Good Morning & Happy Monday!! I can’t believe that we are on week 14 of this series!! If you haven’t had a chance to read through the previous posts I hope you will!! So many diverse yet powerful stories!

We find so much freedom as we own & share our stories! God can use our stories to encourage & empower others! I love that!

Really excited about today’s guest! I had the privilege of meeting her at a Junk in the Trunk Vintage Market as a fellow vendor. I was immediately struck by her sweet & encouraging spirit! She is the owner of Olivewood Designs & is extremely creative!

Thank you Julia for Living Brave & sharing your story!

Candi reached out to me and asked if I’d like to share what it means for me to “Live Brave.” She explained that God had placed me on her heart, but little did she know that I am in the midst of an enormous health struggle that has led me to lean on my Heavenly Father and Live Brave.

You see, I was a perfectly healthy 38 year old momma just a couple months ago, but my body was growing weak, my joints were achy, I was tired and my body felt “off.” I ignored it for a while, and then when my lymph nodes all became swollen, I knew I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

So I put my big girl panties on and made my very first appointment with a General Practitioner since moving here to AZ 4.5 years ago. He ordered a series of blood panels, and I gratefully offered up 6 very red and filled to the top vials of blood. We laughed as the nurse told me how Brave I was, that a grown 45 year old man was crying like a baby just the day before, and he gave only half the blood I did.

It was a relief to have that over, but the journey was only beginning, unbeknownst to me. It was going to be 1 week before I had the results, but thankfully I was wildly busy preparing for my biggest sale of the year at Junk in the Trunk Vintage Market.

The day arrived, April 29th~ D day( diagnosis day), the day I was to sit down with my Doctor and get the results. Within that week, my body was taking a rapid nosedive. I had lost an astonishing 10 pounds in 6 days, and I had never felt weaker. He walked in and put his hand on my shoulder, and I burst into tears. I knew it wasn’t good. He told me he had answers. All I heard was “celiac disease AND lupus.”

He encouraged me to not research lupus, that it would freak me out. For an absolute carb-lover, celiac disease was not the news I wanted to hear, and don’t even get me started on the lupus diagnosis.

I am a momma with 4 kids who need me, no one wants to hear this news. I immediately reached out to my closest friends for prayer. Many came by my side and held my hands and prayed and dropped off gluten free goodies and sent encouraging messages, cards and gifts. I was overwhelmed and felt so loved.

Mind you this all went down just 2 weeks ago. Living Brave was the only option I had, I was not going to curl up in the corner and pretend this was not happening. No, I took the bull by the horns and called on my essential oil loving friends and marched my booty down to my friend’s neighborhood Apothecary to get holistic supplements to get my body on the right track.

Thankfully the week leading up to my Rheumatologist appointment flew by and before we knew it, the day had arrived. Last Friday, May 8th, my husband took the day off work to be by my side for the unknown. Glory Be, after running a series of questions and a visual overhaul of my body, she determined that in her heart of hearts the lupus diagnosis was wrong.

I am still on this journey and need to offer up more of my blood this week for further testing, but the moral of my story is to Be Brave, we are all going to get knocked to our knees at some point in our lives, and it is OK to reach out for help; your friends, family and loved ones will help you to Live Brave even when you don’t have an ounce of bravery left in you.

Much love, Julia Wood~Olivewood designs