Means Less

I hate Lyme disease. I hate that I will feel great for a few days and then have a day like today where all I want is to hold my head and make people stop asking speaking because it's just so confusing and I don't understand, or can't quite think of the words I want to say.

I hate that I don't want to go up the stairs because it's tiring, and I am so fatigued after hours and hours of sleeping.

I hate the sense of loss that holds on to me and reminds me of all the things I'm missing out on.

I hate trying to build a community when every other week I feel sick and tired and grouchy.

I hate how long distance my life has become, with all the people I love scattered across the world.

I hate how careful I have to be about sleep. If I don't get enough sleep, my symptoms are worse. When my symptoms are worse, I don't really want to be social. I just want everyone to stop talking and drink tea. Not exactly conducive behavior for making friends.

It's hard for me to make sense out of all this stuff that Lyme does to me, and also how I can handle it with grace and love towards others and myself. Sometimes I give up on the endeavor. When the bad days happen, I resort to telling myself, "Well, this is Lyme, and this is a part of you. Just do the next thing." I'm sure at some point I wanted it all to mean something, to be counted for something, but currently I am just too tired to "find the good in it", or whatever.

During a theology class near the end of my senior year, we were in the middle of some lengthy discussion about yet another aspect of the "mystery of God." I didn't really care what it was about at this point, struggling as I was with all those things that seniors face: finances, the end of a relationship, the sudden realization that "I have no idea what I am going to do with my life", etc. The day was cold, I hadn't really slept, and the great "mystery" seemed irrelevant.

One of my theology professors actually stopped the discussion. I wonder sometimes if he knew what I was thinking, if he could see the apathy in my slumped stance. He looked at me, at all of us, and said, "I want all of you to know that all of this means something, it matters. It really does. What we are doing here has so much meaning."

At the end of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher says, "Meaningless! All is meaningless." On the worst Lyme days, I come back to this passage and pair it with my professor's exhortation. "This has meaning," I tell myself when I struggle to get up the stairs. "This has meaning," I say when it's all I can do not to have a panic attack in the grocery store. "This has meaning," I mutter when I wake up to aching joints and brain fog. "All these things that I think about, all these hurts that I feel, all this pain that I am going through, it has meaning,

BUT this Means Less that what I want it to mean. It Means Less than I wish it did. It Means Less than everyone says it does. It is not the end all, and it is NOT all of me. All of this means less when I remember Christ."

Granted, this does not make my pain any less, or the brain fog any easier to manage. It does, however, settle one of the arguments in my pounding head, and that is a good thing.