Chronic Illness
28 Aug
I’m really excited about National Chronic Invisible Awareness Week! It’s coming up September 14-20. I’ll be blogging about chronic invisible illness each of those days. Here are some startling statistics about chronic invisible illness. (Source http://www.mychronicillness.com/invisibleillness/factsheet.htm)
*Nearly 1 in 2 people live with chronic illness and 96% of illness is invisible.
*The divorce rate among the chronically ill is over 75%.
*Depression is 15-20% higher for the chronically ill than for the average person.
This has been a hard week for me. Nothing bad happened. David didn’t flare up. I’ve just felt tired, physically and emotionally. I’m so ready for David’s arthritis to be in remission. I want the house to be sold.
When people ask, “How is David?” lately I’ve been answering, “He’s the same. Things are normal. Our new normal.” I HATE saying that. I hate saying, “our new normal.” It feels like I’m giving up. Like I expect things to continue this way. I don’t. I hope and pray our life gets back to normal. I just don’t know how to balance that hope with contentment. We thank God that David is still able to work, that although David is in incredible pain every day, his illness is not life threatening.
Ugh. It’s just hard. I don’t want to whine and compalin, but I cannot just put on a happy face. I want to be truthful when people ask how we are. People should know how bad things are so that they can pray for us, support and encourage us. But does anyone really want to hear, “We’re awful, thanks for asking,”?
My part time job has been a refuge this week. For a few hours, I don’t have to answer my cell phone and talk to doctors’ offies and insurance companies. Instead, I’m helping a nice man by reading his emails into his voicemail because he doesn’t want to learn how to use the internet. Life is so simple at the office.
All God’s children gots problems. Some worse than ours. But my problems are significant, and I know that God cares about us and loves us. If God hadn’t saved me, there’s no way I’d be able to survive this.
And we will survive. I still have hope. I’m okay. I’m having a rough week, but that’s to be expected.
Thanks for reading.
Love,
A Young Wife
Praying that God will lift you up and give you His peace and joy and that your husband’s arthritis will go into remission soon!
Hey Ashley…
Oh, if we could only find that balance between hope and contentment! It IS such a struggle, isn’t it??!??! It’s like, we believe God can heal, that He can do anything, yet while we wait with anticipation, we have to live this thing called life, in the reality of chronic illness.
And yes, if you’re terrible, tell people you’re terrible. You’d be surprised. SOME don’t want to hear it, but some, the ones who genuinely care about you, they DO want to know the truth.
Thank God for the internet, for connections like these, for Lisa and Rest Ministries…we can all support one another and pray for each other. Lifting you up right now to Our Heavenly Father that he would infuse you both with joy, peace and strength today!
Love you,
Kerri
I’m praying for you guys. I thought of you recently when I started reading a new book. The forward is by Wayne Grudem, and he talks about how his wife has chronic pain due to a car accident. They made the difficult decision to move to Arizona 8 years ago. I had never heard of people moving there as a means of pain management before you mentioned it.
Thank you all! Kasey, it’s really interesting to learn about all the different issues people face that are helped by Arizona’s climate. One of David’s sisters had severe asthma and was helped tremendously by a temporary move to Arizona.