ENTROPY.

There is something within me that wants for things in life to stay whole and untarnished, but this never seems to happen. I don’t think I am the only one who senses the tendency towards decay in the universe. This is true on a large scale for the universe of course. The world is constantly in a state of being polluted and overcrowded, not to mention that our natural resources are constantly dwindling. But even in the smallest things in my life, I notice this tendency. At some point, new cars break down, highlights grow out, fingernails chip, new clothes stretch out, cds scratch, ipod drop on the floor (total bummer!), food goes moldy, shampoo bottles run dry, rooms get messy…It’s really quite annoying. These small things may not seem like a big deal, but to me they are a symptom of a greater problem in the whole universe: the law of entropy.

I looked up the word entropy today on thesaurus.com and it gave me these synonyms: breakup, collapse, decay, decline, degeneration, destruction, falling apart, worsening. Each one of these words powerfully describes what is constantly happening on every level of the universe: from the decay of our teeth to the melting of the polar ice caps.

I think the most annoying side effect of this universal law is the breakdown of our own bodies. Our whole lives (after adolescence) are a process of our bodies breaking down. I think the sooner that we realize this, the better off we will be, because it will not surprise us when it happens.

It is interesting that in a time in my life when almost all my friends are in the best physical shape of their lives, I am absolutely a mess. While a lot of my friends are running marathons and triathalons, I am lucky if I can walk to the end of my street. Some days walking to the mailbox is a victory. While this may seem fairly depressing, it is kind of strange gift to me in a weird way. It is a daily reminder of my own lack of control over my own life and my ability to control anything. It also reminds me how fragile my body is. I know that I’m not invincible.

Being sick also does something good inside of me, in that it springs at least a little desire for something else: something beyond this world. It is so incredibly easy for me to be happy with just living and not thinking about eternity and the life that Christ calls us to if we have decided to submit our lives to him. But when your body is constantly hurting, it is a constant reminder that we are not made for this earth- that this is a broken system, a dim reflection of something greater.

In the meantime, our job is to keep our eyes open and do our best to allow God to renew our hearts, even while our bodies are falling apart.

Romans 8: 19-21

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

CONSTANTS.

One of my favorite phrases is “the only constant is change.” While it is true that life is always changing, I have found that there are certain things that I can count on to stay the same: the sun rising and setting, the seasons changing, my mom making Autumn soup in September, family getting together in November and December, etc…The older I get, the more I truly take comfort in these things. They give my life a sense of rhythm.

Another example is that when we change the clocks for Daylight Savings time, it always feels strange how it is dark so early. Without fail, the clocks are turned back on set on a specific day each fall. In our minds, we KNOW that it will get dark earlier. And yet, somehow, it will never cease to amaze us for that first week of adjustment that it is only 7 o’clock when it feels like at least 8 or 9. In a strange way, this comforts me.

And so I’ve concluded that during this season of sickness in my life, I want to create as many sensible “constants” in my life as I can. One of my constants is a cup of tea each day. It might sound ridiculous, but I take so much joy in both making and drinking my morning tea now. My latest tea habit consists of a lovely cup of British Breakfast tea, a squirt of honey and a splash of soymilk. It is quite delicious. Somehow, when I sit down for my morning tea, whether I am miserably sick or surprisingly energetic, it brings me a sense that I can make it through my day, whatever it will look like.

CREATIVITY.

Creativity has saved my sanity in sickness. During my really bad Lyme days, it is almost impossible to concentrate or create, so I just give up. BUT…on days when I am recovering, it is just the thing to get my mind working again.

I constantly go through different seasons of creating, which I hear is normal for the artistic process. But, as a very structured person, this frustrates my intense need for consistency in a time in my life when I can’t be consistent or committed to almost anything. But still, in every season, God gives me a new wave of drive to focus on the creative endeavor at hand. Creativity opens up what has been shut down by sickness.

At times, I am intense about playing my guitar and new song ideas will flood my mind. Other times, I fix my eyes on photography and focus growing in my skills in that area. When neither of these things are striking me, I turn to writing children’s stories or journaling. When all of things aren’t working, I start a blog. Haha Just kidding. But you get the idea. Creativity is a big part of my life, survival and healing process.

Sometimes I feel like my endeavors are fruitless and it frustrates me to not be better at each of these skills, but it is all part of the process, part of the healing. For me, to give up on creativity would almost be like giving up on healing. Whether you are healthy or sick, I would definitely recommend trying to find creative outlets in your life. It certainly can’t hurt.

TITHE.

The other day, I seriously felt like an emotional wreck. I was impatient, snippy, sarcastic, and cranky. And for the life of me, I could not figure out why. I knew I was tired and, of course, sick, but that is not different from any other day. What was different?

It was not until a few days later that I realized I had been going out 1-3 times every day for the entire week, whether it was to run an errand, see a friend for coffee, hang out with my boyfriend, etc. This may not sound like a lot, but for my body and my health that is WAY,WAY too much to do in a week. (To give you a point of reference, when I was sick last fall, I only went out for about 20 minutes every couple of days…) While I am no longer completely housebound, I have seriously limited energy and have to really watch how much I am out and for how long. The last thing I want to do is to hold back my recovery by putting unnecessary stress on my body.

I have a friend who is always texting me a phrase that has been very helpful to me as I’ve been recovering. It is: “Save 10%.” By this, she means save 10% of your energy, your strength, and your sanity. Don’t let your tank go empty. It’s like how in the Old Testament, God asked his people to give him the first tenth or “tithe” of all their crops and any sort of income they made in the year. This was an act of obedience that showed commitment and trust in God and his provision and, in turn, he blessed them for their obedience. Similarly, I think it is wise to save a “tithe” of my energy. I have found this is really good way to live. When I do this, it makes feel slightly more sane and definitely less cranky.

WANDER.

One of my life’s greatest luxuries is allowing my thoughts to wander. When I am busy, my thoughts are always related to action. When I am tired, my thoughts cannot usually drift, for they are always pointed directly at sleep, like an arrow. It is when my mind is truly clear, when the only sound I hear is the faint sound of the Swell Season, when I can smell the aroma of a fresh cup of licorice tea, when I am bundled in a huge blanket of warmth…It is then and only then can my thoughts wander to things I truly care about. To me, that is when I am most at rest.

CONFINED.

So recently, something changed for my little niece Tegan, and she began crawling. It is not a complete crawl yet. My mom calls it a “soldier crawl.” She uses her arms and pulls on the carpet with all her might and then kicks her feet a bit. Somehow, she can maneuver fairly well with this approach.

Suddenly the toy-covered blanket that we spread on the floor for her each week, cannot contain her anymore. In fact, this past week, I looked over and found that she had “crawled” all the way to the kitchen floor and was sliding on the tile. All of the sudden, the world has opened her. While this is exciting, it also creates a whole new set of problems and dangers that we need to protect her from. Her world just got bigger.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 The summer before I got sick, I went to Italy for three weeks. I traveled with a group of friends and explored Florence, Cinque Terre, Luca, and many other Tuscan towns. We hiked a cave and a mule trail, attended a Renaissance fair, swam in the Mediterranean and road bikes around the city walls of Luca. We traveled in airplanes, buses, cars, and trains. It was quite the adventure. During my time in Italy, the world felt huge; I felt like I could do anything.

When I returned home in August, I began to prepare my classroom for the coming school year. My family and friends helped me to clean, clear and prepare. I wrote the names of each of my students on each of their nametags on their desks and above each of their backpack racks. I prayed over each of them. The possibilities for learning that school year seemed limitless. We could do anything as a class. I was very optimistic. This year would be a year of strength.

When I got sick in October of that year, my world suddenly felt smaller- much smaller. With each day that I was confined to the couch, my world shrunk. With each month passing by, my hope of coming back to my classroom shrunk. When I had to give up my classroom, my world felt invisible.

The good news is that, with time, I have started to heal, which means that my world is expanding again. As I heal, I am able to go out, to meet with friends and go back to church. It is a slow recovery- much slower than I would like, but it is certainly going the right direction. I hope that, in time, my world will feel limitless again. This is how I measure healing- how big the world feels. Soon, I hope to go out and conquer it again. For now, I am trying to learn contentment in the confines of sickness.

~~~~~~~~

VALIDATION.

(A little affirmation for my friends with Lyme out there….)

This past year of my life could best be summed up with one word: “sickness.” Though I do not desire my sickness to define me or confine me, the truth is that it has.

Sometimes I close my eyes and I try to tell myself that my sickness is only in my mind: that if I really wanted to, I could get up and go jogging or go back to work. But with Lyme it does not work like that. Lyme takes over what feels like every cell of your body- like an army invading you from the inside. It is such a distinct feeling, I would know if it were happening in my sleep and yet, somehow it is very difficult to explain the sensation. I’ve tried to think of something I could compare it to but have not come up with anything that could do it justice. Every Lyme sufferer experiences it differently and yet, when I talk to someone with Lyme, it is like there is a baseline of understanding between us- that unspoken bond of shared pain. So I guess what I wanted to say to those who are reading this who have Lyme: I know what you are feeling and it is very real. I’m sure a lot of you have been told that your sickness is “all in your head” as I was told by a doctor when I was 16 and could barely walk because of the Lyme. It is the worst feeling to be suffering so intensely and to be told that you are crazy and “just looking for attention.” I know for me, the best medicine is validation….So… I want to just let you know, you are not crazy or lazy.

You just have Lyme.

GRACE.

I have really been struggling with the idea of productivity lately. What does it truly mean to be productive? To me, it is to produce something in your day that is worthwhile, something worthy of honor. While for most of the world, this means “putting in a hard day’s work” for those of us who are sick (or even if you are unemployed), it must mean something else, but I’m not quite sure what that is yet.

In pondering this thought, it occurred to me that I think it is very important to not confuse busyness with productivity. I feel like American society causes us to be always busy and sometimes productive.

Busyness is not necessarily what I want from life and yet I sometimes find myself seeking it, just so I can feel like everyone else. You can do a lot of nothing and stay busy, but to be productive is a decisive act to do- for a purpose. In sickness, busyness consumes a lot of energy and can take away from the healing process. And so, all we who are sick are left with the question of what to do with our time- how to use what little of it that we have and make it last in the vast amount of time we have at our disposal.

I have found that when I am very sick, I try to just occupy my brain with distraction. When I start to recover and have limited energy, I tend to spend it more wisely. It is really on my best days that I tend to get busy and not necessarily be as productive. Thank goodness God gives me grace in each day- whether it is productive, busy or otherwise.

UNCONDITIONAL.

Two or three days a week, my mom and I watch my little niece, Tegan. I was there the day that Tegan was born about 9 months ago. It was one of the first times that I had ever seen a newborn baby. It was so amazing to see her miniature feet and hands and to watch how completely perfect she was, just lying there in my sister’s arms.

When we first started babysitting Tegan, I was so excited, but after a few weeks, it struck me how little she was able to do and it kind of frustrated me. She couldn’t walk or eat food or even sit up and I sometimes wondered what it was like to be in her shoes- so incredibly helpless.

So many times, I have seen Tegan lie on her stomach and kick her legs and try with all her might to crawl. She can’t even imagine trying to walk yet; all she wants is to crawl and even that, she is not ready for. And so she kicks and cries and becomes very frustrated, until I pick her up in my arms and tell her “It’s okay, Tegan. I promise you will crawl soon. Just keep trying.”

It strikes me in moments like that how incredibly precious she is to me. I couldn’t love anyone more. And then it hit me- God’s love is just this. He sees us for the place where we are at, not the place where we want to be. He knows where we will be someday and yet he does not love us BECAUSE we will be there someday. He loves us now- in all our brokenness and frustration. He would love us even if we never learned to crawl.

Sometimes, I don’t understand how God could love me like that, when I am so weak and sick and can’t do much to serve him. Like Tegan, I get so frustrated by my own inability. It’s human nature to love because of action, because of what people can do for you.

It strikes me how God’s love is so incredibly different. It doesn’t even resemble that human kind of love. It is so intense. It is so passionate. It is so separate from action. His love is that of a parent, of one who watches over us when we sleep and loves to watch us breathe. He wants us to crawl, but he knows that sometimes we are just not ready- that is, until we are.

SUGAR.

So apparently people with Lyme are not supposed to eat processed sugar. I have had Lyme for over a decade and I did not know this until this past year. I was reading about it in a Lyme book and they said something like “Don’t worry- if your friends are eating cinnamon rolls, you don’t have sit out! You can just eat a mango instead.” This sentence only proved to make me very angry. I mean, I can handle sitting on the sidelines from almost all physical activities, taking large amounts of medications that make me even more sick, and going to the doctor all the time. These things I have learned to accept. But come on. Don’t take away my cinnamon rolls or my frozen yogurt. That’s just mean. Oh, and I hate mangos.

ATTAINMENT.

God is more concerned with WHO you are ARE than what you DO. I state this not as a lesson I have learned and can pass on to you, but more as a reminder to myself. I have to keep reminding myself of this each and every day that I am sick. I feel so worthless sometimes, as I lie sick on the couch, watching TV or movies.

Let’s be honest, if you don’t work and you meet someone and they ask you (as they inevitably do), “What do you DO for a living?” it makes you want to shrivel up and die. I feel like saying “I do NOTHING, okay! I do NOTHING!” Usually what I DO say is “I used to be a teacher.” I don’t know which one of these things is worse: the fact that I can’t do anything NOW or the fact that my life is defined by what I USED to do. Sometimes I feel like Charlie on LOST, always talking about what he used to be good at… (If you are sick and watch LOST, you understand what I mean…)

When my Lyme came back over a year ago, I had to give up the best job in the whole world: teaching first graders. I LOVE to teach and when I got my own classroom, I felt like I had found my calling and my deepest passion. Yes, it was exhausting. Yes, leaning over those tiny desks all day made my back hurt. Yes, I really hated making those tiny little crafts. But it was all worth it when my students grasped difficult concepts, learned to read and write and shared their creativity with me. I felt like I was born to teach them. It was my gift.

And yet, the thing I have been forced to accept in giving up my job is that I am still “me,” apart from teaching. Teaching is just one of my labels, one of my gifts. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a girlfriend. I am writer. I am a teacher. These are all things that are very significant and I regard them as important and significant to me and to God. But the truth is, I am more than those things. While God gave me the gift of teaching, it is still somewhat external to my being. In my deepest part, I am a unique soul created by God to bring worship to his name. All the other goals and labels I have for myself pale in comparison to that.

It also has occurred to me several times this year that even without my sickness, there will probably be times in my life when I don’t teach (if I have kids, if I retire, if I lose my job, etc…) Careers are way more uncertain that we perceive them to be. I know so many people who pour themselves so much into their careers or their children or whatever it is that is most important to them and then, when their job is done (i.e. they retire, their children move out, etc.), they don’t know who they are anymore. While it is entirely natural to go through this, it causes me to pause and wonder: where do I find my identity? Is it in WHO I am in Christ or is it in WHAT I DO?

WHOLE.

The Rick Warren quote (at the top of the blog) motivated me to think about life in a new way. Because God created each one of us and God is perfect, there is a nagging voice within all of us that says that life should be perfect. And yet, this is clearly not the case in the world today. Something has gotten off track in a very real way, leaving us dissatisfied in the very core of our being. This dissatisfaction can actually be a good thing because it makes us realize that something is wrong. In the meantime, we are called to live between the “railroad tracks” of joy and suffering, until things are made whole.

Here’s more of the quote from an interview with Rick Warren:

“Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy…

I used to think that life was hills and valleys…I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life…No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on…And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, "which is my problem, my issues, my pain." But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.”

~Rick Warren

WHY.

Confession: the idea of making my own blog scares me to death. It’s such a strange concept to bear your soul and thoughts over the Internet when you do not know exactly who will be reading them. Yet there is something within me that desires to share what I have learned about life through my battle with Lyme Disease. Whether you are healthy or struggling with chronic sickness, I hope that some of the thoughts that I share will meet you in some helpful way. If you have Lyme, I hope I can be a resource and encouragement in your healing process as so many people have been to me. If nothing else, I think that people who are sick need to know that they are not alone- not only in a general sense, but in the very specific emotions that accompany chronic sickness. I think we all need that kind of connection with one another. As C.S. Lewis says, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”