I bid farewell to 2007!
The past few years I had been grabbing tightly to time. Snapping everything up and holding tight... just begging for time to stop.
I needed time to adjust to so many changes...
a confirmed diagnosis of lupus,
the loss of my career,
the loss of my closest friend to cancer,
and the loss of my identity.
With so much time on my hands, I had felt that time was flying, zooming, raging too fast. I couldn't grab it all up.
And being the mother of a young child compounds the speed of time.
Any parent can attest to this as you watch your toddler magically go from smearing chocolate pudding into his hair to running leaping, chasing butterflies, to learning multiplication, to "Mom! I'm too big for that!"
I have learned that by desperately trying to make time stand still, all I have accomplished is to lose time.
Life moves forward... and be assured life stops for nothing.
During all the desperation I encountered over the past few years, I had the curse (and blessing) of having a lot of time on my hands...
or should I say time on my mind?
I was not aware of how much time lupus can give you.
Lupus gave me the time to reflect.
Being too ill to be busy, busy, busy...
I had time to look inside.
I wish I had had a map, or even better a script, to tell me how to go about the whole introspection thing,
but such voyages do not come with instructions.
So, I have bounced around willy nilly looking about at the stuff this life has accumulated.
Lots of junk in the attic of my mind that has gotten cumbersome... heavy.
And a whole passel of really bad habits, including trying to be a time keeper.
While sorting through that mental attic, I discovered that time is an illusion.
You can live in the past, you can be completely immersed in a future that has not happened, yet...
or you can live in the present.
Some folks have even mastered living in a moment... or one moment at a time.
Nope...
not there...
yet.
(working on that, though)
Anyway, I just got on this whole train of thought this evening because of the whole New Year's resolution thing.
I see all those dieting commercials on television and ask myself if I would really be happier if I were 10 lbs. lighter?
If you have lupus, that becomes an almost totally absurd question.
We really can not expend energy on 10 pounds. Between the medications and the disease process... we can be skinny as a scarecrow to inflating like a balloon from steroids.
Ten pounds is irrelevant.
So I tossed out that worn out resolution of guilt that many woman seem to hold onto tightly.
I have decided to lose about 10 pounds of personal baggage, though.
I know I would feel a LOT better if I lost some bad habits... even one would suffice if I can stick with it!
And I know I would feel even better than better if I took on 10 more pounds of soul... the fruits of the spirit:
LOVE
JOY
PEACE
PATIENCE
KINDNESS
GOODNESS
FAITHFULNESS
GENTLENESS &
SELF-CONTROL
Yep, there's plenty here to work with.
So, instead of dreading another year passing, I am EXCITED!
Come this Spring, I will be on the five year mark of a confirmed diagnosis. My grieving time has been long, complicated by the death of a loved one and a terribly long adjustment period.
But, the time for grieving has passed.
I thought lupus had taken everything away from me, but it can not.
If I focus on the things that are truly important, the things that become the legacy we leave behind when we pass from this world...
there is plenty of work (and time) to do.
Lupus can be a hindrance, but she has become my launching pad into the second half of my life.
She has given me the luxury of time, the luxury of quietness for introspection, and in the testing of the dark nights of the soul...
Lupus has guided me to a light, an opportunity to move forward with less baggage...
at least 10 pounds...
and more soul!
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