We have been so blessed in our life. I look back at the marriage, the children and the grandchildren that Bill and I have been blessed with....but today it all seems so clouded by this dark cloud. I HATE THIS DISEASE. I hate what its done to me, I hate what its made me, I hate that it has taken so much of ME away. So many of us have been through what I would call a "dark night of the soul," I experienced it probably about 7 years ago. It was a time in my life where God seemed so silent. I prayed, I dug deep into scripture, I listened to uplifting messages but it just seemed that God had pulled away his hand from me. It scared me, I didn't know if I had done something that had displeased him or why the silence all of a sudden. I thought I would die, I couldn't do this life without him and without the strength that he provided me and the words of knowledge that I needed always at the appropriate time.....then silence.
In Samuel, Saul found himself being imploded upon by the Philistines, he prayed but God did not answer, not in dreams, not in visions and not with a word. I know its in these times that it is a time for us to sit patiently and wait upon the Lord. But this isn't supposed to happen to me. I feel as though I'm trapped in a body that has totally gone haywire. It's tiring to wake up one day and feel utterly normal and function normally to sometimes hours to a day later completely unable to accomplish the smallest tasks. Tears come as there are days that my physical body and mental body is so tired of fighting and not knowing when this will ever end.
It's difficult being in crowds of people as the dizziness sets in and then the disorientation follows. None of us want others to see us fail, to see us in a state of frailty. I've found out how really small and insignificant we really are in such a vast world. I remember the day of my grandfathers funeral....as we pulled out in the funeral procession that the outside world was continuing on with life. How could this be? This man that I knew was a man of God, he served the Lord with all that he was, nothing in him was ever evil or un-christlike. How is it that everything didn't stand still at this moment....after all....it did for me.
On the day that I'm placed in the ground or any of us are placed in the ground....the pile of papers that need addressed on our desks, the phone calls that need returned and all the things that we see that have to be done......will soon be forgotten. But the time that I spend with my children and my grandchildren molding their lives and showing them how to live in Christ is all that will really matter.
It's been a down day today as I had to turn down doing the Women's Ministry once again this year. I can't even plan a haircut in advance as I don't know from moment to moment if I'll be upright or laid out begging God to end this misery. All I ask for is my health back, all I ask for is that from today forward I can get up daily and enter the world as everyone else enters....without wondering when its going to hit me. I think I'm having better days, but unlike before when I felt bad everyday....now I can feel great and have the wind knocked from my sail in a matter of minutes. When will this torture end. When can I begin to enjoy life again, when can I feel good again. When do I get to pick up the pieces of a terrible 2 years and turn this around to a story that God can use.
