A new year has arrived, and my scheduled appointment for an MRI with it. I believe the saying is “a picture is worth a thousand words.” So while most of the year, I can manage symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis well enough to ignore the reality that I live with a progressive disease, an MRI forces me to look at the pictures and face a thousand words I do not want to read.
An MRI reminds me that I live with a progressive disease, and managing symptoms does not equate to a lack of progression. It reminds me that I can not write this part of my story. I can do a thousand things correctly but not change the course of my disease progression.
It was winter when I first learned of this disease living inside my body. So, winter feels the appropriate season to have scabbed over wounds reopened, to find the grief that still lingers, and to face a thousand words I would rather not.
In facing the lingering grief, I find myself continuing to learn how to live well with the reality of what is instead of the reality I imagined.
Joy Marker
While winter invites me to rest and create space for celebration, it also encourages me to prune and cultivate in preparation for spring. And can I be honest? I am not very good at pruning and only marginally better at cultivating. Yet, this journey with chronic illness and being forced to read the MRI story teaches me that pruning and cultivating are of utmost importance.
When faced with an obstacle, my natural instinct is to figure out how to climb it, get around it, or move it. But I find myself holding a question these days. What if living with MS is not an obstacle to overcome but a limitation to embrace?
The reality is every one of us lives with limitations – limitations of time, energy, financial resources, physical and emotional capacity. Our limitations exist regardless of age, economic status, or gender. Yet, instead of accepting limitations, most of us spend a lifetime proving to ourselves and others that limitations do not confine us. Over and over, we spend more time, more money, and more emotional energy than we have to give.
What if we embraced our limitations, intentionally pruning and cultivating with the respect to our limitations? I can’t help but wonder if pruning within our constraints would open space to see beauty where it has previously been unseen?
“What if the good life has nothing to do with what we try to control, but everything to do with God’s small invitation to name our limits, feel our humanity, and hide ourselves in him?”
Ashley Hales (A Spacious Life)
It is that time of year when spring begins to pop in on occasion, reminding us that it is living just around the corner. Early signs of spring easily tempt us with an invitation towards new growth. Yet, let us not rush too quickly in spring’s direction; we might still have work to be done in this winter season.
Perhaps we need to allow ourselves time to sit with the picture of the life that is, not the image we wish to hold. We might need to ask if, in our pruning, we have considered the limitations of our current life stage, physical and emotional capacity to ensure that enough pruning has been done, to allow for healthy growth come spring?
Embracing our limitations, pruning the excess that keeps us living beyond our limitations is only part of finishing this winter season well. We must also consider the cultivation required for healthy growth in spring. Our limitations do not only require us to ask what we carry that we should not, but what we are not carrying that perhaps we should.
Cultivation with our limitations in mind invites us to consider. What nourishment does my body need? How might I stimulate my mind? Is my soul lacking something? Even, when did I last do something just for fun?
As we finish out this season of winter, may we see our limitations not as obstacles to overcome but as an invitation to feel our humanity, release that which is not ours to carry, and find rest with our friend Jesus.
If you are looking to trade hustle and hurry for the goodness of limits, A Spacious Life, by Ashley Hales is a great book to take with you on that journey.
