Burden or Blessing… if you don’t get a miracle, be one…

I’m not sure if, back when I got the phone call from my primary care physician telling me that I had/have very active RA, I would have ever been sitting around trying to decide if I actually view what my body is doing to itself as a burden or a blessing.

In the past week I have read “The Shack” (which I highly recommend… never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that I would start to think of God as a heavy set black woman or that God … aka Papa… and Jesus would tell someone that church as a construct is not necessary for a relationship with Him) and watched “Butterfly Circus” on YouTube (I also highly recommend that short 20 minute movie).  Both of those things (along with listening to “Something More” by  Nick Vujicic) have me really thinking about the fact that it just might be a blessing.

I know that many people (many many people) would think I’m smoking something good and obviously not sharing.

But I try very hard to look at things slantways in my own personal Wonkavator.  I know that people tend to think that I live in a fairyland but, believe me, I live every second in my life in reality.

I was told my whole youth that people like me don’t…
People like me do.

I may not ever change the world, but I can change the way one person views RA, and I think maybe I have.  I realize how many miracles there were in my life right when I needed them… when Squirrel started to have seizures… when I needed to hear what I needed to hear… and I think maybe I can be that for others… others with RA… others facing nephroptosis.. others facing the ‘this totally sucks’ deals that can be lived with and lived through.

Is it still a burden?  Hell yeah.  There are so many days when I hurt so badly that I fight tears.  But… it’s my choice how I deal with my every day.  I fight tears and deep gray blackness that encroaches at the edges… but… there are times when I am reminded that… if not me, then who…

April Wells
12/30/16