Early in my chronic illness journey I had the mentality that I would “beat it” and “fight it.”
Many years of struggling, pushing myself to my limits, sacrificing so many things trying to “win” against the illness… I realized I was going about it entirely the wrong way.
Then, I was at my personal health rock-bottom… I was falling down multiple times per weak, I was experiencing respiratory disfunction and cardiac disfunction as a result of the COVID virus, my body was so weak at times just holding a bowl of soup up to eat was too much for me, and I had a maximum stand/move around time of 1-2 minutes at some points during the day or week before my body would just collapse. It was while I was at this lowest of low place, and my mind was wrestling with some of the darkest places a human mind can go, that god graced me with a new insight. I was not going to “beat my disease,” I was not going to “win the war”, and fighting my disease was only fighting against my own self.
I realized dieting that season of life, that the best thing I actually could do for my life, my physical and mental well-being, was to radically accept my illness, and radically accept my life in all its messy, sick, chaotic, inglorious parts. I came to learn the immense peace that is accepting where I am at in life, and practicing the mindset that this is just my life, and there is nothing wrong with it, chronic illness or not.
In the way ironies in life often work, since radically accepting my poor state of health, my chronic illness, the fact that I will never see a day of true “good” health again on this side of heaven has actually allowed me to begin truly deeply enjoying my life again, enjoying the people in my life, savoring the little moments, enjoying my work, focusing on reverting a life that functions within my true current sets of abilities and limitations. With this new found peace and love for the life I have been given disrepute this illness which threatens to one day take my life from me, I have made profound improvements in not only my mental health, but in my physical health as well. It seems so ironic, but the more I accepted and quit fighting, the more I actually won.
