Breathing Deeply: My Life With Cystic Fibrosis

Thunder is just the sound of angels bowling. --my mom

Last night during choir practice we witnessed a beautiful electrical storm. Even though it wasn't raining on us at the moment, in the distance there was a fantastic light show going on. Peals of thunder echoed and the lightning crackled across the horizon. Since the moon was nearly full, it cast an incredible glow on the low-lying clouds. As we sang "And the Glory of the Lord" from Handel's Messiah, God was revealing to us a hair's breadth of His glory at that very moment.

I really do enjoy the rain. I much prefer it to the sweltering heat and the dry Santa Ana conditions. I love bundling up at night in the soft pajamas that my husband got for me when we celebrated our first Christmas together. (He has EXCELLENT taste by the way!) Throw in a pair of sluffies and a cozy throw blanket, and I practically go into hibernation.


I slept pretty well last night in spite of the fact that I was pretty exhausted from the women's retreat at our church. The weekend was packed as tightly as possible with all sorts of activity. The retreat started on Friday evening and went all through the day Saturday. By the time we got home on Saturday evening we were very pooped. On Sunday morning we settled right into our usual church activities. It felt weird to be at church so many days in a row.

Health wise I think I did a good job of not wearing myself out too much. I made sure I kept some high energy snacks and bottled water handy while at the retreat. A nap yesterday afternoon did me good as well. Now I need to make sure that with the change in weather that I don't catch a cold or something from the dampness.

If it's really chilly when I first climb out of bed in the morning I have to cough more. I've tried to think about that scientifically and I think the reason might be that since cold air is less dense than warm air, I'm not really able to fill my lungs up as effectively on the cold mornings and that's what makes me out of breath. I also know that oxygen diffuses more easily in cold water as opposed to warm water, so I'm wondering if perhaps the same is true for warm and cold air and that is resulting in a lower oxygen concentration in the colder air. *shrug* Then again, maybe I'm thinking about it too much. I'll go check out some of my chemistry and physics books and see what I can determine on that subject.

In the meantime, I'll just keep enjoying this rainy weather. Maybe it will rain a lot like it did last year!