Date Ideas for Someday...

1. Scrabble, chess, and board games at a coffee shop
2. Walking around San Juan Capistrano's Old Barn Antique Mall with drinks from the corner Starbucks
3. Disneyland
4. An independent film at UCI's movie theater, followed by snacks and browsing in the plaza
5. An at-home round of "Would You Rather?" or some other discussion-based game
6. Hiking and bird-watching, complete with binoculars and guidebooks
7. Music, journals, art, and people-watching at Pines Park

The Day My Thyroid Was Removed, Part II

To read Part I, click here.

I woke up gasping.  It felt impossibly difficult to swallow air into my lungs.  I was disoriented.  I started crying.  I tried to rub my eyes, but a pulse monitor on my finger and various tubes got in the way.  I started asking for water as I wept.  "Water.  Can I have some water?"

I heard a male voice tell me to stop rubbing my eyes.  It was my nurse.  He said he was going to have to call an ophthalmologist if I didn't leave my eyes alone.  I began asking for my parents.  "Where are my parents?"  My parents were called to my bed.  The nurse offered me ice.

My bed was in a rectangular room with many other beds.  All of the beds were situated around the perimeter of the space, and a work area for nurses was like an island in the center of the room.  My bed was at the back left.

When my parents came in, they called my brother at home.  He sent my mom a picture of Tobin on her iPad.  When she held up the picture, I started crying again.  Then my mom handed me the phone so I could talk to Tobin.  Through tears, I said, "Hi, honey!  It's me!"  I started babbling to my parents about how I wanted Tobin "right here," and motioned towards a spot on my bed.  I was in and out of sleep, as was my dad (possibly my mom, too, but I didn't notice).  I had a pack of ice on my neck.  My mom took a picture of me to post on Facebook.

After the initial offer to chew on ice, I was eventually given water, and then apple juice.  The nurse told me that this was to make sure the anesthesia wasn't causing any nausea.  At some point I was escorted to the restroom.  I had to urinate into a pan so the amount could be measured.  I walked back and forth from my bed in a gown that may or may not have been open on every side (cancer and major surgery certainly take away any sense of modesty or embarrassment).

Eventually I was transferred from one post-op room to another.  I think they transported me in a wheelchair.  I was then assigned a new nurse in this new room.  This room had more privacy; instead of curtains on three sides, there was only one curtain.  The anesthesia slowly wore off.  My new nurse ordered me the "broth plate" (broth, Jell-o, applesauce, orange juice--I think) from the hospital cafeteria.  I told her about my dietary restrictions, so she went out of her way to ensure that my plate was gluten-, dairy-, and soy-free.

My mom let me fiddle with her iPad.  I went to the bathroom again without assistance.  I read my library book.  My parents eventually went back to their hotel to rest and get some food.  I continued to read.  A male nurse came in and asked what my book was about (hoarding), and we had a brief conversation.  My surgeon came to visit me.  I was jubilant to see him (he's become some kind of major hero in my mind).  He told me that since I seemed to be recovering so well, I could eat solid food.

The nurse ordered my dinner plate, again noting to the chef my particular dietary restrictions.  I ended up getting roasted chicken, green beans, and fingerling potatoes (it was just about as delicious-tasting to me as a meal could possibly be).  My parents came back at some point either right before or during my meal.

I wore some kind of compression devices on my legs to prevent blood clots.  They began to make my legs sore, so the nurse turned them off.  Around 9PM, it was finally time for me to be transferred to the overnight room.  They wheeled me through what felt like multiple buildings, until we reached my home for the night.  I was given my own room with a sliding glass door and restroom.  I was given a controller with buttons for the bed, light, and nurse.

After the switch, my parents left for the evening.  I had a chance to wash up for the first time since before my surgery that morning.  I discovered that I had yellow streaks running across my neck and cheek from the pre-operation cleaning (I thought this was some kind of iodine, but I don't actually know what they use to clean the skin).  Every time I got up to go to the bathroom, I had to page the nurse so she could come in and unhook all the monitors connected to my body.  That also meant re-attaching them every time as well!

I settled back into my bed.  I stayed up for a while and read my library book, and I think the nurse may have brought more Jell-o and apple juice at various times.  I was also given painkillers regularly.  With every nurse switch, I was asked about my allergies to medications.  Every. Single. Time.

I was given thyroid hormone for the first time that night, even though I'm normally supposed to take it in the morning.  I mentioned this to my nurse, but she told me it was part of her orders.  She and I also had a conversation about her friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer.  The nurse told me I was an encouragement and inspiration--even though I really don't think I qualify for either of those titles!

I finally faded off to sleep, hearing the sounds of the nurses talking quietly at their long desk outside my room.  I woke up around 7AM.  One of the nurses came in to tell me that my doctor would be visiting soon.  Shortly afterward, the team of residents who assisted with my surgery came to visit me.  There were at least six of them.  Only one spoke directly to me.  They all had enormous smiles and looked so eager and excited.  The resident asked me some questions, and then asked if I had any.  I asked about when to take my next dose of thyroid hormone, when I could go back to the gym, and possibly when I could put cream on my scar (I can't remember if I had any other questions).

My surgeon eventually came to visit me as well.  I re-asked the same questions I posed to the resident.  Eventually the hospital began the discharge process.  I can't remember if my mom and I talked on the phone or if we had planned the day before what time she and my dad would come to the hospital.  While I was waiting for them to arrive, I had a chance to wash my face and brush my teeth again, and I changed into the clothes I had worn on the way to the hospital.  I somehow managed to get my hair into a ponytail.

Unfortunately, the nurses had lost my paperwork, so my parents and I had to wait around in my room while the staff scrambled to get me out of there.  I started to feel pain, so the nurse gave me more painkillers.  They had to scan my wristband every time they gave me any kind of medicine.

I was finally officially released.  My mom went to the pharmacy while my dad went to bring the car to the front of the hospital.  The nurse wheeled me out of the building, and someone helped with getting my bags into my dad's car.  My mom called to say the prescription wasn't ready yet, so my dad and I waited.  Finally, the medicine was ready, so my dad slowly drove the car over to the entrance that led to the pharmacy, and we were off.

I don't remember much of the drive home, or even what I did once I was home.  I do remember needing my dad to help me lay my head down (he had to hold my head up while I laid the rest of my body down because I had no use of my neck muscles).  I also remember not being able to tilt my head up or down while sitting or standing.  I had to put a pillow behind my back when I sat at the kitchen table; otherwise, I was in too much pain from having to overuse my head and neck while eating.

The rest of the day is not really in my memory.  I don't know if this is from the anesthesia or painkillers, or simply because I was sleeping and the day was uneventful.  Technically, this was the day after my thyroid was removed, so I guess it doesn't hold as much gravity for me.

I am grateful to all of the staff who accommodated my needs and offered me exceptional care.  I felt like I was in capable hands during my entire time at the hospital, and I am glad that this day seems like such a distant memory.  I am proud to be a cancer survivor, and the roles of the various medical personnel who made that reality possible will never be forgotten by me.

I am a survivor.

That moment when you remember how your professors radically changed your life...

That moment when you're reminded of the vision you held for your future...

That moment when you realize you're a survivor.

Today is the 16-week anniversary of my total thyroidectomy, and thus my 112th day of being cancer-free.  These anniversaries are largely non-monumentous.  Every few weeks, I take a photo of my scar and post it on Facebook with a caption about which anniversary I've reached.  The photos always garner "likes" and comments, and they're a small and simple way for me to celebrate.  I have also been turning these photos into "covers" for my Facebook profile, after I add to them the statement "I am a survivor."

The fact that I'm a survivor has been a conscious reality since the day I was diagnosed with cancer.  But I have given the title (survivor) little meaningful thought in the past few weeks.  I don't know that I really considered what the word meant beyond the fact that it made a statement about my having battled cancer.  However, something in me shifted tonight as I read those words.

I've been struggling a lot lately with trying to figure out the future.  I realize that working in retail is unsatisfying and impractical for the long-haul.  I want to contribute something to the greater good of mankind--research, teaching, love.  I want to make a difference in the world.  As an INFJ, my heartstrings are always pulled in so many directions.  I read an article recently that said that career options for INFJs are always simultaneously exciting and heartbreaking.  As idealists, the world of possibility is thrilling and produces in us all sorts of fantasies about the future.  However, all of those possibilities are also crippling, because we come to realize that to pursue one pathway is to sacrifice another.  We can't do everything.  And so at once none of the options are appealing any longer because we can't do all of them in one self-designed career (wouldn't that be nice?).  It's frustrating.

So, I've been dealing with all of that INFJ confusion--the appeal and drawbacks of every job out there.  Add on top of this the fact that INFJs often feel misunderstood (and often are misunderstood) when sharing their intuitive insights, so people write off this deep analysis of future options as crazed neuroticism.  The INFJ then packs up all this thought and places it back into the very personal introverted intuitive luggage, and once again starts mulling over the more "conventional" options, because those aren't considered "crazy."

And then I get to throw an autoimmune disease, endocrine disease, MTHFR gene mutation, and histamine intolerance into the mix of my endless thought processes, which does result in a certain amount of crazy as I try to create a game-plan for my future.

The past few weeks I've been revisiting the idea of pursuing a Ph.D., as I think it may be one of the only career paths that affords me the level of freedom and time for contemplation that I'm seeking.  The struggle I have been facing with this idea is what kind of research agenda I would propose in my personal statement.  I want to write something honest and compelling, but to be honest would be to say that I really don't know what I want to do doctoral level research on.  Earlier tonight I read through old personal statements and academic essays, and then found a letter I wrote to my professors when I graduated from Cal Poly.  The letter mostly talks about how their mentorship and guidance is what made me want to become a professor in the first place (over eight years ago), and how I wanted to inspire my future students in the same ways my teachers inspired me.

When I finished reading the letter and closed it on my desktop, the first thing I saw was the cover photo I had posted on my Facebook profile earlier today.  It felt like the "I am a survivor" statement was boring a hole into my heart.  For the first time, those words made me want to cry.  They no longer just meant that I battled cancer, but that who I am in my very essence is a culmination of every event that has ever happened to me, both in the past and moving into the future.  I could easily say "I have hope" or "I have a future," and they would mean the same thing as telling people that I'm a survivor.

Writing this now brings to mind the verse that was a favorite for years and years--the one that all my friends knew I loved, and that caused them to give me knowing glances whenever we read or heard it.  It was my signature verse, for reasons that I won't outline in this post.  But, suffice it to say, the words still hold profound meaning in my heart, and are something I think I need a reminder of today.

Jeremiah 29:11

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future'" (New International Version).

or

"I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope" (Common English Bible).

I take the GRE in one week.  My prayer is that during the test, these words will be my companion:

I am a survivor.

I have hope.

I have a future.

For You, My Fellow Introverted Idealists, My Fellow Autoimmune Disease-Sufferers

What if I told a new narrative for my life?

Last year in one of my graduate seminars, we read a book by Geraldine Pratt in which she discusses transit lane versus trapped narratives.  Transit lane narratives are the dominant discourses of the most visible populations.  The ones told and retold by the media, in our schools, by way of a constructed cultural consciousness.  The trapped narratives are those of oppressed peoples, that get bypassed for the more "important" narratives--that stay hidden away because they contest our neatly-constructed cultural consciousness.  They would upset the status quo.

And, when I shift the concept of these narratives from macro to micro, I realize that I have designed the same system in my own life--for my personal narrative.  I have an idea of who I am or who I should be, informed by choices I've made over the years, words that people have spoken to me, beliefs I have been trained to believe about myself or have wrongly assumed about myself.  I have been fixated on one narrative that is defined by the woulds and shoulds and supposed tos.  A narrative that is neatly-constructed and deeply embedded in my self-consciousness.

Perhaps the real narrative for my life is trapped.  Or, a narrative for what my like could be is trapped.  All those beliefs I have believed and tales I have been told and assumptions I have assumed--but how many of them are part of His narrative, the meta narrative, and how many of them have become the story of my life simply because it is the same narrative repeated over and over...?

Can I frame a new narrative for myself?

Is there another narrative He wants me to tell?

My narrative for the past five years has been about disease and exhaustion and doctors' visits and medical bills.  It has been isolation and rumination and depression.  It has been giving up on a lot of maybes and possibilities.  The admitting that compromise and sacrifice are necessary evils of living with chronic illnesses.

I cannot rewrite my story.  I am who I am who I am.  I will always have my past experiences and my chronic illnesses and my passions and likes.  But my narrative doesn't need to be dictated by sickness or past experiences.  Illness is my transit lane narrative, but that doesn't have to be my narrative at all.

I don't know how to ride the line between living with a chronic illness and not letting it control me.  It affects a huge part of how I live my life.  But I think that I've for so long wallowed (I'm not sure that's the appropriate word) in the knowledge of my diseases that my every experience and very reality has been shaped by that wallowing.  I don't want to live life that way.

Additionally, before illness more or less came to control my life, I had certain ideas and ideals about what I wanted to do with myself--what I wanted to devote my time and talents to.  Sometimes I wonder if being diagnosed with chronic illnesses wasn't a sort of get out of jail free card--an opportunity to start out on a pathway I had never given myself the room to consider, at least not since childhood.

I'm still figuring out who I am.  What I like and what I'm good at and where my talents and passions will collide.  I'm still learning what it means to be an introvert (more specifically, an INFJ) and a Highly Sensitive Person.  What it means to be a cancer survivor and live each day battling autoimmune disease.  How I can live a healthy and happy life, finding balance between recognizing my limitations and not giving up on dreams.

I want to make a difference in the world, but that dream seems like such an amorphous and ambiguous thing.  I know I want to create, and organize, and contemplate, and help, and connect, and be independent, and embrace my values.  I don't want my work to just be work.  I want it to be my mission.  But I also want to take care of myself while on that mission.  No more grandiose dreams of high-stress overseas work with people.  I just want peace, and beauty, and authenticity.

I don't want to feel constrained by my past experiences or limited by my degrees or jobs or what people have told me about myself or even what I have wrongly or rightly believed about myself.  Can't there be a new narrative?  An emerging trapped narrative?  One that is true and good, but simply buried by more visible story lines?  Or, by ones that are easier to believe or that fit together more neatly as an unfolding narrative "should"?

What if I was brave enough to tell a new story?  To unearth a trapped narrative?  What if my life became something that no one, not even I, ever predicted or envisioned for myself?

I don't know what it would mean to live a trapped rather than a transit lane narrative.  Somehow it seems harder, scarier.  But also richer.  Better.  More beautiful.

And that is what I want.  Richer, better, more beautiful.

God, help me tell my story.

My Non-Linear Trajectory

Sometimes it's difficult for me to accept that my interests evolve.  In my mind, I would like my life to reflect some kind of linear trajectory--logical and focused.  I want the central unique purpose for which I was created to be obvious in all of my jobs and volunteer efforts, etc.

However, as I get older I realize that nothing in my life has ever (ever) gone according to plan.  I wanted to be a missionary.  That desire became more focused, and I decided that I wanted to work overseas with children.  I wanted to attend a Christian college, where I thought that I would receive the best training for my intended career.  I ended up at a (very good) state school.  I started out majoring in Liberal Studies, and within only a few weeks of my first quarter of college discovered the program was not a good fit.  I waffled in indecision over my major for nearly two years.  My university approved a new bachelor's degree in Comparative Ethnic Studies.  The program required two Ethnic Studies courses to switch majors.  I registered for the prerequisite courses and applied to switch majors, not really knowing what Ethnic Studies was, but certain it would better prepare me for work overseas.  I went overseas and worked as a missionary for a year.  I hated it.  I returned home to the U.S. and discovered that I actually really loved Ethnic Studies.  I wanted to get my Ph.D.  I was accepted into a doctoral program.  I went to visit the school where the program was and I freaked out.  Despite being offered a full fellowship, I decided not to go.  I considered divinity school.  I thought it would prepare me for religion-focused research in a doctoral program down the road.  I tried two different divinity programs.  I hated them both and dropped out of them both, one year after the other.  I ended up working in special education at the same time I made the decision to get a master's degree in Women's Studies.  I started the program, realized it wasn't a good fit, and then transferred into an interdisciplinary program that allowed me to take more education coursework.  I graduated and got a job in special education and hated it.  Now I'm in retail.

There has always been an innate drive to help people and make a difference in the world, but I don't know that I've ever pursued the best and most appropriate means of doing those things.  I've chosen very extroverted and emotionally-draining roles, and as an INFJ and Highly Sensitive Person, I burn out quickly.  I don't know that I've ever found a job that truly embraces all of my gifts without totally wiping me out on an emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical level.

I loved the Comparative Ethnic Studies program at Cal Poly, not just because the subject matter fascinated me, but because during that time my lifestyle was perfectly suited for my personality type.  I spent countless hours pondering issues and ideas that were meaningful and aroused my passions for those treated unjustly.  I was in class during the mornings, but had most of the day to work on projects or papers and make decisions about how I would manage my time.  Focusing on the experiences of oppressed peoples made me feel like I was somehow making a difference in the world, if only because I was becoming a more aware world citizen--and thus could potentially educate others.  I wrote and read and had engaging intellectual discussions.  I worked for my professors doing editing and creating handouts and fliers, which tapped into my artistic sensibilities and need to organize and attend to details.  I conducted oral history interviews for a number of ongoing projects, which allowed me to connect with people in deep and productive ways that were based on pre-determined questions and thus didn't exhaust me.  In terms of my Clifton Strengths, Intellection, Responsibility, Relator, Input, Achiever, I was actively making use of all of my greatest assets.

The desire to go on for a Ph.D. was largely to mimic my undergraduate lifestyle, and not necessarily for the doctoral title or program itself.  With a high strength of intellection, I am drawn to any role in which I have a significant amount of time dedicated to critical thinking and making connections between ideas.  This is both a blessing and a curse.  I love to contemplate and learn and study and focus on big ideas, but my interests are at times so diverse and disparate that it would be seemingly impossible to focus them into one doctoral program.  Can't I just go to school forever?

The last few years have resulted in a significant amount of self-discovery and self-analysis.  After I lived in China and discovered that I am an INFJ, my entire self-perception and worldview shifted.  So much about myself finally made sense.  When I discovered last year that I am also a Highly Sensitive Person, it was like the final piece of the puzzle fell into place.  I'm not crazy.  I don't think I am unique as an HSP who struggles with deciding on a career path.  I wonder how many HSPs are also INFJs, and how many of them also have a strength of intellection?  How many of them struggle with autoimmune disease or other physical manifestations of living in an over-stimulating world?

I've been thinking a lot lately about continuing on in my education.  I really do love being in school.  However, I feel paralyzed when it comes to choosing a program.  There are so many programs, and it feels like choosing one would be at the expense of a whole realm of interests.  It's also hard for me to choose a program without some kind of practical application in my mind's eye, because I want a job to be at the end of it, but I don't really know what job I want to do.  Does the job I want even exist yet?  Do I have to create my own job?  I've been reading a lot of online articles lately that basically tell me that the best option for a Highly Sensitive Person is self-employment.  That seems easier said than done.  I'd love to work for myself, but what kind of business would I be creating in the first place?  Can I get paid to think and organize?  Wouldn't that be nice...?

I've thought about continuing my education in Disability Studies, pursuing psychology, becoming a naturopathic physician or nutritionist.  I've considered doctoral programs in traditional fields like Sociology or Education, or nontraditional fields like Sex and Gender Studies.  Unfortunately, Ph.D. programs require you to submit a focused research proposal with your application, and when it comes down to it, I don't really know what I want to study.  Do I really want to conduct a major research project?  Can't I just read and think without having to worry about a dissertation?  Can't I just skip over all the politics of academia?

I know there are other people out there in the world that think and feel like I do.  I wish I knew my tribe.  I wish we could all band together and brainstorm and discover what each of us is meant to do.  I don't always mind doing the work of self-discovery, but sometimes I feel stuck and want to move forward--but I just don't know how.  I see so many of my peers that are happy and progressing in the normal socially acceptable ways.  I don't necessarily compare myself to them, but it does leave me to wonder why I can't just make decisions and when I will actually take action steps to change my life.  Will I ever really know what trajectory I'm on?  If my past is indicative of the future, my path will never be linear.  I think I'm in denial about this.

What do I want to do?  What do I really want to do?  I know I want to work in a quiet, scenic environment and have lots of time for thinking and reflection.  I want to be able to do something creative.  I want to be able to use my hands to organize--to sort and categorize.  I don't want a boss hovering over me.  I want my work to contribute to the greater good of humankind.  My MAPP Career Test results list the following as my "top motivations":

• I have a strong preference to work under the supervision of someone who is knowledgeable. I seek clear direction. I like to "learn the ropes" and develop expertise.
• I am motivated to gather, record, departmentalize, store and retrieve information.
• I am talented at spatial measurement and arrangement, artistic ability for factual image reproduction, attention to detail, awareness of machines and their function, and tolerance of routine.
• I have the ability to remember exactly what was written or said.
• I perform well in roles where I feel I can share information that makes a positive difference to others.
• I am motivated to carry out instructions for routine tasks in a familiar environment.

I wish that someone could simply read that list and say, "Aha!  I know exactly what you should do."  Somehow, I think this journey of self-discovery is ongoing.  As much as it pains me, I think that I will probably continue to try things and hate them as I whittle my way down to my true purpose.  Or, perhaps my purpose is simply to be a sojourner trying all these things, never really knowing where I am headed, but trusting that God is in control nonetheless.  Perhaps I am meant to experience as much life as possible so that I can relate better to and serve all people, and the true linearity of my trajectory is actually found in its inconsistency.  If that's the case, Lord, give me a willing heart...

My Future: A Poem

I want to live in a small cottage by the sea

And have a flock of schnauzers

And drink tea

And write

And have a vegetable garden

A Smart Car

And a big desk overlooking the water

And an art studio

A husband who will with me: go to Starbucks and play board games,

peruse local antique markets,

read on the front porch

I Am Valuable, My Life is Worth Living

I don't love myself.

It's a realization I've made during the past weeks, or perhaps months or even years.  I don't love myself or find value in myself, and so I haven't been taking care of myself.

I'm not usually the biggest fan of Joyce Meyer, but over the weekend I came upon some words she wrote that spoke to my soul.  We can't love ourselves until we are healed emotionally, and we can't heal emotionally until we accept God's profound and unconditional love.

The depression demon usually visits me a handful of times throughout the month, generally in relation to a combination between where I am in my hormonal cycle and how I've been eating.  Tonight I was trying on some outfits, and all I could think about is how fat I am.  I looked in the mirror at how big (objectively speaking) I've gotten in so many places, and it made me feel totally unattractive and undesirable.  Coupled with those feelings is my already low self-esteem resulting from knowledge of my diseases, and the belief that I'm abnormal and tainted and not someone who anyone would want to marry; I cry in desperation, feeling like an alien creature stuck in a life she doesn't want, but incapable of having anything more or different.

In reality, I'm only 20 pounds heavier than my "normal," a result of hormone imbalances, cancer, and a puttered-out thyroid.  However, I think much of my self-worth hinged on my thinness, and now that it's gone (objectively speaking), I don't feel good about myself.  Before that, I found value in academic performance and achievement.  Before that, the perceived strength and quality of my faith in God.  I'm not in school and I've moved away from my legalistic Christianity and into something that feels less certain and secure (the loss of legalism is a good thing, the loss of security is not such a good thing).  Without my previous appearance, or academic accolades, or the recognition of a mature faith journey, I no longer have anywhere to find value.  Except the value that God has inherently created me with.

So much of my life has been about performing and doing and achieving that I missed out on many years of just be-ing.  When I was a missionary in China, for the first time in my life I was surrounded by a team of people who spent time doing things they enjoyed, simply for pleasure.  That concept was so foreign to me.  I didn't even know what I really liked doing.  I remember starting to spend afternoons outside with my camera, and then I bought some paint supplies at a bookstore and painted some pictures for the first time ever, just because I could.  I bought fiction books.  I downloaded music and learned about different singers and bands.  I began to exercise and cook healthy foods.  I became less focused on the appearance of my life to other people, and made choices that brought joy to my heart.

I'm not sure what's happened in the past four years, except I think that somehow with my medical diagnoses I began to give up on my life a little bit.  I remember when I was first told I had Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and probably PCOS, my immediate thought was, "Well, I guess I'm not getting married."  Somehow a disease made me abnormal, and that abnormality made me unlovable, and to be unlovable meant I had no value.  I think that I've been caught in the web of this pattern of thinking since that day in the beginning of 2010.  I am abnormal, so I have no value.

It's difficult to come to terms with the physical ailments you've been born with--to know that God created you with these proverbial thorns in your flesh.  I know that we all have our weaknesses and idiosyncrasies and problems, but somehow because I now see that I am not and can never be perfect, I have lost all sense of self-worth.  Perfectionism is such a painful and exhausting addiction.

But then I think about how much God has created me to be able to offer to the world.  My emotional and spiritual and physical struggles are but fodder for the possibility of ministering to others--of feeding God's sheep.  My suffering makes me more real and authentic and genuine (I hope), so that I can be a source of comfort and respite and truth to the people around me.  And He has given me gifts, as a human be-ing, that are unique only to me.  And not only gifts, but a calling to which no other person has been called.

I think about so many people He has placed in my life, people who love and value and appreciate me for who I am and nothing I've done.  People who have loved me through the ups and downs of my autoimmune disease, the good days when I've been kind and grateful and warm, and the bad days when I've been depressed and cranky and cold.  People who have loved me through my cancer, showering on me their support by way of an outpouring of financials gifts and notes of encouragement.  People who have continued to seek out relationships with me, even when that seeking out is very much one-sided.  All of that love and support and seeking speaks volumes about the love of God, and if the people in my life have valued me in this way, how much more does my Abba Father lavish His value and love and pride on this little creature He has created--me?

Earlier this year, I began to see a counselor to help me with PTSD from a near-fatal car accident I was in two years ago.  During our first session, she gave me a list of positive self-affirmations and negative self-talk.  We discussed some of the phrases from the list that I want to come to believe to be true.  I no longer see the counselor, but I have since begun writing these positive phrases in my journal.  I think there is a lot of power in claiming these affirmations in my own writing in my own personal journal.  I also began to rewrite some of the affirmations as truths about God (i.e., God is in control; God can be trusted).

I haven't been very consistent about going to the gym since my cancer surgery, but tonight, amidst a mini emotional meltdown, I knew I just needed to get out of the house and focus my mind on something other than my own unhappiness.  As my endorphins kicked in and I actually began to feel the cloud of depression lifting, I began to say to myself, over and over:

My life is worth living.

And then I added to that:

I am valuable.

And so I pumped those elliptical pedals and chanted to myself, "I am valuable.  My life is worth living.  I am valuable.  My life is worth living."

I have begun to make a list of things I want to commit to doing every day and/or every week in order to nourish my body and soul.  If I feel trapped in my life and want things to go differently, I am the one that needs to take steps to change what is changeable.  I am going to start taking care of myself because I am valuable, and my life is worth living.

He made me valuable.  He gave me a life worth living.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.