Decisions ... all but my life

When it rains, it pours. I used to be the eternal optimist but honestly? I'm having a hard time with that right now.

I'm still mourning my beloved grandmother. I'm learning how to cope with this new thing called fibromyalgia, learning how to manage it along with my preexisting diseases. I'm trudging through the 2nd semester wherein my abilities are blatantly smothered by my inabilities.

I'm aching to live the life someone my age should be living. I'm so excited for all of my friends who are living "that life" - the life most young 20-somethings should be living. It's almost time to finish school, start a career, get married, begin a family.... yet I'm a million miles from there. One of the hardest things is watching my nurse friends graduate and live the life I've fought for so hard. Don't get me wrong, I'm not jealous or unhappy for them. In fact, I'm probably more excited and proud than most of them even are. I just wish something could go "right" for once in a long while. I am supposed to be doing what they're doing this very moment. I'm supposed to be performing codes and saving lives on helicopters. I'm supposed to be passing meds and showing off my IV insertion skills. I'm supposed to be landing a fabulous job and thinking about where I will go for my masters and in which field and position of nursing I ultimately want to land. And my non-nurse friends? Well, they're getting married and beginning their families...

What's ironic is all of those things are just barely out of my reach. My illnesses are hidden, my heart is taken yet I cannot get married, my undergraduate education - though nearly finished - is all but at a standstill... It's so cruel that all of these things are so close, yet so far away.

Each new day, I watch the world keep on turning through my tear-filled, jaded eyes. Then, at the close - without fail - is a sleepless night of just trying to figure out how to proceed from here.

I've begun my 16th year of coping with this liver disease and let me tell you, I've about had it. Every few months, it seems that something else in my body goes dramatically wrong, and each day, I spend literal hours managing the "business" side of the healthcare mess surrounding me. (Fighting with insurance, coordinating appointments, appealing coverage denials, getting referrals, calling for test results...) It's seems it's all I do - be sick and manage my sickness - and that in itself is frustrating.

More recently, and most importantly, I've been thrust to the edge of some huge decisions that will directly impact the feasibility of my impending marriage, my family's emotional and financial stability, and pretty much just about every hope and dream I've ever had... Yes, decisions that huge. Decisions... dreams... questions. So many heavy questions and threatened dreams just resting on decisions. It seems all the paths are blocked, dark, or foggy. And nothing makes sense. Like how I'm barely floating through school when I really just want to change the world ... why love is the strongest thing in the world yet it's not enough to give us the life together we so desperately need ... whether or not we will ever have children, let alone children of our own.

Questions weighing heavily, dependant on a few huge, huge choices in the palm of my hand. How to proceed? Do I stop or go? Start now or wait a while? I'm in over my head in questions that do not have right or wrong answers, questions that I - albeit humbly - venture to say the majority of you will never ever even ponder once during your lives. Questions that mean more than life and death, questions that define the true essence of joy. The joy of the Lord is our strength, right? Well what about when there is no joy? Where's the strength with which to fight the battle? He promised He won't ask us to deal with more than we can take, and that's all I have to hold onto at this present moment. I should probably just be content knowing what a strong fighter God must think I am to entrust me with such huge, heavy things.... because He thinks I can handle it? According to the promise, yes. But seriously? Sometimes I wonder if He's sure about this. But come on people... this is the God of the universe. He knows what He's doing.

Even when we don't.

Right?

Yes.

So for all of you fighting right now, my heart goes out to you, and for those of you who are thriving, be thankful for every. little. thing. Pray for those who don't have but the thinnest thread of hope left. Get strong for when your hard times come. Pray for those who don't know a life without seriously huge, hard things. Pray for those who have lost not only their bearings but all but their very lives. Pray for those who can't see past some hard, looming decisions resting on unanswerable questions. Pray for those who have to make a choice or two that could potentially and drastically alter the courses of their already broken lives