Be Brave

I am brave.  I am also, usually, what I believe, at least I try to be, humble, so this isn’t easy for me to do.  But I am going to go out there and say it.  I am brave.  Our culture tells us we have to be subtle about our strengths for fear of coming off as some arrogant, narcissistic jerk, and I think that sometimes we just have to let go of the fear of what other people will think and say the things about ourselves that need to be said.  I am brave.  I didn’t feel brave nine months ago.  Nine months ago I felt insignificant and panicked and that at any moment, I would be drug under water.  I was gasping for one last breath of air.  I was in pain and I was afraid.  My body is still not healed, but the difference between the me nine months ago and the me now, is that I believe that I will be.  Chronic illness has a way of making you feel like a visitor in your own life.  It tricks you into thinking that the you that you were, was dependent entirely on your health.  I am not writing any of this for sympathy, but rather to give empathy to those of you who may feel the same way.  I had thoughts that I have trouble sharing with my closest friend.  I let my sickness overcome my spirit.  I don’t think it’s fair to say that I shouldn’t have been sad.  I was grieving a part of me that I am not sure I will ever get back, and I believe that is a process I needed to go through.  I just wish I could have believed that I would be brave enough to get through it and that my life wasn’t over.  Just because I couldn’t keep up physically, and needed time to rest my body, didn’t mean I was a failure as a mom or wife or friend.  It just meant that my body was screaming at me that something needed to change.  I am still working on healing my body, but through a book I am currently reading by Lissa Rankin, M.D., Mind Over Medicine, I am finally learning to heal my mind.  I have lived in a place of fear and accepted feelings of inadequacy for too long.  After my diagnosis, I actually prayed that God could somehow just remove me from this world and put another woman in my place, without anyone noticing.  Such a weird, dark thought, and yet, at the time, I just wanted to give up.  I was waving the white flag of surrender and didn’t feel like I was up for the task of caring for three kids, let alone being a fun mom and wife.  I felt they deserved better.  But they don’t and they didn’t.  They needed me.  Your friends and your family would not be better off without you. They need YOU!  Sometimes as moms/dads or just as people in general, I think we have to realize that we are good enough despite our current despair.  And if you can’t believe that, just hang in there long enough to realize that you are brave.  I didn’t think I was brave then, but I know now that even in my weakest moment, I was being cared for by a God that never left me, and He was allowing me to find out just how strong I could be.  You CAN get through this.  Dr. Rankin encourages her readers to get back to something that drives you creatively.  Our minds can’t relax without creativity and my spirit has been so overcome with anxiety over the future, and caring for my family, that I have let a part of who I am slip away.  I am back to claim her.  She has been through a difficult time physically, and an almost overwhelming and impossible time emotionally, and she isn’t there yet, but she is brave and courageous and she will get through it.  You will too.  We were each created with a purpose in this life.  Things will come along to cause us to doubt our significance and our purpose, but those are the moments we need to explore who we are at an even deeper level.  We need to pull ourselves up off the battlefield and keep walking.  If you have a friend with a chronic disease, especially if they are newly diagnosed, please reach out to them.  I tried to hide how much I was hurting for fear that I would scare anyone who found out the truth.  If you are someone in pain, depressed, or experiencing a chronic disease, you are not less than.  I can tell you that I was there.  I experienced the greatest pain I have ever experienced and I still feel symptoms pretty much every day, but the difference is that I know my body has the capacity to heal and so does yours.  Be brave!  Stand strong!  Reach out to your friends and family or to a counselor, and if you can, read the book I mentioned.  If you had told me ten years ago that a book about the mind-body connection would move me the way that it has, I would have laughed in your face, but this book really is transforming how I think about disease in general.  I am going to keep on fighting.  I know that I can heal and I believe you can as well.