How Am I Doing, Really?
Health update: September 6, 2026
I get asked a simple, yet complicated, series of questions quite often these days, namely:
“How are you doing?”
“Are you feeling any better?”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
I’m never quite sure how to honestly answer them, but I’m going to try.
If you’re unfamiliar with my health struggles, you may want to pause and back up a few entries before reading on.
A quick note for transparency: I actually started writing this article months ago and have made several attempts to finish it since. Between the fatigue, brain fog, and trying to piece together what has changed over that time, I eventually needed some help organizing the timeline and pulling my scattered thoughts together coherently. That is not the norm for my writing. I usually draw a pretty firm line at using AI for creative or personal writing because I want what I share here to remain genuinely mine. In this case, I used it as a tool to help me sort and structure thoughts I had already written, spoken, and been trying to finish for weeks. The experiences, convictions, and heart behind this are still my own.
It’s been about a two months since I was last hospitalized, and since then I am doing better in the sense that I am somewhat stabilized. However, the underlying issue is a lot bigger and is still a daily struggle. Some days are easier, some days are harder. Most of the time people aren’t even aware anything is going on with me, which I tend to be okay with. I don’t want a pity party, but I would like to bring some awareness to the reality of chronic illness. I know many of you reading can understand that in different ways, from Lyme disease to countless autoimmune disorders. What can be nearly invisible to everyone else can be debilitating to the person living with it.
The condition I struggle with is known as autoimmune hepatitis. It is not a viral infection such as hepatitis A, B, or C. I actually developed it long before the years when I was living a wayward life and making choices that could have put me at risk for many other health problems. Simply put, autoimmune hepatitis causes my immune system to attack my liver. Over the years, that damage progressed into advanced cirrhosis, and much of what I deal with now comes from the liver no longer being able to do everything it was created to do as efficiently as it should.
That is where answering “How are you doing?” gets complicated.
Sometimes I genuinely feel pretty good. There are days when I am up, functioning, laughing with my family, going somewhere, posting online, or doing something fairly normal, and I can almost forget for a little while how sick my body actually is. Then there are days like today when my body seems to hit a wall. Thinking becomes difficult, moving feels heavy, and even very ordinary things take far more effort than they should.
A lot of the symptoms aren’t especially visible from the outside. The fatigue can be overwhelming. Brain fog and confusion come and go. The itching can become intense enough to keep me awake until the wee hours of the morning. I deal with abdominal pain and swelling, nausea and vomiting at times, and a collection of other secondary symptoms that come along with advanced liver disease.
One of the biggest physical issues right now is the abdominal fluid buildup. Aside from being uncomfortable and making it harder to move around normally, it has also caused an annoying umbilical hernia to now bulge out. Because my platelets remain extremely low and my bleeding risk is significant, draining the fluid is not currently a simple option. I would really appreciate prayer that the fluid improves, that the hernia stays uncomplicated, and ultimately that both resolve as my body heals.
I have also been dealing with a vocal cord injury that has made it difficult to project my voice. More personally, it has kept me from being able to sing the way I normally would. That has been a surprisingly difficult loss for me. Singing and worship have always been such a natural part of how I express myself before YHWH, so I would especially appreciate prayer that my voice is completely restored and that I can sing again.
Medically, I am being followed by a doctor now and we are continuing to monitor my labs, but I am not taking any conventional medications. There have been a few slight improvements, which I am thankful for, but we are talking about relatively small changes, not some dramatic turnaround on paper yet. My platelets remain extremely low, and there are still several numbers that show very clearly that my liver is struggling.
So medically speaking, this is still serious. That does not mean we have accepted the expected outcome as inevitable.
We still have hope. We still believe YHWH is completely capable of healing my body, and we are continuing to pursue healing while also trying to be wise and responsible with the reality in front of us. I don’t think faith requires pretending the numbers say something they don’t. I can acknowledge what is happening in my body and still believe that YHWH has the final say over it.
One of our next big steps is a trip to New Mexico to see a holistic specialist experienced with this disease. We are hopeful that this will give us more insight and another perspective on what can be done to help my body heal. We are also looking into procuring a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber as another tool we may be able to use as part of that process.
So many people have reached out with suggestions, doctors, protocols, treatments, supplements, and even offers of part of their own liver. I want people to understand that I genuinely see the love behind those things. I don’t take lightly the fact that someone would care enough to research something for me, spend their own money to help us obtain something, or literally offer me a piece of their body.
At this point, however, transplant is still not the route we feel led to pursue. I know that can be difficult for people to understand, especially when they are looking at this through the lens of Western medicine, but it is something we have thought and prayed through extensively. I am incredibly grateful for the concern behind those offers even when we choose a different direction.
I also owe an apology to quite a few people who have reached out and haven’t heard back from me. I have stepped back significantly from ministry and from many of the things I would normally be doing because, quite simply, I have had to. There really hasn’t been much “pushing through” and working going on behind the scenes. Some days I just do not have the physical or mental capacity for much beyond taking care of what is directly in front of me.
If you see me online and I still haven’t answered your message, please don’t take it personally. Scrolling for a few minutes, sharing something, or posting a picture can require very little thought. Holding a conversation, answering questions, making decisions, or even figuring out how to respond to a thoughtful message can require a level of mental energy that I sometimes just don’t have. There are days when I look at a message, fully intend to answer it, and simply cannot make my brain produce the words.
I am trying to become more comfortable with admitting that rather than pretending I am keeping up with everything normally.
There has also been a very sweet praise report in the middle of all of this. Recently, a family reached out and gifted our family a little vacation in Florida. It came at a time when we desperately needed some rest, and it ended up being an incredible blessing. For a few days we got to step away, spend time together, enjoy the water, make memories, unplug, and just breathe.
It was genuinely a spiritual refreshing for me. There is something healing in its own way about sitting beside the ocean with your family and, for a little while, not having the next appointment, lab result, decision, or responsibility demanding your attention. I am so grateful to the family who made that possible for us. It was much more than just a trip.
Most of all, I want to thank everyone who has carried us through this season in so many different ways.
People have prayed for me. People have fasted for me. People have helped purchase supplements and other things we are using to support my body. People have sent Scriptures, encouragement, information, and messages simply reminding me that they are standing with us. There are people who have quietly helped in ways that probably seem small to them but have meant an enormous amount to us. Every little item- from the pillow that helps keep my legs elevated, the supplement organizer that helps me keep a routine, to those who sent the special coconut water that helps me keep my electrolytes balanced… each and every one of these things and more have been almost daily blessings and comforts to me.
I don’t know that I can adequately explain how humbling it is to know that people are bringing my name before YHWH when I am not even in the room.
And while I absolutely want continued prayer for my physical healing, one of the things I would ask for most specifically right now is prayer for my emotional and mental strength.
I believe YHWH can heal me. I believe He is good. I believe there is purpose even in seasons I don’t understand. None of those things mean this is easy every day.
Sometimes it is exhausting to wake up and figure out what kind of day my body has decided we are going to have. Sometimes it is hard to watch life moving at full speed around me while my body insists on moving much slower. There are days when the physical discomfort is honestly easier to carry than the emotional weight of uncertainty.
There are moments when I feel strong, hopeful, and ready to fight. There are also moments when I am just tired. Both can be true at the same time.
So if you want to know what you can do, please keep praying. Pray for complete healing. Pray for wisdom as we make decisions. Pray for our upcoming trip to New Mexico and for the right people and information to be placed in our path. Pray for my platelets and the bleeding risk, for the abdominal fluid and hernia, for my liver to regain healthy function, and for my voice to be restored so that I can sing again. Please also pray for my mind, my emotions, my endurance, and for the strength to keep my eyes fixed where they belong on the hard days.
And if you’ve asked me lately how I’m doing and I smiled and said, “I’m good,” when the actual answer would have taken twenty minutes to explain, I wasn’t trying to be dishonest.
Sometimes “I’m good” simply means I’m still here, YHWH is still good, we’re still trusting Him, and today that is enough.
“Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for Elohim is for me. In Elohim will I praise his word: in YHWH will I praise his word. In Elohim have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me. Thy vows are upon me, O Elohim: I will render praises unto thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before Elohim in the light of the living?”
-Psalm 56:8-13
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