elation

Sometimes you have to go down before you can go up.

Sometimes you have to take two step forwards, one back, and then repeat. 

Sometimes you have to just be, just remain where you are for a long time. 

Always, you have to be patient and kind to yourself about where you are. 

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Those are the things I have been learning the past few months. The only way to describe my health at the moment is by a graph, where the overall shape is an upward slope....but where there are jagged downward jerks along the way. 

There are days where I feel characteristically ill, and others where I am so well I taste and delight in what it is to be in full health. One excellent week leads into a week of tears, migraines and couch rest – and then as suddenly as my bad health appeared, it departs again, like a fleeting bad dream. The main challenge in this new stage of illness is to be incredibly flexible mentally: to accept and embrace whatever my body throws at me, and to remember the upward slope even when I’ve taken a temporary plummet.

Perhaps that sounds simple, when written in a sentence – but we’re dealing with a heart which is longing and working towards healing. I agonise in those down times that I’ve taken a fall to my former state that will last for months. I deliberate carefully about how much to do: less to preserve my health, or more to utilise my new found well-being? I try to celebrate the progress without clinging to the health which may not remain. I pray and thank.

Each time I achieve something, I want to throw a party and rejoice for feeling alive. I cannot express how wildly well and free I feel as I do the shopping alongside Ben who has done it alone our entire marriage. How incredible it feels to put my arm around his waist on our walks, when I didn’t have the strength to lift it up that high for the first few years. How elated I am to be able to do the dishes, and help make dinner....go on long car trips, play my flute standing up, hold up my hair straightener long enough to straighten  my hair, and get ready for bed at night without any help. Tears of happiness trickle down my cheeks as I feel gratitude for this lavish gift, and dare to hope that the graph of my health is going to keep winding its way slowly, slowly to the top.