{"id":922,"date":"2014-05-28T18:55:01","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T23:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jenniferfitz\/?p=922"},"modified":"2015-08-11T17:55:25","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T22:55:25","slug":"i-got-my-life-back-and-similar-nonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jenniferfitz\/2014\/05\/i-got-my-life-back-and-similar-nonsense\/","title":{"rendered":"“I Got My Life Back!” And Similar Nonsense"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

At this writing, I am the poster child for Better Living Through Chemistry. \u00a0If we were to rely on a drug-ad cliche to sum up the post-prescription transformation, one might reach for the old reliable, \u201cI got my life back!\u201d<\/p>\n

And that would be nonsense.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not ungrateful, I\u2019m tremendously grateful. \u00a0I\u2019m thoroughly enjoying this dramatic change in circumstance. \u00a0I certainly don\u2019t mean to squash the happiness of anyone who\u2019s experienced some similar reprieve. \u00a0Nor would I ever dismiss the genuine suffering \u2014 far greater than anything I\u2019ve experienced \u2014 that others endure with no such relief.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s what: My life has been here all along.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t go anywhere when I was at my sickest. \u00a0I was living my life. \u00a0And don\u2019t understand me to mean, \u201cI was finding happiness in small things!\u201d or \u201cI realized that time with my children was such a treasure!\u201d \u00a0Oh please. \u00a0I\u2019ve always been easily amused, and I have the bunny ears to prove it. \u00a0I wouldn\u2019t choose to spend all day every day with my children if I hadn\u2019t treasured them from the get-go.*<\/p>\n

My life is bigger than a collection of accomplishments and abilities and happy moments. \u00a0Laying very still in a big machine in a cold room, praying abbreviated rosaries to pass the time because I can\u2019t keep track of ten Hail Mary\u2019s without beads or fingers, \u00a0but I can keep track of three? \u00a0That\u2019s my life. \u00a0Part of it, anyhow. \u00a0Doing routine tasks with no music, no singing, because I needed every ounce of concentration to get the work done? \u00a0Life. \u00a0My life. \u00a0Walking oh-so-slowly 1\/16th of a mile around the indoor walking track because the little girls want to go run during their sister\u2019s volleyball practice, but no going up on the track without an adult? \u00a0Mine. \u00a0All mine.<\/p>\n

When you divide your life into the parts that you\u2019ll claim ownership to and the parts that you reject, you steal from yourself. \u00a0You miss out on a chance to be everything that you could be. \u00a0Some of the parts no sane man would choose, but there they are, unchosen but endowed all the same. \u00a0Are you going to live them, or are you going to waste them?<\/p>\n

Bigger on the Inside than the Outside<\/h3>\n

It matters because we are formed by what we do and what we choose. \u00a0Given our fallen world, what our bodies do reflects our inner lives imperfectly. \u00a0The effort to pray, poorly, comes out like so much failure when your body is not cooperating. The effort to work, to think, to love, all of it looks like so much worthlessness. \u00a0And then one day \u2014 in this life or the next \u2014 suddenly your body behaves itself, and you discover your soul was growing stronger through all that effort. \u00a0Effort that seemed, like walking uphill on a too-fast treadmill, to be getting you nowhere but miserable.<\/p>\n

The paradox of redemption is that every good is to be sought, but no evil is to be wasted. \u00a0We work, diligently, for what is good. For healing. For an end to poverty. \u00a0For peace. For the good of souls everywhere. \u00a0We become more like Christ the more we work for that good. \u00a0And yet, like Christ, an integral part of our life on earth is making even the evil be good.<\/p>\n

\"File:Detail<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

*No aspersions being cast on parents who find their children are best treasured as they get on and off the school bus. \u00a0Lots of ways to treasure those darlings. \u00a0Mine do well at home. \u00a0Except when they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Artwork by Adam Jones, Ph.D. (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>], via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this writing, I am the poster child for Better Living Through Chemistry. \u00a0If we were to rely on a drug-ad cliche to sum up the post-prescription transformation, one might reach for the old reliable, \u201cI got my life back!\u201d And that would be nonsense. I\u2019m not ungrateful, I\u2019m tremendously grateful. \u00a0I\u2019m thoroughly enjoying this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[205,6,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disability-chronic-illness","category-stick-that-corner","category-suffering"],"yoast_head":"\n"I Got My Life Back!" 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