On the Other Side

Hello and welcome, I’m so glad you stopped by! We’ve all experienced difficult seasons in our lives. Seasons when we are living in the moment, we think, how am I ever going to get through this? It’s unbearable. There is just no way! Then somehow, we get to the other side of that difficult season and look back on it, sometimes in awe that we were able to survive. It boggles the mind.

For those of you who are new around here, I live with a rare form of Muscular Dystrophy that took 44 years to finally diagnose. I have always been affected and suffered from muscle weakness and difficulty walking since I first started walking, but only have had a name for my disability for about 4 years now. During those 44 years I was consumed, as anyone would be, with finding answers for what caused my weakness and physical difficulties. 

Getting to the other side of that search, I have had some time to reflect on that time in my life of limbo and so much uncertainty. At times the pain and frustration of not knowing would consume me, and no one around me truly understood my emotional struggle. It was difficult in many different ways for my whole family. 

Now that I’ve reached the other side, I often find myself reflecting on what those 44 years taught me. I really, wholeheartedly, believe that was exactly how my story was supposed to go. It was all part of my life’s plan. I think about it a lot actually. There is so much to reflect on and see from this new perspective. 

Marathon training has been a part of new beginnings 💚

The kindness of others during that time is something that keeps surfacing in my mind, and recently memories of hair washing of all things! Hear me out. I would spend a week or maybe a little longer in the hospital after each of my many surgeries. I always came out of surgery with a cast sometimes on both legs. I wasn’t able to get out of my bed to shower, or do other things until I would be a few days into my recovery, plus I couldn’t get my casts wet so it made showering and bathing tricky. One of the things my mom would do for me, along with the nurses, was to find a way to wash my hair because that just makes everything feel better, right?! So, they would maneuver me to where my head would hang off the edge of the bed and they would wash my hair over a small bucket of water. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. Once, after I came home and was recovering when I was a teenager, my mom had to be out of town. My sweet Aunt volunteered to come over and wash my hair for me, while also maintaining my privacy and dignity that was at risk when needing help with bathing. Now, I look back on these moments as such beautiful acts of kindness. People holding me up, helping me through. That’s how I got through it.

Along the same lines of my hospital stays, another memory is that every time I would be in the hospital, my classmates would make me cards and send get well wishes. “Get well soon, we miss you!” I loved receiving those messages from my classmates. It gave me something to look forward to when I would be away from my peers. It helped me feel like I wasn’t missing out as much. It was kindness. When I would return to school, the big thing was that they would all take turns signing my casts. I loved that!

I could go on about how other’s kindness touched and shaped my life over those 44 years when I was in the thick of uncertainty. How blessed I was that I was never truly alone. I didn’t appreciate it enough in the moment, as is frequently the case in life. We are too caught up in other details to really appreciate what is happening around us, for us. 

So many people in my life helped me develop my humble courage. They didn’t have answers for me, but they helped me walk through those years. So many different time periods and examples of how other people lifted me up over and over again. Now that I’m on the other side, I strive to be that person for others who are in the tough seasons of their life when things feel hopeless, scary or frustrating. 

As I’ve shared my story through this blog I have a steady stream of people who reach out to me and tell me I’m helping them by sharing my story. That makes me so happy, and I feel like I am finally living as I was created to be, but really I always have been. It just didn’t always look the way I thought it should. 

On the other side of the search, it’s not that things aren’t still difficult. They are. I live with a progressive muscle disease. It’s not easy and things aren’t always great. However, being able to look at things on the other side of that difficult season of searching has truly changed things for me. I’m so grateful for this viewpoint, and for all the kindness shown to me along the way. 💚