Unlosable Life is about helping new/struggling Christians (and even non-Christians/people who are seeking) strengthen their faith in the truth of God’s Word, answer hard questions, find support in their struggles, and have the resources to grow in their faith.
My name is Melody Laney, and I have been a growing Christian since 2001 and a cultural Christian before that.
For the past few years, God has led me on a journey of struggles and questions, leading me to the most important point of life: the things that can’t be lost.
The things we lose in this life are abundant: jobs, loved ones, marriages, health, homes…
But so are the things that CAN’T be lost: Jesus, salvation, His Word, growth, the list goes on!
I would like to tell you my story of the past few years as a context and a background around what I will dwell on in this blog: the redemptive, sanctifying, loving, caring, patient work of Christ, the Unlosable Life.
My Story
In 2019, I started a blog. I wanted to try to make some side money for my family, and this seemed like the easiest and fastest way. And I liked to write. So it was a win-win.
Except that it wasn’t. My expectations were so far off from the reality of trying to make money from a blog: if you want to make money, people have to find you (LOTS of people); if you want people to find you, you have to write in a way that Google will bring you up in search results; if you want to write in a way that Google will bring you up in search results, you have to surrender your writing style and voice.
Plus all the keeping up with social media algorithms that change constantly.
Plus finding the right pictures without spending a ton of money.
Plus formatting and stylizing the blog without spending a ton of money.
I was stressed and the fun was gone.
In November 2019, I came down with a sinus infection, which I didn’t think a lot of since I struggled with chronic sinusitis. But this infection would NOT go away, even with multiple rounds of oral and nasal rinse antibiotics.
That December, Ryan (my husband) found a documentary about a certain way of eating (which I will not talk about here because I don’t want to distract from the message of Christ) and wanted to try it. So I came up with a meal plan, and we tried it for a week. MY SINUS INFECTION CLEARED UP.
My curiosity was peaked. About a week later, we traveled 10 hours to Kansas City, MISSOURI (the right side of the city) to see Ryan’s family for Christmas like we do every year. I felt great on the trip, but when we got there, I got HORRIBLY sick. Something was not right.
When we returned from Kansas City in January, I continued to go downhill: my energy was gone; I was FREEZING cold all the time, so I would wear layers of clothes and my fleece robe; I hurt to the touch all over (even my robe rubbing gently on my skin made me hurt); the only way I could function to even take care of our young girls while Ryan was at work was to take the max doses of ibuprofen and Tylenol together. Then I developed a high fever that I kept down with the painkillers and a horrendous cough that brought up tons of thick white and yellow mucous.
I visited our family doctor several times in January, looking for answers. She ordered tests and an EKG because my heart rate was continuously 120. She gave me breathing treatments when I would come in because my lungs didn’t sound right.
One of the tests she ordered was an ANA panel. The pattern came back speckled: she came into the room and informed me with wide eyes that I had lupus. I was devastated.
At the end of January, I felt like I could barely breath, so I went to a clinic in a town nearby. And the nurse practitioner diagnosed me with walking pneumonia (which, looking back later, was probably COVID before it was popular). She prescribed me some powerful antibiotics, and, after a few days, I felt MUCH better.
But some things still weren’t right: the speckled ANA panel; some of the mystery symptoms from the beginning of January; and I had a hard knot in the right side of my abdomen that had not been there before.
So began a year of doctors, tests, blood draws, and endless appointments.
And COVID definitely complicated the process, making doctors even more difficult to get into in a timely manner.
I visited the clinic again to ask about the knot in my abdomen. She thought it might have been a hernia from all the violent coughing I went through for so long. She ordered a CT scan, and the radiologist confirmed that it was a hernia, so she referred me to a hernia surgeon.
Turns out, the radiologist read the wrong area and found a tiny hernia by my belly button (which is normal after having kids) and said the knot in my abdomen was a hernia. The surgeon read my CT scan and thought that the knot was a torn muscle that balled up, and if it wasn’t healed in a few weeks to ask for a MRI.
So I waited another month and no change. I went back to the clinic, and they ordered a MRI. Noone knew what the lump was. SO they ordered a biopsy.
I got a phone call in late November from a surgeon’s office: he said it was a desmoid tumor growing in my abdominal wall, and I would need surgery pretty quickly to remove it and keep it from growing (desmoid tumors fall between cancer and non-cancer: they don’t metastasize into other organs, but they can grow and become entangled in the tissues and organs around it).
On December 29, 2020 (my precious oldest daughter’s birthday), I had the surgery. The surgeon had to make a 3-inch incision from the belly button up; remove the tumor (which had already started growing since my MRI); take out abdominal wall muscle to fill in the hold the tumor left (he said I barely missed having to have mesh instead); pull up on the wall and reinforce it with permanent stitches under my right ribs; and some other things I still don’t totally understand.
It went really well, but the recovery was a bear. I slept in a recliner in our room for six weeks; painfully popped several stitches inside; dealt with an at-least-one-foot long drain tube and bag; couldn’t lift my kids or do much. I didn’t realize how much my core did until I started having back pain from lack of support, and the pain from the surgery was a lot.
The recovery period passed, and I was able to live life. I still had not seen a rheumatologist due to not caring for the first one that I had seen and hoping that removing the tumor would improve my symptoms: serious fatigue; bruising all over my legs; several centimeters thick skin on the bottoms of my feet that cracked and bled to the point I could barely walk; thickened skin on my fingertips that cracked and bled, making it extremely painful to open doors or button shirts; dry eyes; and others that I can’t remember at this exact point.
On November 15, 2021, I finally saw my new rheumatologist for the second time, and she diagnosed me with Hashimoto’s (the immune system attacking the thyroid); Sjogren’s (the immune system attacking that “moisture” glands, such as salivary glands and tear glands); and Scleroderma (the immune system attacking connective tissue and causing the body to produce excess collogen). I was relieved that I didn’t have Lupus but sad that I had so many autoimmune conditions. But also relieved to have answers.
Around October of 2020, I had come across a medical doctor who had developed a protocol that reversed her autoimmune condition completely. I have been a big believer in the power of diet and lifestyle impacting health for several years, and I experimented with many different ones, just trying to improve my mounting number of symptoms. This doctor was incredibly genuine, and her protocol was completely free, and everything she was teaching seemed to be the tweaks I needed to make, so I gave her a try.
When I received the news that I had three different autoimmune conditions, I was already seeing improvements from the protocol and my energy was amazing! I was so excited.
Then, on the evening of November 17, 2021, I received a phone call from my Dad that would completely shatter my world and make me question what was safe: my older brother had died suddenly and tragically in an automobile accident. I won’t go into too much detail here, but it was completely devastating to me and my whole family.
On November 20, 2021, while I was in East Texas with my family, I got a phone call from my husband about our middle daughter, Amy: she had had a seizure and was on her way to the hospital via ambulance. My younger brother drove me up to Amarillo that night. My husband, Ryan, and I spent the next four days in the hospital with Amy while she battled pneumonia.
My physical, mental, and emotional health took a nosedive. All the improvements that had come with the protocol were gone. In fact, I started getting new symptoms, like huge, itchy blotches all over my legs. I have always struggled with anxiety, but this was on another level. And depression set in to the point that, over the next few years, suicidal thoughts would creep in due to the feeling that I couldn’t control everything and keep my loved ones safe, so what’s the point? And my mood was in the toilet, and I struggled with taking things out on my loved ones. I felt like I could never change my health or turn from my sin; if I could never change, what’s the point?
BUT JESUS.
God showed me the other day how He has brought things full circle.
I started following the protocol because I wanted my health back in this life, but now HE IS FIRST.
Back when I started my blog in 2019, it was about earning money and the attention. Now He has laid a blog on my heart again, but HE IS FIRST.
HE IS FIRST. AND ALWAYS WILL BE.
Frequency of Content
I am a Christian, wife, mom of four, and I have a heart to disciple women. As much as I would like to constantly post content, I have a life around me that demands my attention first: my ministry to my husband and kids. I am also heavily involved in our local church and community. My goal is to publish a new post and a video to go along with it every week. I will not PROMISE that, but I will try.
*As a side note, I will not name the protocol that I started following back then and continue to follow to this day because I don’t want to distract from what is truly important: Jesus, the hope He offers in this life, and the eternity that He offers in the next (because we will all die at some point, no matter how healthy we are). If you are curious about the protocol, we can talk one on one.*