at least the "physical" side of it. The physical healing of, what was for a long time unknown to me, an autoimmune disorder.

I have so many testimonies of God's grace and sovereignty in my life...so, I decided that it should be broken up into sections...It's quite a beast of a testimony to tackle, but here it goes...

I'm new at this...

I've never had a blog before and I'm still not quite sure what I'm suppose to put on here. If this is suppose to be anything like xanga, then I'm set. I did one for our family and when xanga went out and Facebook came in...well, those of us who are 30 and older don't catch on as fast as we use to!

Plus, if FB were easier to navigate (at least for me), I would do it on there. Besides, I'm one of those people that believes FB forces you to stalk your friends (and those random people you knew from high school and didn't know very well, but you made them your friend because you knew you graduated with them...yeah, you know who you are!). Which is weird that I feel that way because I also feel the strange need to check my FB every hour...

Basically, my hand was cramping from writing in my journal so much...and it was a lot of paper. I probably will still journal on paper because there's something to getting to go back and see your own handwriting and remember what you felt when you wrote it down. This blog will be more about me as a person, not about our family, my kids, of course, those things will be in here, but I want to have a place that I can write about just me...even if no one else ever reads it. I'm a writer and I enjoy it, but have no where to display my writings, so...

I'm naming this blog "everything in between..." because that's what I called my journal. I will write about anything and "evertything in between..."