New Body

I kept feeling like I should write this post, but I didn't want to. I didn't want to share this. Or admit to it. Or accept it. Or be it.

But I'm ready now.

I've viewed my illness as a detour from the life I'm supposed to get back to any time now. A set back. A frontage road running along my favored course. Sometime, it will merge, right?

Because when you get sick and you're barely in your twenties, you get better, right? Your prime is still ahead, right? Your body is confused or having a meltdown, but it will get back with the program because it's young, right?

Do I have to answer that question?

I finished Ann Romney's book, In This Together. It tells her story of having MS. I dog-eared the pages that touched me, where she articulated my feelings about having a debilitating chronic illness so well. The beginning third of the book impressed me the most. Here, I directly quote what she said, because after four drafts, I still can't do a fair job of summarizing. 

A friend of a friend who was a few years ahead of Ann in her own MS journey offered Ann counsel over the phone. 

"'You've basically moved into a new body,' she began. 'The things you took for granted before are no longer true anymore, and it's your job to take care of this new body. You have to listen to it and pay more attention to it than you're used to doing, and you have to understand and accept the fact that you have limitations...People are going to try to push you a little, because you don't look any differently to them...the people who love you most have to understand that you're not who you were before and can't do the same things...Learn your limitations,' she said."

A new body. Limitations. No going back. Neat. 

I mean, obviously, we get new bodies through life. Think toddler bodies vs. school-aged bodies, pre-pubescent bodies vs. post-pubescent bodies, newlywed bodies vs. elderly bodies, and all the many bodies in between, like athletic, post surgical, and menopausal.

But ill bodies, if expected at all, are not expected until the late, late years. This is why it's so shocking and tragic when illness touches someone at a younger age. It doesn't seem right.  

I certainly didn't expect illness. I went to university on a dance scholarship and had a powerful, lithe body. I had a baby as I graduated with my bachelors degree and hoped for at LEAST nine more. 

I remember the alarm and devastation of living in my recovering, post-birth body and wondering if I could never be put back together again. I cried, "I'm leaking from almost every oriface all at once! Motherhood has broken my body!"

I recovered quickly to a new normal, yet I was a bit altered. I still danced--muscle memory is a gift. But my perfect ballet abdominals were sacrificed for my baby. Every "improvement" to my post-birth body was a reminder that the heavens opened and two of the brightest souls in the universe came into the world via my little mortal frame.

But illness? Illness. 

I haven't been able to figure illness out. It's stuck to me. I can't shake it because it's my new body. 

It's going to take some time to swallow. I've always wanted to be the tough girl who helps put up chairs after church, the dainty girl who clears the plates after dinner, the tough mother who lifts a turkey in and out of the oven with sinewy arms glistening from the heat of the kitchen. I've wanted to kick box and shoot hoops and run half marathons. I've wanted to rearrange furniture and clean the house by myself, run kids to school and activities, handle the finances and be my husband's business sidekick, be the mom who swims with her kids and takes them to a new park every week. And I wanted to have a baby attached to me in some way at all times. 

But thank goodness that Heavenly Father has changed my heart and made me content without all that. 

My doctor says I should focus on what I CAN do and not on what I CAN'T do. I heard that again about three times during General Conference last week. 

It seems that since my abilities have changed SO MUCH, I need to find new purpose. I need to build a new life. It's super intimidating. My old plan was pretty cool. 

I can't make babies, can't scurry around as a nurse, can't handle play dates or loud groups of little people. Can't bake bread, afford more schooling, beautify my home, grocery shop, or pull in a paycheck just now. 

I can do personal daily worship, love my husband, teach my children, read, write, crochet, do a little family history work (it stresses me out), read to my children, talk to them for long periods of time, do family home evening, scripture study, family prayers, plan the menu, start simple dinners, carry out a very low-key calling, be available to my husband and children, make our home smell nice...

And miraculously, Heavenly Father allows me to feel well enough to go to church and partake of the Sacrament every Sunday. This is truly a miracle to me. 

But anyway, as far as comments like:

"Hope you feel better soon." 

"Maybe tomorrow will be better." 

"You should be good after this treatment, right?" 

I'm not offended, and I do have an answer. 

Probably no. 

I have a new body. It has problems. But it is still good for something.