Aches and Pains

I've never been very good at slowing down and resting as much as I need to. So naturally, there comes a point where it all becomes too much, and my body forces me to rest. This time, it is coinciding with physical illness. My thyroid condition is acting up. It's something very easily remedied, but it takes time for the new dosage of medication to work itself into my system. Until it does, I'm stuck feeling exhausted all the time. Just trying to muster the energy to get out of bed some mornings is a huge feat. The periodic sense of vertigo gets to be incredibly frustrating. My joints ache.

But the thing that bothers me most is the way this all affects my mind. With my hormones all messed up like they are right now, I can't focus very well. I am more easily distracted than usual (and I'm pretty easy to distract in the first place!). My memory isn't working at the speed I'd like it to. It's frustrating to try to hold a conversation, and lose focus midway through a sentence in an attempt to remember what word you wanted to say. Or forgetting completely what it was that I was talking about. Even if I write things down (which I nearly always do), I end up forgetting things. It's frightening.

Sure, it all goes back to normal once my hormones settle again. But until then, it's rather like sitting in the middle of a room filled with really thick fog. You can wave your arms around all you want, and shine tons of light everywhere, but you still can't see what it is you are trying to see on the other side of the room. Yet you know exactly what the room is like. You've spent forever in this room, and can describe every minute detail of it when the fog isn't around.

I have a tendency to get very cranky when I'm all out of sorts like this. So I have to stop and remind myself every now and then that this is temporary. This all goes away, and things return to normal. It's going to require a lot more patience than I'm willing to give, but I'll make it through this just fine, as I have every time before.

~*~

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

2 Corinthians 4:16

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged."

Someone called me a "whore" today.

I was having a lovely time, walking through town with a dear friend of mine, who has been visiting during our Spring Break. We had just finished a late lunch, and were headed off to wander through the nearest bookstore. As we were walking a very deserted street, a car drove past with their windows down and shouted at the pair of us, "Whores!" and drove off before I had caught half a glance of their vehicle.

My dear friend and I were holding hands as we walked, nothing more. She is, in fact, my girlfriend. We're only three short weeks into this. I've never been in a relationship of any sort before this one, so I'm wary about everything. But the fact that I was dating a woman? It didn't cross my mind as something to be wary of, except perhaps around some of my extended family members. Attending a very "open-minded", liberal-arts college has made me forget what the wider world is like. There are so many ignorant, and unkind people in the world, with no sense of the consequences of their harmful words.

My girlfriend and I kept walking until we reached the bookstore. The further I walked, the more the pain set in. It was an awful feeling, sitting right beneath my ribs. I ended up hiding among the stacks of books until I could find a place where I felt safe sitting down, to pretend to look at books while I recovered. While I know that there is nothing I can do about the situation, it doesn't make it hurt any less. My entire life, I have been taught only to be kind to others. But it's a lot easier to say that you'll turn the other cheek than to actually do so. When someone is shouting hurtful things at you, things that cut right to your core because you weren't prepared for them, and know them to be untrue, you can't always think clearly. A very small part of me wanted to fight back. I don't know that I had it in me. All I wanted to do was cry, and hide away until everything seemed safe again.

A part of me started thinking about how the church reacts to situations like this. Turn the other cheek. But what about when the situation involves homosexuality? The views are as varied as ice-cream flavors. Some are just as accepting of these people as of anyone else. Some are very guarded, and some are judgmental to the point of outright rejection. According to the official website for the over-arching church my home church belongs to, we are loved by God no matter if we are heterosexual, homosexual, or anything-sexual. It was a comfort to learn that. I don't know that I classify myself as any particular kind of sexuality. I like who I like, and I don't feel that gender has much to do with it. But I don't know how my home church will feel about the matter. I'm never sure. It's not a topic that gets brought up often, or ever that I can recall.

 I hate feeling anxious and threatened and uncomfortable in my own town. This is a place where I have grown up, and felt safe. The world becomes a different kind of place when you feel threatened. It's a dangerous business going out of one's front door, as I believe it was said in the Lord of the Rings.

~*~

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."

Philippians 4:6