Here is where the mental gymnastics begin.

In a culture that scoffs at the word “limits,” it can be downright conflicting to discover you are not immune to things like gravity or time or aging or illness just because you want to be.  To discover that you do, indeed, encounter limits that cannot be broken through neither your best efforts nor your best intentions.  To discover, much to your disdain or confusion, that there might even be times when that’s a good thing.

And here is just how indoctrinated I am—I don’t even want to put that in print.

I don’t want to put into print that part of living with chronic pain and chronic illness means learning to live within the limits those things impose upon your body.  I don’t want to acknowledge that there are, indeed, limits that I must accept and that it is actually healthy for me to do so.  Because limits, quite frankly, are not popular.

Don’t get me wrong.  I salute those who are able to obliterate limits in their lives.

I have friends who are incredible athletes.  What they are able to accomplish is admirable.

I have friends who are incredible business people.  What they are able to accomplish is admirable.

I have friends who are incredible church planters.  What they are able to accomplish is admirable.

I have friends who are incredible mothers.  What they are able to accomplish is admirable.

All of them run fast and hard, with amazing amounts of energy.  The ambition is remarkable.  The support they have to be able to pursue these things while other parts of their lives are taken care of is enviable.  The things they make happen are nothing short of miraculous.  They work hard, play hard, recreate hard, live hard.

I want to be like these people.

But I am, no matter how much I’d like to be, never going to be these people.  At least not in this season.

This creates conflict within me.  In a culture focused on achievement of any and every variety, to acknowledge there are limits you simply cannot overcome by sheer willpower is not only frightening, it’s also a little shameful.

Actually, it’s a LOT shameful.

This is how strongly I’ve been baptized into the religion of “there are no limits”—I’m still, even now, fighting to write this.  The only limit is in your mind.  Limits are for the weak.  Limits are for the failures.  Limits are for the lazy.  Limits are for the incapable.

So if I embrace that I have limits, am I embracing all these labels, as well?

Because the truth is, no matter how much I want it to be so, I. AM. LIMITED.

My body reminds me of this when it’s three in the afternoon and I’m already done for the day.  When I can’t compose and email to save my life.  When the thought of being needed by one more person makes me want to put on my I-give-up-on-life pants and crawl under the covers. When I reach dinnertime and all of my “spoons” are spent and all three capable cooks in my house are asking ME what’s for dinner.  When my hubby wants to go out and my body is sending all the signals it’s fighting something and is making a really good case for spending the evening on the couch with a fire and a book.  When my focus level dictates my accomplishment level.  When my pain level dictates my activity level.  When my energy levels dictates my entire life.

The pervasive mentality of our culture would be for me to push through these things.  To gut it up and keep going.  To refuse to give in to discomfort.  To feel the fear and do it anyway.  To believe that no pain means no gain.

But at what cost?

Here is the ultimate question I face time and time again: when is it time to reluctantly listen to my body, and when is it time to push it?

And when is it time to simply give my body and mind grace and say, it’s okay, you don’t have to prove a thing.

Because I DO want to prove a thing.  Or two.  Or more.

And it makes me nuts that I can’t.

Do you see the tumbling passes that are happening here, in my mind?  The twisting and turning and spinning and leaping of these thoughts?  Isn’t it enough to make a person dizzy?

I want to accept and embrace my limits.  I want to obliterate my limits.  I want to be able to work as hard and as long as I want to, play as long and as hard as I want to, run as long and as hard as I want to.  I want to learn to embrace Sabbath and gentle rhythms of resting in the Lord.  I want to chase down these dreams of mine as if I am the trophy hunter and they are my unsuspecting prey.  I want to believe that I still am invaluable to my Father even if I never slay a single one.

But I cannot. At least, I haven’t yet. For a multitude of reasons, some coming from within and some coming from without.

My daughter experiences this frustration, as well.  Sleepovers used to knock her out for a day.  Now they knock her out for a week.  A weekend trip—knocks her out for a week.  A large assignment—knocks her out for a week. She can’t stay up all night.  She can’t go hiking all day.  She can’t go to school full time.  She can’t drive.  She can’t hold a job.  Her friends can.

And who of you would dare tell her, “Your limits are all only in your mind?”  You wouldn’t.  Because that would be heartless and that would be UNTRUE.

BUT WE TELL OURSELVES THIS ALL THE TIME.

I should be working more hours.  I should be posting five times a week.  I should be pushing past this pain and fatigue.  I should be walking two miles a day.

Or should I?

I remember when we were getting ready for Keira, who is our firstborn, to go to kindergarten, and interviewing with the principals at each of the two schools we were considering.  I remember I had a specific question I asked both principals, because their answers would tell me quite a bit about how they would respond to my highly-verbal, highly-energetic, highly-active, highly-precocious, highly-sensitive child when she would inevitably end up in their office for one infraction or another.  And I desperately needed to know how my daughter, in all her more-ness, would be received when she was living in the fullness of that MORE.

“How would you respond to a child who, for whatever reason, was somehow outside of the box?”

The first principal responded, with an almost condescending air, “We would help that child learn to live within the box.  It’s crucial for their success at school that they learn to live within the box.”

Saying this to a parent who feared her child’s joyful spirit getting squashed like a stink-bug was probably not her best moment.  I was not impressed.  In fact, I was a little bit mortified.

It was the second principal who won me over.  Without missing a beat, he immediately answered, “Well, we believe that every child has their own box.”

We chose his school.

It turns out, many years later and much to my chagrin, that both of them were right.

As God often does to me, our pastor spoke, the very next morning after my late night musing about boxes, about the fact that we all live within our own boxes.

OH. NO. HE. DID’T.

Oh, yes, he sure did.

You know, we are all put in a box, the size of which we don’t get to determine.  A box measured by our gifts, our talents, our opportunities, our circumstances.  We’re all put in a certain sized box.  The goal of life is to fill as much of the box that God has put you in as you can.  Most of us, because of weakness, because of our “frying pan-sized faith,” live in a corner of the box.  We never achieve all that God would have us achieve.

We each are born with a box, and that box creates both our limits and our opportunities.

Each child has its own box…

We must learn to live within it, but to live FULLY within it.

We all have to learn how to live within the box…

Either way,

There. Is. Still. A. Box.

And THIS is the answer to limits.

Accepting the box you’ve been given.

AND.

Filling the box with as much of God as we can.

Learning to live abundantly, in spite of our limits.

There are things living with chronic pain and fatigue and illness take away from me.  Take away from my daughter.  From my family.  And no amount of will power on my part is going to make this not so.  There are things that are lost.  Things we must surrender. Things we must grieve.

BUT.

We cannot turn our box into a coffin where all of our dreams are buried and continually mourned, but instead into a garden planter in which all within it contributes to the ongoing cycle of fruit-bearing life.

Twenty-four hours in my day, but only twelve “spoons” in my drawer.

This is my box.

I have to learn to live within it.

I’m gonna learn to live within it.

And then…

I’m gonna cram it full.