Life - The Big Tests!

I was pretty sure that by the time I was 40 I would have everything figured out. I am sure that everyone 40 and over would laugh along with me...

I am coming to the conclusion that there is no magic age or situation that makes us suddenly there... that magical place where everything is easy and managable.

There are a few circumstances in every person I know that tests them.
The health problems, or kid problems, or job problems, or family problems.

Life is a revolving wheel of the little tests and the big ones.

I feel like I am just winding down from one of my big tests.

I have been fighting a systemic bacterial infection for many years. Finally diagnosed over a year ago, and despite having gone through several rounds of mean antibiotics I had to try a different method.

The daily battle of figuring out how to rid my body of this pesky bacteria has been a painful and frustrating struggle. In the midst of that I did a complete turn around with my life goals and my career.
Being bed-bound was a huge struggle for me mentally, I am a driver and always have been. I enjoy challenges and not making an income was pretty devastating to my budget and to my mind. I don't want to sit around all the time. It was not in my nature.
Feelings of depression and worthlessness were very real to me.

I really struggled to find my self-worth in knowing who I was, not having a job or being a 'contributing member of society'. That broken record was on loop in my brain daily.

Learning to be patient with myself and my health has been a slow but rewarding process. Learning to work hard at my new job. Not only writing but also to help others with their author careers is very rewarding. I had to go through the testing time to understand my real strengths.

Patience, long-suffering, and self worth don't sound like fun tests but I cannot stress enough how going through this journey has changed me for the better.

My advice to anyone in the midst of their hard test, whatever it may be, to let God into the journey. He will shed truth over your situation. Believing thoughts that are only focused on negative things will only keep you in that trial longer. In every situation there is good and bad about it.  There is amazing truths out there that can help you through any situation.

Sometimes the course of your life just needs one moment of understanding to get it moving forward again.

My bacteria battle feels like it is finally coming to the last cycle. With the understanding that my body has a lot of healing to do. I will need to keep my patience while I am finishing the fight. I know that I want to jump back into the 'well' world with gusto. But I have to remember what I have been through and where I want to go may take time.

I want to be able to look back on this time as not 'lost time' but found time. The time I spent getting to know the real me. The me that is stronger than I thought. That looked death in the eye a few times and came out with a new understanding and empathy for others that are suffering. 

For me the most profound understanding is that I like me. The quirky real person that I am. I am not sure I can ever go back to the people-pleaser I was before. Life is way too short.

I am praying that whatever tests I have in the future, and we all know they are out there, is that I will be better prepared by what I have gone through. I have a few extra tools in the toolbox. To face what comes with God at my side.

Wherever you are on your journey, Don't give up, and let God in. You will never regret it! 


~ Leah Banicki
Writer, Mom, Wife, and survivor!

Music & Writing

Just popping in to tell the world about what I have been up too. 

Just this year I published my first novel, Seeing the Elephant, by  Leah Banicki (me), but this journey has been an interesting one. 

My life in a nut shell...

Leah the singer - doing commercials and voice overs since the age of ten, performing on every stage imaginable. Lead singer of a Christian Rock back that traveled around Michigan with some amazing people. (I got pictures of me in leather pants to prove it.)

I love music, I truly do, it's in the blood. 

Writing has been another passion for me but was always in the background. It worked well for me while in a rock band, songwriting fulfilled that urge I had to fill up notebooks. But even in between times I have at least 30 stories started with ideas and characters floating around in spiral notebooks since I was a little kid. 

Just found one the other day from when I was a teen, two teenagers got stranded when a plane crashed on a desert island. Not very original, I laughed my way through my pages. 

Four years ago, everything changed. My hectic lifestyle of singing every other weekend in our local big church, working full time, and recording my own cd in my home studio came to a screeching halt. 

I got a parasite somehow, (still don't know how) called campylbacter, it nearly killed me. Food has not been the same since, neither has my health. Once the doctors figured it out and got rid of it, my body was broken. I spent an entire summer in bed. Three years later, still trying to learn how to eat and not be sick, not singing, not writing, barely living.  My family has been so supportive, loving me through the hard days. Sickness isn't pretty and chronic illness takes it's toll on everyone. Not just me. 

I read a book by a friend, Patricia Strefling, and was so inspired that I picked up my old beat up laptop hand me down and began writing again. A story that had been in my heart for more than a decade. battling my ever sick stomach and broken intestines, I took my ten years of research I had done and the story bloomed from the few chapters I had doodled over the last decade and fleshed it out to the adventure of my lifetime. 

The economy has hit my home in a big way in the last few years and my husband and I struggled along pinching pennies as I was sick at home the last three years, somehow feeling guilty for having found something I enjoy doing from my place on the couch or sickbed.  In a few years my life had done a complete turn around. It was very difficult to face for me some days, missing the stage, my health and livelihood, but having writing was a new direction for me to look for hope. 

Before I even finished the new stories started flowing in my head, sequels and other stories. Some hitting close to home, characters that have to face some hard situations before finding their happy ending.

My struggle to find my health is still an active one. I feel lucky to have a few days in a row that I feel good enough to go out and about. I take it day by day. I am learning about the publishing industry from my perch here at home. I read everything I can afford and write and write and write. 

The thing I have learned that is most valuable this year that no matter where you are at you can do something. I showed my daughter that even from a sickbed you can reach people.  Holding my first book in my hand was a profound experience for all of my family. Even on the worst sick days I have hope. I have a story to tell, nothing can stop me. 

Be blessed,  Leah Banicki

My First Book

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