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Having faith in the Good/Hard.
Maybe this good/hard life is about showing up to the ongoing hurt with ongoing hope.
I LOVE the phrase “good/hard life.”
Because life, really, is both.
But when people only focus on the hard—when all we can see is the ongoing hurt—it can become really hard to keep going.
I know I’ve felt that way.
I’m willing to bet you have, too.
- When you’re in between meds and you have to wait for the old to get completely out of your system and then for the new to build up IN your system enough to HOPEFULLY have an effect and now, in the middle, without pharmaceutical intervention your symptoms are like a gut punch bowling you over with the reminder that, DANG, I really AM sick and you’re desperately hoping that this new medication is the miracle you’ve prayed secretly for.
- When you’re watching your friends go back to school, go back to work, go back to running, go back to their social lives, go back to living their lives at all and you’re still on the couch and they just can’t seem to understand that chronic means forever and that, no, you’re not going to just bounce back like they did.
- When you’re lying in bed trying to sleep and the insomnia/anxiety/pain/hot flashes/restless leg/side effects/muscle tension/tinnitus/cramping/burning/flare is keeping you up and you feel sad and scared and alone and you cry yourself to sleep except without the actual sleep part.
It can be hard to have ongoing hope, can’t it?
But I’ve been learning, over these loooooooong, difficult years through my daughter’s illness and diagnoses into and through my own, that the only way you get through it is to see that it’s not a HARD LIFE it’s a GOOD/HARD LIFE—and to LOOK for that good and to ACKNOWLEDGE that good and to EMBRACE that good and turn it into THE BELIEF THAT YOU’RE GOING TO BE OKAY, NO MATTER WHAT.
Not that you’re going to get better.
Not that you’re going to get back all that you’ve lost.
Not that you’re going to never feel the hard again.
But that because you’re able to show up to the ongoing pain with ongoing hope, you’re gonna be able to keep your head above water, no matter how hard the rain.
That’s the secret.
Embracing the contradictions.
GOOD/HARD
PAIN/HOPE
FLOATING/DROWNING
Knowing that you can’t have one without the other, so you’ve got to be willing to accept them both.