(Originally posted on December 15, 2018)
The other day I felt the same tidal-wave of frustration and sadness that I have felt on many occasions. Anyone who has dealt with an auto-immune disease (some of us deal with more than one) will understand what I mean when I say that it feels like your life before the diagnosis was a good life…and it’s as if the disease stole your life and gave you a different one. Who I was before is very distinct from who I can be now. Life isn’t over - it’s just a different life - and it is an everyday fight to get out of bed and live as normally as possible.
I am still able to do many of the ministry tasks that I did before I was diagnosed, but there are some everyday tasks that wipe me out and cause me a significant amount of pain for the energy that is necessary to exert. For example - washing clothes here is a half-day chore that requires a lot of work. (Sometimes I miss the automatic washers and dryers that people use in the US!) I used to wash the clothes for Pastora Ana and her family because it causes her back to ache when she does it. However, since I got sick last winter, I have not been able to help with that weekly task. It saddens me that I can no longer be useful or helpful in that way.
This was the case (again) last week as I sat in a white plastic chair outside while Ana and her daughter, Marleny, were washing a mountain of dirty laundry. My heart aches with desire to take the load off of them (literally and figuratively) and I cannot do it without paying a huge price for it physically. I was to the point of tears with frustration.
As I was struggling to keep from crying, I had my hands in a bowl of beans - shelling them so that we could wash and cook them for the noon meal. The smallest one of our clan approached me, giggly, because she loves her “tía Megan.” I pulled her into my lap and asked her, “Quieres que te lo enseñe?” (Do you want me to teach you?) She nodded yes, and I began show her slowly how to open the shell and pull the beans out. Slowly but surely, Ana Ester began to fill her little bowl. She was SO PROUD of what she had learned, and she was eager to show each person that came walking up for the rest of the morning. “Look, Papá, what I learned! Want me to teach you how? Tía Megan taught me.”
I smiled. There are days that autoimmune disease can decide that you have a home day instead of going out to work. There are days that the pain is unbearable. But I am learning that it forces me into a place that I wouldn’t ordinarily be if I was completely well. I wouldn’t have been sitting in the rocking chair that day with a three year old baby girl on my lap teaching her how to shell beans, instilling in her a good pride and provoking childlike joy. I would have been laboring in a different kind of work. One isn’t greater than the other. I’m just coming to realize that it’s just different.
My life before wasn’t better. It was just different. What I could do before is different than what I can do now. It’s not better or worse. It’s just different. My usefulness and purposefulness wasn’t any greater then or any lesser now. It’s just different.
I’m learning a different kind of hallelujah.
