More Powerful than Darkness

It was a crazy holiday season.  I suppose it always is.  Christmas already seems a month ago rather than just barely over a week ago.  I'd like to think I'm recovering from the stress of the season and now that it's a new year, everything will perk up and fall back into its normal place.  We're not off to a good start on that hope though.  I'm still feeling exhausted and the weather isn't helping.  It's been gray and dreary for the last few days and I need the sun.

I've been pretty much laid out for weeks, it seems.  David and I went out for New Year's Eve and came home before midnight because I couldn't make it.  I've noticed that even staying home all day, I can still get pretty darn exhausted and my new limit of activities seems to be one.  One measly, pathetic activity.  I can curl my hair and do makeup with the girls and then I'm done.  I can do a load of laundry and then I'm done.  I can clean a bedroom and then I'm done.  And I hate this more than I can express.  I hate having to move from the bed to the couch back to the bed.  I feel lazy and useless.

And I've been praying a lot about what this means in my life; how on earth my brokenness can be used.  How I can be a blessing rather than a burden.  I don't know.  The only thing I know is that when I look at it through an earthly lens it just sucks and it is a burden.  Only when I look through a kingdom lens does it make a bit more sense.  But my vision still is not that great.  I can't see it clearly. I just know that this has been chosen for a reason and that acceptance is the key to all my problems.

I want to isolate with this illness and keep it a secret and cry by myself in the bathroom and then come out with a tough attitude and act like it's no big deal.  I've been pretty quiet about Multiple Sclerosis in years past but as it continues to have its effect in my life I've found myself searching out other sufferers--their words and stories so I don't have to feel so alone.  I find myself wanting to know if there are others who are trying to homeschool through a chronic illness and I'm googling those search words and so I've realized if I want a voice, I can also be a voice.  I can provide what I'm desiring for others who are searching for similar feelings of connectedness.

What in me wants to keep it to myself, anyway?  Shame?  Embarrassment?  Fear of being misunderstood? Disbelieved? I'm not sure but I do know the enemy likes to silence; he likes to make us feel isolated and alone.  And those are lies.  We are never alone.  And when we share, we bring light and light is more powerful than darkness.

Overcome

It's been a while since I've blogged.  A while since I've thought about blogging.  Several years ago, I blogged daily.  And then I tried to continue but I just couldn't. Sporadically, I added a few entries over the course of a few years but so much had changed--I couldn't get back in that space.

I was a different person then.  Married to a different man.  I had two less children. That blog, then, brought me so much healing.  It became a meditative place for me; a place of searching; a place where I felt close to God. I read those entries now and I almost envy aspects of my old self.  I can appreciate and even admire my own intense pursuit of God there, if that makes any sense.

In some ways, I feel as though I had a purer heart, more innocence. A divorce will straight wreck you.  I couldn't write much about it and I still feel like I can't.  Because I don't quite have the words. It's been four years and still, I can't entirely wrap my head around it. That blog was so much about married life and children and trying and searching and God.

Today, I'm married again.  I have two new children.  I'm still trying; I'm still searching and God is constant.  But I couldn't just pick up where I left off.  I've been so altered. Too much is still unprocessed; there are too many blanks--even for me--in my own story.

But I've missed that dedicated time with God; that longing, the comfort I found in writing in that capacity.  And the why of why now I'm starting a new blog is simply, that I guess it's just been on my heart.  It's terrible timing, actually, with the busyness of the holidays.  Too, I'm working on a novel I started writing in November that I feel rather committed to, there are the six children I homeschool which occupies most of every day and most all of my thoughts and there's the chronic illness which makes for bad timing with nearly everything in life.

So, I have multiple sclerosis.  I want to add something upbeat and cliche like 'but multiple sclerosis doesn't have me! Smiley face' but that would be bull sh*%.  Historically, I haven't shared much about my disease because it's kind of a downer and I don't want to seem like I'm looking for pity. But lately, well, it's been harder to ignore, I suppose.  Too, I've been thinking about how I need to read the words of others who suffer in a similar manner.  Somehow, it helps. So, I guess if I can do anything with this, I can share it as my story and what it looks like so others with chronic illnesses might not feel alone.  I can give a face to it.

My best defense for years was a good offense--there, I squeezed my cliche (I know how to spell cliche but I don't know how to add the accent :) )in--meaning, I did a lot of pretending.  I ignored it whenever I could.  I piled more and more on my plate in defiance to prove to myself that it was no big deal. But that's not as easy anymore.  Besides, I don't know that I was fooling anyone.

Last May, I was diagnosed with Valley Fever which is a b*%t#@  Blah, blah, blah.  Still have it.  Isn't helping a damn thing.  So, here I am, six months later, confessing my illnesses, I guess.  I want to tell you that it's still all good and it is in many ways.  I can walk and talk and swallow.  Just not as well or as easily. MS is a progressive disease.  It takes things slowly--at least it does from me.  It plays the long game.  I don't want to be cynical.  I pray I never have another symptom crop up in my life.  I try and practice positivity.  But I also need to work on authenticity.  With  myself.  Honoring my own truth.  And my own truth right now is that I feel like where other people have periods or days of sicknesses, I have periods or days or even only hours of wellness.  I feel like mostly I've learned to live sick.  And that's a bum deal.  And it pisses me off.  But...

And here's the crux of the new writing; the return to a place such as this: but...I have God.  I love God.  He chose this weakness or weaknesses for me for a reason and always, always it could be worse.  This disease brings me to prayer and that alone fills me with gratitude.  I am overcome.   This disease has at times overcome me, rendering me helpless, knocking me out, winning. But I turn to God and somehow, someway He speaks to me and I am overcome by His goodness and His compassionate love.

So overcome that I want to share it.