One of my favorite quotes:

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting."

E.E.Cummings

Overall, its been a pretty good week. It seems like I am still making some progress for which I'm grateful for, but have to be careful not to push the limits. I seem to be processing more internally as my body starts to come to life again and have had a more difficult time articulating it all. I guess its to be expected that after a person goes through a huge adjustment of being sick in bed for a long time that there will be another huge adjustment as I am able to be out in the world more. I certainly am continuing to be very thankful and grateful but many emotions seem to be bubbling to the surface that I wasn't quite prepared for.

I have known many people who have become sick and have gone on to healing. But, I never considered much what the overall emotional process would be. My thoughts are more about the physical struggle and of course I would assume there to be fear, sadness, confusion, etc. I think for me I was so sick for so long that I was living minute to minute. I knew in theory that the world was still turning while I lay there, but was to consumed with surviving to be completely affected by it. As I get better and make these small outings, I begin to realize how much has been going on around me. There has been almost this sense of panic and urgency to hurry up and "finish healing" so that I can resume my place in the world. As my best friend put it to me today however, was that there are as many lessons for me still to learn on this side of the process as there were on the other. Part of me is like....arrrgggg...no more lessons...school is officially out!!! The other part of me is excited to see what this will cultivate in a very stubborn heart.

The good news is that I do have a place in this world...we all do. Its definitely here with my family. And, I am still the same whether I can get up, do my hair and put on those trendy clothes and hit Costco with the other ambitious moms...or I have to stay in bed for awhile in my very fashionable Christmas pj's in May. There's a lot of freedom in just "being" rather than always having to be "doing". I realized too that I'm a pretty simple girl. I grew up in a simple small town in Alaska and I know the difference between my needs and my wants. Before going through this illness I think I started to make things too complicated trying to cram in activities and things that I saw everyone else doing. That's not who I am and I love that what has happened to me has helped me find myself again. When you strip away the minivan, make-up and committees life is actually much richer. Listen, I still need my minivan...don't get me wrong. But I certainly don't need to put as many miles on it as I used to and definitely enjoy the space I live in...both my skin and my home. Brennan Manning shares my heart in "Abba's Child" where he shares...The energy that I have been exhausting in my own past, and at times my present (my words), in pursuit of illusory happiness is now available to be focused on the things that really matter--love, friendship, and intimacy with God.