Hair is Overrated.

There has been a huge influx of questions from friends and family with what the heck is going on with my hair. I thought I'd write about what's going on for those curious here.

This summer I was diagnosed with psoriasis. Not a huge deal, except that it totally sucks. Psoriasis is a chronic, autoimmune disease that appears on the skin. It occurs when the immune system sends out faulty signals that speed up the growth cycle of skin cells making it very itchy and flaky and horribly uncomfortable.

There was a patch of it behind my ear and I was using a topical cream to treat it. Seemed to work but psoriasis comes and goes whenever it feels like it, so it's frequently present. Then this past Friday I had a hair appointment and my hair dresser was brushing out my hair checking the roots when he asked me

"Have you noticed this?"

I looked up to see this fairly large bald spot behind my ear.

Awesome, right? Well, he continues looking and finds another spot symmetrically behind my other ear. A tiny freak out happened inside me. He said that it looked like alopecia, which just means baldness, and that I should go see my dermatologist. My first thought was that it was some weird reaction to my topical cream or that it had to do with my psoriasis.  Monday morning I called my doctor and we set up a time to come in and check it out that afternoon. He did a ton of blood tests to make sure it wasn't anything with any of my organs or metabolic measures ... and to make sure I wasn't prego. I'm not. Thank God. And nothing else was wrong for that matter.

"You're completely healthy!"

Clearly. The next step was the dermatologist. I went this past Thursday and she walks in, takes a look and says, "Oh, yeah. That's definitely alopecia areata. Without a question."

Alopecia areata is a common autoimmune skin disease resulting in the loss of hair on the scalp and elsewhere on the body. It usually starts with one or more small, round, smooth patches on the scalp and can progress to total scalp hair loss (alopecia totalis) or complete body hair loss (alopecia universalis).

The basic consensus is that you don't know how much hair will fall out, you don't know when it will grow back, if it grows back you don't know if or when it will fall out again and if it will be a different spot or the same and you don't know why it happens other than it's autoimmune and there isn't a cure. You're just left in the dark and wondering what the crap.

My dermatologist thinks that stress is what made it surface. So I think weekly massages are totally called for. :)

How am I feeling about this? What a funny question for me to answer, since feelings aren't really my thing. I'm feeling like there could have been an autoimmune disease that makes me really sick, or prevents me from eating certain foods or something that could have been really painful. This just hurts my worldly perception of beauty and it's not painful, I can still live a "normal" life, can color the hair I do have, my diet probably isn't a participating factor although I may try a paleo diet just to cleanse my body and make sure everything else is in tiptop shape and I'm not sick. What makes me chuckle is that about a week prior, I was talking with my Mother-in-law about how there's really nothing that wrecks my world anymore because God is so much bigger than my circumstances. My joy doesn't get depleted because something crappy happened and that the period of not being okay was very short. Then this happens right after a really rough couple days of some things that surfaced in mine and Ben's marriage that was really, really, REALLY difficult to bare and walk through. 

The funniest part was how much being diagnosed with alopecia areata paralleled the issues of our marriage. The end result for Ben and I was that I needed to be okay with not having an answer about some things. That some things that I had realized I wanted to do and dreamed of may or may not happen and I needed to shift my thinking on the fact that I was married now and it's not just about me and what I want to do but about us. That I needed to be okay not knowing and ultimately trust and rely on God and believe that whatever happens, he is for me and for Ben and I more. 

Just like this alopecia areata is a physical unknown. I literally cannot do anything about it, I have to be okay and content in the fact that it may or may not grow back, I don't know when or why. I just have to keep moving on and trusting God.

Funny how He works, isn't it?

I'm truly confident now that circumstances really don't deplete my joy and that I do believe God is bigger than my circumstances. I've been able to recognize that mourning over things is appropriate and that doesn't mean I don't trust God, and that just because I don't FEEL happy, doesn't mean I shouldn't considered the fact that God is growing me in areas of weakness a JOY. What a blessing this has turned out to be at 23 years old. 

The next steps:

• I have decided I do not want steroid shots into my scalp to attempt to force hair to grow, which is usually a common treatment when first diagnosed.
• I have agreed to a daily steroid shampoo - which I'm not sure what's worse - having to wash my hair everyday or that I have to use a 4oz. bottle of shampoo that cost $260.00.
• I've changed my psoriasis medicine to something that is used for scalp psoriasis in hopes that will help - since really both are an autoimmune disease. The only down side is that this new medication has some not so fun side effects like headaches, fatigue, more susceptible to catching infections which should be really fun since I work with kids and apparently if I get pregnant on this stuff our baby will have two heads.
• I have a new vitamin intake that includes a TON of biotin and other vitamins to help with the higher risk of catching something.
• I cut my hair off. Like really off. Mainly for two reasons: 1) if I have to wash my hair everyday, I want an easier solution to doing it. This new do will help me dry faster and hopefully my natural wavy hair will work. 2) if and when my hair does grow back, it won't take long for it all to be the same length. And yes, I mourned over the fact that my long hard work to grow it out for dreads is no longer happening. I'm also very sad about my bun.

Goodbye, bun.

Thank you to those who have been so loving and helpful. I really appreciate your kind words and prayers.

Anniversary 1.0

Yesterday Ben and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary! I took the day off originally to spend with him, but then we realized Ben started his LAST semester at the U yesterday and I ended up not being able to see him until about 6:30pm. We originally said no gifts, but that's my love language and I LOVE giving gifts - so I wanted to do something special where it was kind of like a gift to both of us. I had decided on two things:

#1: 50 States by our 50th Anniversary
The 1st year anniversary's symbol is paper and because I love tradition, I decided to get my creative juices flowing and came up with the first gift idea. I have an itch to travel, and you may remember a post a few weeks ago about my discontent with staying in Utah until we're old and wrinkly and not ever traveling outside of this place - which would be fine, I just had to have that reality smack me in the face. So after much prayer and wrestling, I realized if I just went off and explored without Ben, it would suck. So I got a map and printed pictures and dates of all the places we've been to together, or if we had visited that place many times, the very first time, and pinned them to the map. My goal for this project is to document our travels and record them with pictures and travel to all 50 states before our 50th anniversary. He loved it!

 #2: Love Notes and Prophetic Words Notebook
This second gift came from Beautiful Day and I loved the idea! She did two seperate notebooks for these things and I decided to do just 1. She explains it like so, "The love notes one is great because when we don’t see each other as much as we’d like, we can still connect in a tangible way. We wanted to do a notebook for prophetic words because they are powerful. I don’t want to trust in my awful memory to recall words of wisdom spoken over our marriage five years down the road- I want it in front of me where I can see it." I wrote a long love note on the first page explaining both paper gifts and of course telling Ben how madly in love I am with him still.

I decorated our room with a paper banner I made, and got a bottle of wine (that, by the way, was called "Unity" and bottles in 2011!! Cheese, I know but so awesome!!) as well as a 1-year anniversary world's greatest fudge cake that I added Reese's too. Seriously. Best cake I've ever tasted!

Ben finally came home with beautiful pink roses and had made surprise reservations at a fancy-smancy restaurant, Prime Steak House & Piano Bar, in Park City. He told me that he knew how much I love piano bars so he thought this place would be great and it really was AMAZING. We had the best food we've ever eaten in our lives and I wore my new leopard print dress and some high heels - I went all out, people.

It was such a great time of celebration and we're so thankful to all our friends and family who have been on our team this last year. Thank you, again, to all our friends who stood next to us last year and who have truly taken the role of being in our line, to walk with us while we journey through our marriage and help to guide us through, seriously. We love you and count on you to remind us that this isn't really about us, but about our Great God who has blessed us so much through each other.

365 Days Later

Ben and I are celebrating one year of marriage today!

In honor of this special day I thought it would be fun to give you 12 things marriage and being married to Ben has taught me over the last 12 months.

1. Guilt doesn't produce closeness, grace does.

2. It's always never a good idea to use never and always.

3. Just because you live together doesn't mean you'll see each other - Plan together time regularly.

4. A face-to-face reminder, a text message, an email, a post-it note (or several) and a carrier pigeon may seem like overkill, but they're not when it comes to making sure Ben knows what we've said yes too.

5. We will always spend money on take-out. Keep it in the budget.

6. Laughing when "sexy-time" isn't in the slightest bit sexy makes it even more fun.

7. Nothing is worth staying mad about - we're either going to be happily married or unhappily married.

8. Try the things the other one loves that you are either horrible at or really don't want to do. It makes for good stories to tell the kids one day.

9. Meet with a trusted friend who can see clearly the things you can't in your marriage regularly. And thank them regularly.

10. Slow to speak, slow to react, fast to support - those musicians can get pretty high up in the sky. Join them as much as you can.

11. I've gotten over the idea of anything about our lives ever being private or a secret.

12. Love is a verb. It speaks the loudest I do the dishes and laundry.

Have a beautiful day!

A Winter Wedding!

Michelle and I weren't supposed to be friends.

I don't think there's another statement that could be so wrong.

Michelle and I met at a leadership conference when we were seniors in high school. We were what I'd call kindred spirits. She's the Korean version of me and I'm the American version of her.

In our years of friendship, I don't think there's another person on this earth who has been able to understand my silent processing, my reasoning as well as my decision making process. One thing is for sure, there isn't another person on this planet who has been as supportive and active in wanting me to succeed and see my crazy, sometimes rather impulsive plans go well. She cheered me on when I said I was moving to Utah and hasn't stopped cheering me on since.

We've both had our share of heartbreaks, and one thing Michelle knows how to do well and to the fullest is love. I can remember after each break-up, tears, fears and insecurities that rose and the same conversation would take place:

"I can't WAIT to see the man God is preparing for you if this guy wasn't him. He is going to make these boys look like jokers. Stick in there and trust your Father. He knows what he's doing by moving this loser out of the way."

and man, was that the truth.

Michelle is getting MARRIED in December to the sweetest, craziest, man who compliments her in every way. I couldn't have DREAMED up a better man for my best friend and am so excited for the years of traveling together, of raising our babies and all that life will bring us whether that's pain, love, joy and heartache - I'm ecstatic to be able to do it with these two crazies.

One of the BEST parts is that these two hotties love each other

and we get to both walk down the isle and before Kelly and Michelle to support and say

"Through thick in thin, we'll always be there."

and that makes my heart happy.

Some wedding details that get me all kinds of crazy excited:

Here's to marriage!

Chronological Love