I have only shared the following with a hand full of people... When I was at the Mayo Clinic in March, three doctors thought I had a rare disease that has a horrible prognosis. If the "still under research" medication didn't treat this disease, I would only have one year left to live.
I have almost lost my life before. This wasn't the first time for me to hear these type of words. But for some reason, I was very certain that I didn't have this disease, and refused to let this information and possible prognosis upset me.
I felt as if I was giving life to this disease if I told anyone about it.
Fast forward two months to the present. I received a phone call from one of my doctors at the Mayo Clinic; and praise God, I don't have this disease. (The test results take a long time to process.)
Not many days after hearing the good news, I emotionally crumbled.
Oh, how I cried and cried. Sobbing tears of relief. Something I thought that I had been "ignoring," had been more like denial.
I took a couple of weeks to just grieve. I grieved the fact that once again in my life, I was told I might have a bad health prognosis. I grieved for all the healthy years that sickness has taken away from me.
I hibernated a little bit. I needed a place to heal.
I read. I rested a little extra. I saw my counselor and shared all this information with her.
And a single tear or two will still occasionally fall.
Living with sickness is difficult enough, yet we still have to deal with the emotional part of it - which (to me) is sometimes harder than the physical.
Matthew 11:28 says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
I've been laying in my Father's arms, and resting a lot lately.
It's okay to grieve. It's okay to rest. There is not a right or a wrong way to live with an illness and all the baggage it brings along.
I will rest and heal some more. I hope that through this blog, you'll know that grieving and crying sometimes are part of the healing process. And it's okay. The Bible even says so. ;)
Dear friend, I agree with you - the emotional stuff is sometimes much harder to deal with than pain - we often forget that we need to grieve for our illness, our lost lives/friends etc.. but praise God, that we have a God who's willing and able to give us comfort and rest. Thanks for this wonderfully helpful reminder. Rest well, sister.
ReplyDeleteDear friend, how are you doing? Hope your resting is making you feel atleast held & loved in the arms of your God. You have been such an inspiration and joy to me that today, I would love to nominate you for the Sunshine Blog Award - For details of how to accept, check out http://fmsfaith.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/my-very-first-award-sunshine-blog-award.html
ReplyDeleteTake care of yourself, sister!