When I thought I lost me
You knew where I left me
You reintroduced me to Your love
You picked up all my pieces
Put me back together
You are the defender of my heart
Many times I’ve lost myself. It’s actually quite easy when there’s a million messages declaring what defines you and what makes you unique and worthy.
I lost myself when I thought my weight defined me in high school.
I lost myself when I had to drop out of college.
I lost myself when I had to quit my job.
I lost myself when I laid in bed for days on end.
I lost myself when I gained the weight and more back.
I lost myself when I realized my originals plans and dreams were no longer a reality.
If you sat down and thought about it too, I’m sure you would come up with a list of your own definitions of what you surely thought defined you. Things you’ve lost or have come and go. But if all these things we define ourselves as can be gone so quickly, did they ever really define us in the first place? Did they bring as much value as we thought? Maybe… maybe not.
He never promised it would be easy, I understood that. Yet, I thought that meant something hard that came…and then went.
A “season” of life, a season of trials or heartbreak, that only lasts a couple of months at the most right? And no matter how much I seem to pray, or figure out why, I don’t know why it continues. I don’t understand how something so painful, bland, and heart wrenching could be of much use to Him.
That’s right I said it: If there’s a purpose or a plan to any of this, I don’t really believe it right now. I try to, I try to hold onto hope, I desperately cling to His word (I know I could cling harder though, but can't we all). But each time all I hear is the reverberating silence. A silence so loud its seems to shatter everything. A purpose that seems so lost, it's never to be found. A life that seems so pointless, it seems it should be over, because it's not going anywhere.
This may come across too dark for you, maybe it makes you uncomfortable. That’s ok, it does for many people. You see we know how to react when someone gets sick, because they either get better or they die. If they get better you can wish them well with a sense of optimism, knowing its all going to be ok. If they are on the verge of death, you know, or pray they are going to be with the Lord. There’s a finish line in both of these scenarios, a relief one way or another that comes.
But what happens when you get sick, and you don’t get better? You don’t die from it, you don’t recover, it just stays. How do you react to that?
It’s uncomfortable I know. It’s not easy to sit with someone in an unending grief. It's not comfortable to try and understand being in severe pain everyday. It’s hard to not try and fix something that is perpetually broken. I get it, being continually close to someone who is forever physically broken on this side of eternity isn’t for everyone. And that’s ok.
What is my point here? The point is, there’s a certain something that happens when you realize you will always be acutely sick. There’s a maturity that comes with it that you wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Waking up in pain from head to toe. Looking in the mirror, realizing your outer body is just as effected as the inside. Seeing clearly the subtle differences that no one else sees. Recognizing the dozens of things that are no longer an option for you. Coming to know the drs. Better than your friends and family. Becoming increasingly ok with being by yourself because you don’t have a choice. Realizing you’re going to cry a lot more, but not in-front of people. No because if you cry too much, too often they will get sick of you.
“Remember this will go on for the rest of your life, not just a few weeks, and nobody can handle that, don’t drive them away.”
This maturity, you want to know what it really comes from? You know when you go through a breakup or a death or a divorce in the family. You eventually heal with time because you move past it and forward. You’re not waking up eveyday to the same death, the same break up happening over and over again. Now, I am in no way diminishing these things, or saying someone who has gone through it is in less pain. The thing I want you to understand is, if you were reliving the same heart break everyday, if it was fresh everyday, you would always be healing and grieving it, would you not? You wouldn’t move forward or get over it because it would always be just happening to you.
That’s what life long illness is. That maturity, that empathy that I can express comes from this: loss, grieving that loss, anger, denial, acceptance. And then that cycle of “healing repeats itself every few days or weeks. It’s on going, it never ends, because the loss, the pain, the “thing” that caused it, isn’t going away.
You may read that and say,
“not with that attitude it's not!”
Or you may even be tempted to add,
“You don’t know that, someday you will get better.” “Don’t dwell on that, don’t think that way.”
You know what the definition of chronic is?
always present or encountered. continuing or occurring again and again for a long time.
(Merriam Webster Dictionary.)
It’s alway there, it’s ongoing, ever present. So no, these words have nothing to do with my attitude or my lack of positivity. They come from a place of acceptance, a place of knowing this is the reality of the situation.
Being close to someone who is constantly ill is not easy. It takes someone who is very committed, very understanding, very willing to forgive. But there’s something different about those who live with life long illnesses. Something special that God has been working in them for many years.
They know how to love a little deeper. They readily empathize with pain and loss. They know how to simply listen instead trying to fix it. They realize the simple joys, the pure joy of being able to do something you love, even if just for a moment. They can understand that time is a gift, movement is a gift, work is a gift, rest is a gift. They’ll tell you that nothing is in your control, no matter how much it seems so. But they will also tell you that it’s ok, because it never was in in the first place. There’s a lot they would like to tell you, or want you to know.
"If you were reliving the same heart break everyday, if it was fresh everyday, you would always be healing and grieving it, would you not? You wouldn’t move forward or get over it because it would always be just happening to you."
If you were to meet me you may not even know I am sick. If you knew me before, you might realize some big differences. But if you were to ask me what I’m learning now because of it, here’s what I would say:
1) I’m learning about what doesn’t define me (job, body, friends, health, independence, wealth, freedom). Most days it feels like my illnesses define me but I know they don’t.
2) The definition of me was determined by my maker: I’m a child of God (John 1:12) I’m a conquer (Rom 8:37), I’m chosen (John 15:16) I am a woman of purpose (Phil 1:6). Do I believe all of these everyday? no. Do I struggle to live my life by these definitions? Do I forget what I know because I don’t feel this way? Absolutely.
But this is the truth and without it I don’t even have the false definitions to lean on anymore. I have no job, I don’t have a “fit” body anymore, I don’t have a collage degree or career.
The truth is all that I have left to believe.
3) I’m learning it’s ok that I don’t understand. I feel lost most of the time. I hear silence when I pray, I experience loss everyday. I want to understand I want to feel His peace. But me not understanding doesn’t mean it’s not true. Am I ok with that. The grief and anger comes in waves. But I have faith. I know that because even when I don’t feel like it, when I’m angry at Him, I get up and I fight. I fight the lies, I fight the hate I have for my body both internally and externally. I fight the voice that says my life is purposeless.
If I didn’t really believe what God says about me I would've just stopped a long time ago.
4) And lastly, I would tell you that I’m learning it’s ok to grieve. It’s ok to not be ok... for long periods of time (Mat 5:4). It’s ok to lose yourself for a time because He will still find you there. Even when you feel so lost you can’t remember what it was like to feel like yourself, to feel alive. Even when you’ve been broken down into a million pieces and you don’t know how to be put back together. He will meet you there however many times need be.
He will find you where you lost yourself. He will reintroduce you to His love when you feel like it’s not even there. He’ll pick up all the pieces of you that have been scattered from countless heartbreak. He will defend your heart if you let Him.
Whether you feel His love or not today is not the question. Do you believe the truth that He loves you anyways, despite how you feel about Him right now?
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
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