Struggling, enduring, and overcoming setbacks in life can be the key to growth. Hi, this is Jacquie Fazekas and welcome to Episode one-two of You are an Overcomer Podcast: Be Healthy for your purpose.
It's time for me to get raw, real, and vulnerable, telling you the truth about my struggles and my victories.
In the episode one-one, I shared that I was a sick child, born with asthma and often hospitalized. As a child, I was not as active as the other kids and battled being exceptionally overweight. This impacted my self-esteem and I struggled to love myself.
However, after 3 near death experiences in my life, I now know being healthy is a choice and is for a purpose.
You see, my journey toward a healthier me started after my 1st near death experience.
It was 1979, and I was in seventh grade. It started as a typical day. My mother had made breakfast for me, and I had planned to go to school that day. You see I loved school, unlike many kids. After breakfast, I started to feel sweaty and hot. I knew the flu was going around the school. Oh boy, I thought to myself, "Was I getting the flu?" My mother saw I was looking flush and went to get the thermometer to take my temperature. Yup, I had a fever! I had to stay home from school that day.
Unfortunately, my fever continued to get worse throughout the day. It hit 104 that night! I started to have stomach pains and nausea too. My mother, at a loss of what to do for me, called the doctor. He advised her to rush me to the hospital, so that I could get hydrated and get some other tests done. Certainly 104 degrees was concerning. All I could think was…another hospital visit! NO
I could barely walk to the car. My mother wrapped me in a blanket to keep me warm as I shivered uncontrollably. Upon arriving at the ER, they rushed me in to take my vitals and assess the situation. They had seen really bad cases of the flu that year, and some folks had died, so they were not taking any chances. Based on my symptoms, they admitted me, so they could monitor me.
For a week, I laid in the hospital bed, as they pumped fluids and medicine in me. My symptoms were not going away and they were at a loss.
One morning, after a week in the hospital, with no recovery in sight, my vitals plummeted one morning. As the sirens and peeps filled my room, my mother was jolted from her sleep. She rushed to the hallway and screamed for the doctors and nurses. She begged them to save me. …by now she was convinced it was my ependix and that it had ruptured…but the doctors said it could not be because my pain was on the opposite side. She begged for an xray and this time they listened. Alas, yes, my appendix had busrt. In fact, I was so full of poison, that they rushed me to the emergency room right from the xray room. Realizing my body was shutting down from all the poison, they had no time to waste.
When my body started to shut down, I passed, so I knew nothing that was happening. Waking up after recovery, I started to learn how close I had come to dying. I was still in a lot of pain, but they said this time it would ease. I had a huge cut across my belly and just cried uncontrollably. As my mother shared with me the story of earlier in the day, she joined me in tears and prayers. She had being praying to Mother Mary to save me. I had been doing my own praying this whole time, asking to be saved for a purpose. God answered my prayer.
During my recovery, I spent time asking God why He saved me. I never got a clear answer but I was convinced it was for a purpose
During this illness, I lost a lot of weight. My mother took me to a nutritionist to better understand my allergies and food issues, so I could possibly keep the weight off and get healthy. Back then I was told I should avoid sugars and starches, and that was it. As I paid attention to that advice, I managed to keep my weight off. When I did not follow the guidance, my weight would creep up.
But weight was only one small part of the unhealthy life I lead. Due to poor self-esteem and doubts and I was always under stress. At the time, I had myriad stomach problems. I was told just to take some over the counter meds and deal with it. So, I did. Ultimately I ended up constantly taking indigestion meds, unaware of the impact stress was having on my health back then.
But I soldiered on. On my path of overachieving and striving for perfection, overcompensating for my lack of self-worth, and masking my pain with medicine, I was not happy and certainly not living my truth.
My second near death experience came in college when I was on the basketball court outside. I got a whiff of something in the air and it shut my lungs down immediately. I had asthma attacks many times, but never one that I could not recover from with an emergency inhaler. Arriving at the ER, passed out, blue and not breathing, they rushed me to a room and worked to get me breathing again. Between pumps and fluids, it took about 10 minutes for me to start breathing again and awaken. I saw my life flashing before me…I just continued to pray to God.
HERES WHERE WE NEED A RESOLUTION TO THIS EXPERIENCE. SHORT AND SWEET IS OK. Something like "it turns out this was a _____which resulted in (condition) and the drs treated it with _______and the condition was rectified after (so much time)
For years, I endured the pain of never feeling well and having chronic stress. My stomach issues continued. I would get infections often or asthma attacks. I would spend many nights praying to God to help me understand why I was still here and what purpose he had for me.
I thought, "He must have a purpose! He saved me twice!" Little did I know, not too far down the road, he'd save me a third time.
I began to pay better attention to the foods I ate and the lifestyle I was leading, but based on how negatively I felt about myself, with the lack of self-esteem, I continued to struggle with stress.
In episode 1.1 I share that I was a single mom juggling two boys most of my life, striving to have a successful high-powered career while being a great mother. I'm sure you can imagine, I had a lot of stress in my life.
Throughout my 20's and 30's, my weight would fluctuate up and down. I would get headaches, chest pains, and all sorts of things. Every time I would go to the doctor, they could never really pinpoint what was wrong. Each time I recalibrated my diet and how I was managing stress, I got better, lost weight, and felt vibrant.
I drank coffee around the clock, wine to relax and struggled to sleep due to an overstimulated brain. In an effort to really succeed as a single mother and drive my career, I would tell myself some of the stress was good stress and that I didn't need much sleep. These were false beliefs I eventually realized. You see, I had to tell myself something to mask the pain.
It was in 2009 that I was shaken beyond belief when I had my my third near death experience at age 41!
I was on a business trip in LA, where I was in the middle of a big presentation that morning and simply collapsed with convulsions and my heart stopped. I was having a seizure and cardiac arrest! Despite a full room of executives, no one knew CPR or what to do with a seizure. They began to scream into the hallway for help.
Out of nowhere, came this young man, jumping over his mail delivery cart. He immediately started doing CPR on me and got me to start breathing again. My convulsions stopped. I did not awaken until many hours in the hospital, slowly being told what had happened. For a few days, in the hospital, they would begin to tell me all the reasons this could have occurred. Stress was the big contributor!
Does this sound like it could be you?
Due to my lack of love, I was always stressed and had significant self-sabotaging behaviors and thoughts.
It was in this darkest moment that God came to shake me!
He told me that I had not really learned the other lessons of faith, relinquishing ego, or self-love. I had been simply pretending and He knew it. It took God really slowing me down for me to reflect on my past and really start my journey of healing, feeling, and loving myself. I joked -- God had figured out how to slow me down! He gave me the one illness where they take the car keys from me. I could not drive for 3 months!
God wanted to remind me that he was in control and that my health mattered, so that I could complete my purpose.
For a year afterwards, I would have periodic episodes of my body slowing down to a crawl and my speech slurring. It would require me to be in bed for 2 days, sleeping around the clock, to recover to normal. With no exact cure or medicine, this was the year, I began to work on healing myself.
I quickly learned that a person cannot live a fulfilled and purposeful life without health of mind, body and soul.
Wow! Still so many lessons to learn and relearn!!!
From that moment, I found myself propelled into an even greater health learning journey. I knew if I was to live a purpose driven life, I must get healthy. I needed to figure out how to reduce my stress and change my lifestyle. I had to start the journey of healing and self-discovery, enduring the pain of reflecting on my past, the pain of getting real with myself.
Remember – Living healthy in mind, body and spirit is the foundation for living a life of purpose.
In our next episode one-three "Let go of your Ego and live happily", I will get raw, real, and vulnerable about how I confronted and silenced my ego, so that I could be happy. Facing my biggest fears, failures and past pains head on was a daily struggle. I knew I wanted to be released from the strongholds of all my doubts, so I spent days just combating those negative inner voices. Join me to learn how I did it!
Remember you can find much more on my website at youareonovercomer.com, on Facebook at Jacquie Fazekas and on Instagram @youareanovercomer1. And don't forget to share this podcast. Please join our Facebook group community of Overcomers at Youareanovercomer Facebook group. Overcomers are those who have endured, turned adversity to strength, and challenges into victories. I'm Jacquie Fazekas. Until next time…
