Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone, but I've been thinking a lot about thanksgiving lately. Mainly because giving thanks is pretty hard right now.
Since I wrote last month about my health, not much has changed. Well, I think I have improved a little, but I have also learned the hard way that doing too much can have disastrous consequences, costing me days or even weeks of progress.
Because I have to be so careful, this has been a season of loss for me. I had to step down from leading worship at church. I had to cancel the play that I was planning to direct this fall. Some weeks, I haven't even been able to go to church. I've had to rely on others to go grocery shopping, hang out the laundry, and do other household chores that I wouldn't have had any problem doing before.
As I have been forced to do as little as possible, I am realizing just how much I do every day, and how quickly I want to jump up and take care of things whenever I see something that needs to be done. Now, I have to stop and evaluate: does this really need to happen right now? Do I actually need to do it, or could someone else do it? It is surprising to me how hard it is to let go.
Having very limited energy has also made me more aware of habits and patterns in my life that happen so automatically that I don't even think about them. For example, I've always known that I sense and absorb the emotions of those around me, but I hadn't realized how much emotional energy I put into trying to improve the emotional environment I am in. If someone is having a bad day, if someone is feeling lonely or ignored, if someone is feeling hurt in any way, I impulsively try to compensate for that, pouring out emotional energy in an attempt to make everything better and infuse joy and life into the world around me.
Now I can't do that. I can't do all of the giving and serving and doing and accomplishing that makes me feel valuable and seen. Without it, I feel kind of lost.
I am trying to be thankful for everything I am learning through this time. I'm trying to be okay with recognizing my limitations and letting go. I'm trying to be okay with letting my world shrink and slow down.
Even though it's hard, I know that I really do have so much to be thankful for. I am so thankful for Jesse and all the rest of the household, as they've had to pick up the slack and take care of all the things that I can't do now. I am so thankful that the weather has been nice, and that I can lie down outside and enjoy the sunshine, even though I can't go hiking or to the park. I am so thankful for all of the people who have asked about how I'm doing, who have come and watched the kids so I can rest, who have brought meals, or washed the dishes, or helped clean up the mess when Kenneth crashed a pile of plates onto the kitchen floor.
If you are one of those people, thank you so much.
I'm heading back to the doctor tomorrow to see if my latest bunch of tests have anything to say about what is wrong with me. It would be nice to have some answers, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much. For now, I'm trying to breathe deep, be careful, and remember that this is just a season, and a season in which I am not alone.
