Fading by Degrees

Looking around at the faces in my coming and going these days, it hits me that the majority did not know me before I was sick. The me that they know has always been the me that needs help, that is in and out of the hospital, and navigating much of life from bed or a wheelchair. That makes me sad. I miss my strength.

I wish all my people could know the strong me that could hike a steep mountain trail. The me that loved to do all the creative Pinterest things with and for my little people. The me that was social, driven, confident, and strong.

It has been a gradual and subtle loss. The landscape of life being destroyed slowly, one square inch at a time. Suffering lingers on and on, and pain wears me down like friction wears down metal. On the best days, little inconveniences, like having to drag a stool into the shower to sit remind me that I’m sick. On the worse days I don’t make it out of bed; strapped to a ventilator and dependent on someone else to wake me round the clock to swallow the pills that give me some semblance of comfort.

I have no idea what is going to happen over the next 3 months, or even the next 3 weeks. It looms over me, casting an ominous shadow over my entire world. No matter what I am doing it is always taking up a portion of my thoughts. Yet I push it away, determined to suck every grace drop and dribble of joy from my moments.

In the sleepless dark hours I wonder over the future of my husband and my little people. I pray the loss of me will not stifle them. I replay the losses we have already been through. I weigh the scars that have already been created, and I hope that these new ones will heal too. I compare the losses and try to estimate the outcome based on what we have been through. Anyone might agree this is a waste of my time.

Loss is loss, whatever the circumstances. All losses are bad, only bad in different ways. No two losses are ever the same. Each stands on its own and inflicts a unique kind of pain. We tend to quantify and compare suffering and loss. So, I shift my thinking and pray that meaning can be gained by this suffering, and that we can all grow through it.

I pray that the scars tell a story that changes lives for the better and points to the God of my salvation who has carried me through every hard step. I pray that louder than the story of devastation, people hear the story of grace woven through it; how each time I met the end of me I was met with the grace to fight a little more, to grasp hold of more moments, and to turn broken into beautiful.

I echo my friend who was dying of terminal cancer when I say, “I feel like a little girl whose daddy has come early to pick her up from a party. I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to go.” I want to be here for the mundane afternoons after school; racing through homework to get to indulge in the better parts of the day. I want to be here for the sending off of each of our birdies… sending them soaring in the directions of their dreams and always having a soft-landing place back home when they need it. I want to be here for the blush-faced budding relationships, and the promises and the ceremonies and the rings. I want to get to be Grandma Nanny, with long grey hair and crinkly smile lines, rocking my grand babes to sleep.

A slow stripping of my pride and my dignity leaves me vulnerable and weary. The people I meet now have to take me as I am, with the understanding I may not have much to give back. This changes the landscape of my relationships, because those saints willing to walk into my mess with little promise of gleaning anything for themselves out of it are few and far between.

Still, here I am— hands open, life open, ready to embrace any who are brave enough to walk this life with me. And the times when my invitation is met with the sound of crickets, I know I am held and I am kept in perfect peace in the arms of my Abba Father, who takes me as I am- all my pieces-and traverses this bumpy, winding road alongside me. I have never been alone, in my strength or in my fading.