The condition fibromyalgia involves systemic pain, particularly soreness in the joints, soft tissues and tendons. The cause of the disorder remains unknown but it primarily affects females between 20 and 50.
-Definition of fibromyalgia, dictionary.com
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.
-Lamentations 3:24-25
I’m 30. I have a chronic pain condition.
Am I still allowed to dream?
These days, I’m tired. I’m in pain. I find that my dreams are small, shrunk by chronic pain, chronic exhaustion. Life feels much smaller, more about existence and survival. I was going to change the world, you know. I was going to do things. I was going to have a life marked by holy activity, sacred busyness. It’s hard not to feel I was promised a life of big things--in my teens and early twenties, life was all about potential. People tell you what you’re good at, what they can see you doing, what subjects you excel in and should pursue. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker-the world is your oyster. You can be anything you want to be. You can and should be doing Important Things. As a follower of Christ, those Important Things should be all evangelical, mission-oriented, and sometimes full of Dos and Don’ts, Shoulds and Shouldn’t’s, depending on to whom you were listening at the time.
Now that I’m 30, my goals are not quite so lofty.
These days, I usually dream of rest. I dream of enough magical time and space to rest. I long for free time, down time, time enough to maybe just relax enough to feel good again. I go back and forth hoping for healing. Some days I muster up the courage to ask God for healing-to change the new make-up of my head that now processes everything as pain, everything as a deep ache. Most days, I don’t ask Him, so I don’t have to hear “no” again. Because that gets really old. And raises up age-old questions of faith, God’s intentions, and plain old-fashioned patience and trust. Most days, I chalk it all up to a broken world, broken by that terrible and glorious thing called free will; broken by illness and sadness, a world that doesn't readily invite God in. My pastor told me, straight-up, that asking for healing is a trippy experience. It’s just plain weird. But we are told to ask for it, so we must keep asking. Some days, I ask others to pray for me when I just can’t do it for myself.
But I've been starting to wonder if it’s OK to still have big dreams, even though life is clearly a lot more realistic. I’m a lot more aware of my limitations. I wonder that even if I didn't have fibromyalgia, would I still be overwhelmed with life and all its choices? Would I still have enough gumption to have a huge dream, to set a grand goal? To plan out an adventurous life, one that is full of grace and beauty and checking off to-do lists? Because I really like doing that last thing, too. Would I pursue my beautifully sudden dreams of motherhood? To not be scared off by my miscarriage, to not listen to the fears that I probably wouldn't be a very good mother? Could I still set off towards my dream of writing? To shake off the heavy mountains of excuses, to find the silence and space required? Am I still allowed big dreams, at my age when things should be set, when minds should be made up, when the course of one’s life is already in furious motion? Am I allowed a different life than the one that directly in front of me?
Because I do want a life that is filled to the brim with the goodness of knowing God. I want a life that is full of good fruit from following Him and His words. I want to be saturated in His community, with His people. I want a life where I can recognize and use the talents and skills and personality that He has given me. It’s hard, in the middle of chronic pain, to even see those things. But even this chronic pain can be used for this good life that I so desire. Gary Thomas, author of Sacred Marriage, said so beautifully that while marriage limits what we can do, it multiples what we can become, and I believe that to be true of all the limitations and circumstances we find ourselves in, even something like chronic pain. I am holding on to hope that all things will be redeemed. This is the promise of the Cross. This is the promise that believers in Christ have always held on to. My dreams don’t have to alter; they are good dreams. They might just look different in the daylight.
