Humility is Strength

Beautiful Back Home...It's a long and winding road...

Asking and needing help is a humbling experience.  My doctor once said to me you are the most competent sick person I know...and as I read blogs and articles of others with this illness it is the great irony; extremely competent successful people stuck in a body that obeys no rules, follows no logical path and has you guessing at every turn.  Unpredictable.  I need predictable to feel safe.  But more than anything I want to be happy and strong.  And if I can't obtain strength physically, I need to work harder finding mental strength, which is difficult with an illness that often makes my pretty smart brain have difficulty reading a complex novel...thus I ended up reading Fifty Shades of Boring.  No disrespect E.L. James, but you are smarter than your books.  But you are smarter than all for figuring out how to sell books.  But I digress, the point is I spend a lot of time beating myself up for this illness and am I doing the right thing, the right treatments, and my mind can go off into a million tangents of possible solutions.  The thing is you can't look at a chronic illness day by day or you will go crazy.  I need to start looking at the totality of the illness.  And these are the facts...

1. Three years ago I barely got out of bed.
2. Two years ago I started treatments that only included hydro-therpy because I was too sick to handle anything else.
3. Last year I committed to much longer time frame in Phoenix and when I came home I played tennis
4. This year I am in Phoenix mostly by myself, driving myself to appointments when I can, not giving a damn how many veins are poked, blood is taken, stronger...I am stronger...despite Saturday not being able to move..that was Saturday.

So like all of us there are times to beat ourselves up for not doing our best and times to look at our lives in a totality and decide, no I have made progress and instead pick ourselves up.  And if we can't pick ourselves up, humbly ask for help.  You will be surprised what happens when you begin to reach out and say I can't do this alone, I need your help, I need your love, I need your shoulders.  People will surprise you and you will begin to surprise yourself.