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| My Puppy and Bear - photo by D. Bolton |
When one has a chronic illness, change sometimes becomes the enemy. Change means one has to move from the little niche that has kept one mentally and emotionally safe. However, even when one feels safe, stagnancy can creep in making one needy within, I am not saying that one should feel guilty at being in a cocoon for a time. Butterflies need cocoons. Bears and other animals need safe places to hibernate in the winter. And sometimes, a person needs to step back into his/her safe place and stay there for a while. However, eventually, one needs to move from Point A to Point B:
or, he/she becomes withered and diseased to the core of one’s soul.
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Me and One Small Change
photo by courtsey of my
sweet husband taken
for me. |
How does a person, who is ill, do this? I can testify to how I have done it, and how I am still doing it. I have taken baby steps. I have even thought back to my development as a child; and in a sense, I have allowed myself to become that child again. This may sound strange, but it is really very simple. And believe me, SIMPLE, is just what I have needed to make my move. Anything complicated has only served to frustrate me and has ended in failure, so simple baby steps have been something I welcomed.
First of all, I want you to know that I had not turned in my adult card. I may have brain fog occasionally, and I may have brain glitches, forgetting a word or name here and there; however, my faculties are fine. I still have a working computer in my head. I make more lists than I used to, and I have been known to forget my lists. I also do better if I place my purse in one of 2 places it usually ends up when I come home, and my keys really need to be in my purse. You get the general idea, I am sure.
Secondly, I need you to know that my period of hibernation -- not convalescence, since that implies one has actually healed--had bred some bad habits. Or perhaps, it was that I had a loss of good habits. I especially abhorred the loss of my good habits, which I identified so many years as being
the me I knew. I became someone I no longer recognized at times, and I hated that. I had become stagnant and diseased in things that were not my illness, and I struggled to get out of the mire; but, it was too difficult to pull myself out. And apparently, no one else could either, or could he/she?
That leaves me to the final thing for this long-winded blog. There was one thing, one person, but I had to listen very carefully, because I had not been able to when I was in my deepest fogs. The person that helped me the most in physical and emotional comfort was my kind and patient husband, who could not change me from within.
He could pray for me, as could family, friends, and counselors; however, none of them could change me. The one person that could take me out of this stagnation was God.
In my heart I knew that He would help me, although the road was longer than I liked.
I nearly lost my faith on the way:
I certainly had doubts.
The road was longer than I liked, but I had / have lessons to learn along the way.
This is the first baby-step in my road;
for without this one, no other step is possible.
And He has helped me. I was already a Believer, but my faith was tattered and torn, and full of a few
bullet holes--not literal bullet holes, but painful nevertheless. I took my sparrow-sized faith to God through Jesus Christ my Savior, and asked Him to help me, to restore the joy of my salvation -- and He has--glorious God that He is. He is teaching me as I go, retraining me gently, as any loving father would do for his wounded child. How I love Him! And how thankful I am that God has not given up on me -- or you.
"So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find ; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives ; and he who seeks, finds ; and to him who knocks, it will be opened. Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish ; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?" ( Luke 11: 9-13, NASV)
P.S. I am not saying by posting pictures of my puppy that one should get a dog. That is just one of many changes, that came about among days, months, and years of others. Nor am I saying change is easy. It took change for me to become as ill as I was, only it overwhelmed me with illness' insidious entry into my life. Life circumstances, medications, and becoming more sedentary (despite efforts to continue being active) loomed over me, until the proverbial straw broke; and I was a shut-in (in more ways than one). It would take a book to answer the questions that I think readers have. I will say more in future installments, hopefully not 9 months from now. (wry smiley)
