When should I let go of something I’d set my heart on? When is it too costly to be worth the sacrifice? What will I do with my talents with so little energy? What does tomorrow look like?
My husband is in his final year of his degree. We often talk about next year when he will be an intern in a hospital, and the following year when he will be a fully qualified Radiographer. I get clucky thinking about his graduation and how proud I will be of him in his black gown....we marvel at how it will feel to have an income at last...how we’ll save for a car, and a home loan, and a holiday...
We have plans and dreams in the bucket loads. Mainly because we assume that he will be alive and capable of all those things. We used to have the same kinds of plans for my life...I was going to finish my Bachelor of Music, do my Honours, possibly go overseas and then work for several years before trying to have a baby or two.
But when we make plans, we really don’t know for sure if they will come to be. The future is so unknown, so utterly out of our hands.
I honestly don’t know what I will be doing in 6 months time. In the past few months, I made huge progress with my health and it looked right for me to go back to university and re-sit my 1st Year flute recital. I was keen to get out of the house after a year of being homebound, keen to have flute lessons and square away the first year of my degree. Infact, I am keen! My whole heart yearns to do this but I don’t know if my body is feeling the same. I wish it could talk to me.
*Croaky voice, “ Deee-ee, I’m not ready. It’s too much...”
I’m only two weeks into this experiment, but so far I’m rather befuddled. I hope my next post will be announcing that I am feeling great and loving being back, because right now I feel that my body has regressed – maybe I’m having a relapse?
Since returning, I have been feeling really unwell. I’ve had migraines every evening, afternoon sleeps, insomnia, nausea, weakness...a whole list of yuckies. To be perfectly honest, I’m ok with feeling like that – if I can stay home on the couch with a blankie and a cup of tea. It’s hard, but it’s tolerable. What I don’t like is lying in bed knowing that ideally I would be at class, or practicing. That’s stressful.
It could be the antidepressants I recently went on, but now it feels like POTS/CFS. And it could be that my recent virus has given my body a bit of a shake. But I don’t know, and only time will tell me. If it turns out that going back to uni has retriggered my illness, maybe I won’t try to finish the remaining two years of my degree. I never thought I’d write that. I thought I would just get better, 100% better, and carry on where I left off, with a few lessons in patience and hardship under my belt. But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe this journey will be longer, with more peaks and troughs than I expected.
It’s a quality of life issue. I could potentially limp through my degree at a painstakingly slow pace, and hobble up to claim my certificate five years later....before crawling back into bed for the next few. But I don’t think I want that. I think I’d rather go, “Alright, things haven’t panned out according to my dreams and plans. I can accept that, and I’m going to pursue a life I can cope with.”
And then I wonder, what could I do with my limited energy? Could I make cards and sell them at markets? Could I write? Could I invest at home more? Could I still have flute lessons and practice?
Could I learn contentment?
"It is a big mistake to boast about what you will do tomorrow because there is really no way of knowing for sure what will happen."
Proverbs 27 : 1
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