What of my limbs?

I sit in wonderment as I watch the rising of the sun just above the horizon. The sky is orange and red with the beckoning and the suggestion of a new day dawning.

It's amazing what you can see, if you really pay attention.

The giant Russian Mammoth sunflowers in my backyard face east as if to pay allegiance to the rising sun.

Dew still glistens on the blades of grass and other flowers that are awake with me welcoming the new day.

There is a gentle breeze and the grass, flowers and trees sway gently as if in a dance of some sort, or maybe a slight meditation, welcoming peace and good fortune for another new day, filled with hope and possibilities.

Birds cuddle close together on the electrical wire overhead, while squirrels brave the swaying and run across it as if they’re tightrope walkers.

They get to the end and spring into the trees nearby, playing hide and seek, while they jump from limb to limb, filled with the excitement of this new day coming….the chance to hunt for more nuts, the chance to play,

I think about how free those squirrels are. How easy it must be to jump from one branch to the next. No pain! No hesitation! No thought of what that exertion of energy is going to cost the next day or the next few hours.

I think of those birds that with a simple flicker of the wings, soar high into the sky, wings outspread, using the wind as their blanket or magic carpet, diving and soaring with the current.

Then I think of me. I think of how easy it was at one time to run an easy 3.1 miles in a cross-country tournament. I think of how easy it was to push through a martial arts class in a day…and still have the energy to run a couple of miles.

Then lupus struck, and for a brief moment…..actually it was for several months really, I knew what it was to not be able to do those things.

My legs that once carried me through the miles, up hills and down, seemingly effortlessly, now struggled to get 10 feet due to the severe neuropathy that I was experiencing.

My arms that once threw the javelin in High School, (and held the record for so long), that wielded the sword like it was an extension of my body, that whipped up gourmet-style dishes in the kitchen now struggled sometimes to hold a pen or a jar without dropping it.

What of my limbs?
They now seem useless. I struggle to cut the yard that I once did, simply because it provided great exercise. I no longer run the miles that I used to simply because of the challenge of the pain in my feet and the sever fatigue that I am now challenged with. Gourmet meals, or meals in general, are planned around times that I am feeling full of energy, and many meals are prepared in advance just in case this feeling of empowerment doesn’t happen again anytime soon.

Lupus seemed to have taken so many abilities from me in one single blow, one single wave of its wand.

BUT….

The beauty of life is this…

The amazement of life is such that….
one toss of a coin-
one drop of a hat-

One throw of a die-
one single moment in time-

Or in my case, several months,
can leave behind such havoc, such devastation, such a feeling of loss and betrayal and foreboding.

No one plans for illness striking, and when it does we are left with questions, lots of questions, but how we go forward from this potentially catastrophic event determines how we see the future after illness or trauma.

Do we sit backwards in the Train of Life, facing backwards, looking at everything that we had, and are now missing, and longing for, or do we sit forward in the Train of Life, looking forward, towards all the possibility we still have in life despite the setbacks.

Lupus will not win!

I am rolling forward, towards a new life, filled with hope and possibilities.

How about you?