A few years back, I fell completely and hopelessly in love with my bicycle. I even named it Baby Blue. Baby Blue and I would ride every day; my favorite route was riding to the Westlake Rec Center where there was a biking/walking path that took me past woods, soccer fields, and a duck pond. As I entered the rec center grounds, there was a large hill that was so much fun to ride down that it almost felt like I was flying. Sometimes, I would even laugh out loud as I whizzed down.
Flying downhill on Baby Blue, I could clearly see ahead and knew exactly where I was going. The path was clear and certain. My life was also clear and certain as I reveled in my roles as wife, mother and nurse. Coasting down that hill on Baby Blue, I knew exactly who I was and where my place was in God’s realm. And, it was during that time of having such clarity of purpose in my life that I began to have tingling and numbness in my right leg, and it wasn’t long after that that I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I was 39 years old.
It felt as though one minute I was riding downhill on Baby Blue laughing with the wind in my hair, and the next moment my tire had hit a large stone, causing me to crash and leaving me broken and bloodied. Getting that MS diagnosis absolutely gutted me, and I remember looking in the mirror and feeling confused. On the outside, I looked the same as always which seemed laughable; on the inside I felt like I had shattered into a million pieces. How, I wondered, could my brokenness not be visible? And, in my brokenness, the clarity of purpose I had in my life shattered as well. My life had gone from clear technicolor to gray haze.
The Relentless, Soul-Crushing Fatigue
In the beginning, my time was taken up by learning to live with my new physical reality. Although I didn’t look sick, my neurologist assured me that I had a moderate to large lesion load in my brain and spinal cord. Besides right-sided weakness, which caused me to drag my right foot when I was tired, my primary symptom was and still is fatigue - Oh, the relentless, life-sucking, soul-crushing fatigue.
But, over the years, I have adjusted my life in many ways so that I can actually have a life, and, although it took time to organize my life around the fatigue and weakness, it was the unseen feeling of brokenness that cut me to my core.
Shortly after 9/11, I watched a news program about suicide bombers, and they proceeded to wheel out a suicide bomber who actually lived through the blast. This man could no longer walk, and his hands were scarred and missing fingers. And, then there was his face. His face was so injured that it hardly looked human. I stared at this damaged disabled man and I thought…that’s me. That’s exactly how broken I felt on the inside, and I had absolutely no idea how to fix it. At that point, the purpose and meaning of my life completely shifted to trying to “fix” my feelings of brokenness. I was truly haunted by it, and I was stuck.
Feelings of Brokenness
Until I attended to these feelings of brokenness, I knew that my life could not move forward. The question was, how? How do you “fix” feeling broken? I spoke to a counselor as well as the many wise people in my life, to no avail. In the end, it was a retreat that changed everything.
At the time, I was a parish nurse for a local church, and I had organized a retreat with local hospice pastor Chuck Behrans. The retreat was humming right along when, as I was sitting in a semicircle with a dozen parishioners, Chuck proceeded to whip out a nice dinner plate and put it into a paper bag. He then took out a hammer. We all gasped. No! He wouldn’t just smash a perfectly good….bam, bam, bam! Down went the hammer on that paper bag with that very nice dinner plate tucked inside. He then picked up the bag and you could hear the broken pieces of the plate clinking together as they fell to the bottom. I just sat wide-eyed when he asked, “How in the world do you fix this brokenness?”
My hand shot up and with some desperation in my voice said, “Yes, how do you fix the brokenness?” Chuck just smiled serenely and said, “You can’t.” You can’t?! I almost let out a tiny moan of despair before Chuck said, “No, you can’t fix this plate, it’s far too broken.” He then put aside the paper bag holding the shattered plate and reached behind him. Suddenly a brand new plate appeared and Chuck said, “You must use a new plate. You must become new.”
Oh…… Of course, the answer was there all along. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
You Must Become New
I instantly felt a sense of relief. Of course, my MS had not gone anywhere. My lesion load and my symptoms of fatigue and weakness were also the same. So, what changed? What changed is that I had been reminded that at my essence, my soul was of God; it is and always will be intact and unblemished. In other words, my body has MS, but my soul does not.
That revelation helped me to process my MS in an entirely new way. Once I no longer felt broken, I was able to claim that my soul has and always will shine just like new with God’s light. I was finally able to look forward instead of staring into the abyss of my pain. And, as I allowed God’s Light to shine, it began to illuminate the path in front of me as I started to reimagine my life’s purpose as a person who has MS. Soon, I began to feel like I did flying downhill on Baby Blue, laughing with the wind in my hair, but also secure in the knowledge that I am and always will be a new creation!
To learn more about purpose and meaning for your like and how to begin preparing for retiring even prior to finishing your primary career, join us in person or online for the 2024 Abundant Aging Symposium, Purpose, Meaning and Redefining Retirement on October 4th. Discounts on registration before September 9th.
For Reflection (either individually or with a group)
Read the blog. Read it a second time, maybe reading it aloud or asking someone else to read it aloud so you can hear it with different intonation and emphases. Invite the Divine to open your heart to allow the light of new understanding to pierce the shadows of embedded assumptions, stereotypes, and ways of thinking so that you may live more abundantly. Then spend some time with the following questions together with anything or anyone who helps you reflect more deeply.
Download a pdf including the Reflection Questions to share and discuss with friends, family, or members of your faith community small group.