No Pain No Gain
“If I don’t have red, I use blue.” ~Pablo Picasso
~Would I trade it all for my health back? Caramba! I have been asking myself that a lot lately. Not just asking myself but struggling with the answer. I mean, how in the world could I have a definitive decision about this strange twist of my fate? Would I say goodbye to all the lessons of faith I have been taught because of lupus or is it possible God would have taught them to me another way…Did I have to get sick to learn the depths of sorrow attached to the magnitude of grace and survival?
~It’s not like life was ever especially easy but I did have my health. I had the ability to run away from myself. From overthinking. From things I didn’t want to see. Things I didn’t want to remember. Things I didn’t want to feel. Now, time is my enemy. That’s how I feel anyway because I feel like I don’t have much of it left. I feel exposed. Veins look blue until they are cut open. Then that beautiful crimson red looks deadly even if it looks beautiful. Perspective I guess. Pain changes everything. I see red, not blue.
~I remember when I was saved. The naive joy. I call it that because life hadn’t tinted my color vision yet. I thought being a Christian would make my life easy. Perhaps that is the lesson. Nothing worth its color is going to be without agony. What comes up must come down. All those colorless comparisons that say basically life is going to twist you apart and ring you up to dry. And what a world we live in. None of us leave it unscathed.
~I have to be honest with myself. Having a disease that there is no cure for, that destroys me a little more every second does mess with my mind. But, another honest point is that I have been extremely blessed to have others that understand. When another beautiful human reaches out to me and tells me they understand because they suffer as well…I am completely and forever humbled by them. It is a bond that is unbreakable to me. That road where the colors come alive again because someone gets me.
~Perhaps, I will see shades of blue…again.
