Even If

In the past few months, I’ve had to adjust and readjust my plans to stay abreast the seemingly never-ending waves of change. I’ve been treading water, ever aware of the fragility of my health, my plans, my relationships, and everything in between. I’ve been afraid that if I let something slip, that if I went under a wave, I may never resurface. It’s a hackneyed metaphor, I know, but it’s sadly accurate of how I’ve often felt this past semester: drowning.

After my fall semester of intensive antibiotics, yoga, and prayer, I felt prepared enough to re-enter Vanderbilt and hopefully even graduate on time. I planned to continue improving while living at school, take an internship for credit over the summer, and pretend like Lyme was nothing more than a season of rest and learning. I often do this thing where I create a storyline for my life as it’s forming, as if I was the author and could manipulate my life to fall into the lines that I’ve written. You’d think I’d have learned by now. At the ripe age of 22, my life plans have already changed an absurd amount of times. But here we are again, realizing that my authorship is a facade, a flimsy one at that. But mainly I’m learning and relearning that it’s better this way; I don’t actually want to be in control of my life. If I truly believe in a God who is all-knowing and all-powerful, why in the world would I ever try to take control?

So anyways, here’s the big changes: as opposed to continuing to heal this semester, I’ve actually been on a downward trend that has recently become unavoidably debilitating. After spending over a week in bed, each day blinded by my optimism that the next day would be better, only to realize it wasn’t, I eventually had to face reality and acknowledge that I’m very sick. I went back to the doctor, found out that my mono has resurfaced (I call it “mine” because I almost feel like he’s a pal at this point, always there below the surface). I’ve been SO tired that I’ve skipped just about everything: class, social events, meetings etc. I always wait until the last minute to cancel, just to make sure that I won’t have an impromptu revival. It hasn’t happened yet. After my visit to the doctor, in which we created a whole new medication regimen to address the mono and Lyme, I decided to move back home and finish the semester by commuting to class. I also forewent my internship for the summer, cancelling at the last minute, accepting that I will now need at least an extra semester after the rest of my class graduates. I’ve even reconciled myself to the idea that I may actually take off the fall semester too; I want to take the time to fully heal, hopefully avoiding an endless cycle of temporary relief followed by a dramatic slide back into sickness.

In the midst of all this, I’ve been trying to dream up what I’ll do, how I’ll make it all fit into my new plans. Finally, (finally!) I’ve decided to let it go. My authorship. It was never mine anyways. Sure, I control my thoughts and reactions (although even those are occasionally hijacked by Lyme symptoms of foreign voices and over-reactive mood swings). But even if I could perfectly control my body and mind, I can never control circumstances. I’ve had enough of planning, only to realize that it won’t work out, leaving me frustrated and tired. So here’s the new plan: trust that God is enough, and follow that trust wherever it takes me. Maybe I won’t graduate until I’m 25. Maybe I’ll never graduate (sorry, Dad). But I’ve decided that I want to be marked by relentless faith and contentment, even in the midst of chaos. I keep thinking about “worst case scenarios” of Lyme and healing and so forth, just to prepare myself for the possibilities. I genuinely believe that I’ll get better. I really do. But even if I don’t, even if I spend the rest of my life as a shadow of the person I used to be, plagued by pain and fatigue, I will still trust God. I will still believe that He is enough, that my life could be so much worse, that I have AMAZING family and friends, that there is more than this physical world, that hedonistic “happiness” is not the destination. There are many things that can only be appreciated and grasped in the midst of suffering. While there’s no need to masochistically seek pain, we also don’t have to flee from it and close our ears to the lessons it may whisper. So that’s what I’ll try to do: learn from the pain and trust that God has a plan infinitely better than whatever I’ve conjured up. I’ll leave with this verse that I’ve had hanging on my mirror recently:

“The Lord foils the plans of the nations; He thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of His heart through all generations” -Psalms 33:10-11

I have no idea what the purposes or plans of the Lord are, but I’m going to trust they’re pretty dang good and cling on to that as I continue to let Him lead me.