I’ve made plenty of posts on this blog about my medical journey, so I’m not going to go through that again. Please read them, if you’re curious about how I got to this place.

This post is a celebration of NOW!

I am 5 years post op, and I’m thrilled with every single thing that I’m able to do in my life, because I don’t compare my abilities now to who I was before Tarlov Cyst Disease. I was an athlete before and now I’m not. That’s okay!

I compare myself to the partially paralyzed, with every other sacral TC symptom, woman that made it to the peak (surgery), and then back down to home again.

I will never compete competitively again, with tennis that I loved and was actually very good at, but I can see myself picking up a racket again, for fun. It’s probably going to be a pickleball racket though! lol

I may not be able to play competitive tennis anymore, or hike up mountains, but I can walk, stand and sit without pain (for the most part unless I have a flare). I can go to amusement parks and walk now instead of needing a scooter, and can go to concerts with my daughter and actually dance! All of those things without needing days or even weeks to recover!

I’m able to wash my Jeep! I couldn’t even drive it for a while because it’s a standard shift. I even put together two, 3 section IKEA shelving units all by myself!

I’m able to travel with my husband, including an 11 hour flight to Rome coming up in July. I will be able to stand and walk around, thankfully, but I couldn’t even dream of going before! I couldn’t sit in a car for more than 20 minutes without having to stop and walk around before.

I just sat for a 7 hour drive to join my husband as he played in a couple of golf tournaments! Something I hadn’t done in many years.

I can make plans to attend events now, without fear of it being a “bad day” and disappointing everyone, including myself.

There were years before my surgery, of rapidly declining abilities and pain, then about 9 months before where every day was a bad day and I was completely bedridden. Most of 2017 and then all of 2018 was spent in bed!

I almost said it was “a lost year” but looking back I actually gained more in that year than in about any other. It was when I learned more about myself, and My Heavenly Father than I had before.

I was “lonely” in the beginning but that was transformed into learning how to be “alone”. Now I cherish my alone time, because that’s when I spend time praying, thinking and writing. I was never a writer before this, and now it’s my nature.

My family is full of writers, including my mother and my sister, who has been a writer as her career, so you could say it runs in the family, but it was never something that I did.

I could never stay still long enough. In a way, this was God giving me the opportunity to just STOP.

He didn’t “cause” this situation but He was with me every step, sometimes carrying me one minute at a time!

It felt like an awful thing, and at times it was, but it was also an opportunity to make a choice. To choose to mature and grow.

To “dig deep” into various ideas and questions that I didn’t even know I had. I was too busy “doing” for God that I didn’t have time to think about questions, about the “be still” long enough to listen.

If we aren’t in a place to ask the questions in our life, we never get answers or mature.

I remember feeling guilty because I had been SO active in ministry and then I couldn’t DO it anymore….

My Heavenly Father spoke to my heart one day, as I was alone and very depressed. He said “I know that you can DO for Me; can you just BE with Me?” That was quite a challenge for me, personally, but again it made me grow!

I had accepted that my life would be different now but over the past 2+ years I have been getting my physical abilities back too!

The word GRATITUDE has never been so real. People don’t really understand gratitude until everything has been stripped away.

When Robby, my son, died and we experienced 3 years of death, after death in our family, I had decided that “I would be a better person because he had lived, and not a bitter person because he had died.”

I became a Chaplain and helped others.

I have decided to do the same with my own physical suffering.

Yes, I am changed.

I am changed for the better, because of the suffering.

I wouldn’t wish my life on anyone, but I wouldn’t trade my life with anyone either!