I was born with a work ethic. In Junior High I began figuring out my thirty year plan. Back then it started with Stanford. No pressure. And, mostly, I kept to the plan well. Well, until freshman year of college.
I got sick, deathly sick. And diagnosed before the extremely rare disease killed me. But the disease was still able to kill. Yeah, I’m alive, and I couldn’t be more thankful for that, because I get a second chance to live a better life, a more authentic, honest, loving life. And, to be honest, I’m scared of what would have happened had I died at 18, because I can look back and be immediately disgusted with who I was. But Stills Disease killed. Trust me, it murdered plenty.
Ability to play sports: dead.
Ability to live my dream job: dead.
Ability to go to school: dead.
Ability to be independent: dead.
Ability to have friends and family be around me: dead.
Ability to live instead of survive: dead.
Ability to dream, to hope: dead.
One of the many thoughts that tortures me is that I have no real purpose in life, no way to aid or be a part of society. Nothing to do all day but get out of bed, take my meds, and then get back in bed. Those are my only goals: to not be hospitalized today. That’s it. And this fact kills parts of me and my spirit every moment of every day.
But what am I supposed to do? How can I want for anything if I can’t do anything. I mean, literally I can’t do anything. The constant physical pain, emotional pain, fatigue, lack of sleep—there is no way I can come up with something to strive for, to want for that I know I will be able to do. And so…and so I want for nothing.
I have NO IDEA what to do with my life, with my days, with my time. When I ask myself, “What do you want to do?” I have no answer. There is this dull blank ache. This complete emptiness. An endless void of nothing.
You know that feeling when you find/figure out/realize the thing you were born or made to do? Like sing. Be a doctor. Dance. Play sports. Teach. Coach. Paint or draw. Write. Mine was, Athletic Training (sports medicine). And I got to live my dream job for five and a half weeks before Stills Disease took it from me. Just long enough to get a taste, to know I was not only good at what I loved, but that I really did love it. It was the first time I was excited to learn. The first time I got to study what I wanted to study. It was perfect. And it’s gone.
And when I try to think of something that makes me feel as excited as Athletic Training did, the thing I look forward to doing the most, the thing I love doing the most…the only thing I can really think of is driving. To just drive around and see…well, “it”. Life. Earth.
It’s that one thing that becomes this…place. The place that feels like home. Like you are found. You are understood. You are joyous. You are content. You’re known and you belong. And you could do this one thing every day for the rest of your life, for the rest of time, and everything would finally make sense. Everything would…harmonize. You, God, Earth, your family, your friends—everything would finally fit—be the way it was made to be: complete. Whole. Full.
When we do what we were made to do, God is not only with us, but He is in us, and we are in Him. He is finally able to join us, untainted by our sin.
Our spark of Him, that is us, can finally be one in and with Him. Even if just for that one moment—that moment is a taste of what is to come: a taste of heaven.
God and heaven become tangible in that one little moment in time. In that one little moment it actually feels as if there is no sin.
I love and live for those moments because they are so rare and perfect. I thirst for them daily because I am so dry. And because we are human it feels as if nothing, no amount of these moments, will ever slake our thirst for Him.
But it is in these moments, when you do what you love, what you were made to do, that He fills our cup and allows us to drink deep. And I guess all I really want, is to make these moments my life.
And the only way I can think of doing that is to drive. To be with Him. To see this world He created to dazzle us, with Him. To be in and of the Earth that He created for us, and not on top of it. I just don’t know how I am supposed to do this when Stills Disease killed my ability to drive.
….melancholia.
No comments:
Post a Comment