Living Within My Limits

 

I wrote earlier about my Visible arm band and tracker. They have certainly changed my life, but it hasn't all been easy, and I'm not done yet. One of the hardest things about chronic illness is acceptance. For many people, this is why diagnosis is so important to them. Until they have that label to validate how they feel, they can't fully believe it. I know it was this way for me, but the road to diagnosis is long, and windy, and there seem to be bridges out periodically. 

When you've spent so long, for some their entire adult lives, switching between trying to convince the doctors and your loved ones that there's something wrong with you and then convincing yourself that's you're probably ok because they can't find anything wrong it really messes with your mind. Sadly, for many people when they finally are diagnosed, they are told that there is no cure, little or no treatment, and they just have to live with it. Oh, and it might kill them too. That's me. I'm "many people". 

Rather than drown in the hopelessness this can bring, I've decided to live though. I've decided to live my best life! What that looks like is very different from what I dreamed of and expected though. Even five years ago I had expectations of living a healthy, active second half of life. Despite my circumstances, I think I kept trying to live out that expectation, putting unrealistic goals in front of myself and then shaming myself when I failed to meet them time and time again because my body gave out on me. Now I'm learning that I can live my best life, I just have to do it differently. 

No longer can I "push through" or "make things happen". I need to be intentional and planful. I have to respect that I have limits, and as much as I'd like to operate outside of them, when I do it has dire consequences. This week is Christmas. In past years, when I was homeschooling, I could pretty much put "be sick" on my calendar for the last week and first week of the year. That's because I overdid it so much at Christmas that I made myself ill. Year after year. You'd think I'd learn! Well, I did, it just took WAY longer than it should have. This year, I am not putting that on my calendar. Instead, I'm planning half-days of "take it easy" EVERY DAY this week and next. And then I'm going on a transatlantic cruise where I will REALLY be taking it easy! I can't wait to tell you all about that!

One thing that Visible has really taught me about my limits and how things affect me has to do with stress. We all "know" that stress has a physical effect on our bodies, but do we really KNOW it? For me it was pure head knowledge that hadn't be translated into heart knowledge at all. I'm a very visual person and that's where the beauty of Visible comes in. It shows me what I'm experiencing.

A couple of weeks back I wrote a post about a bad experience I had with Norwegian Cruise Line. That morning I woke up and, after doing my Morning check-in on the Visible app, I was scrolling through my emails. I came across one that had me really concerned. Did I stop and pray about it? Did I take a deep breath and recenter, knowing that everything was in God's hands and would work out ok? Nope. I didn't. I jumped out of bed and stomped to my desk where I promptly called customer service. If you've read that post, you'd know that didn't go well at all. Then I spent time searching through NCL's website trying to find somewhere to give feedback about my customer service experience. That didn't satisfy me, so then I had to write my blog post. By the time I finished with that, two hours had passed. I hadn't checked my phone to see my points once in that time and there was definitely a notification saying that I had gone past my tracker. When I checked, I was shocked to realize that not only was I past my tracker, I had used 15 of the 29 points I had available for the day in two hours, and I was still in my pajamas sitting at my desk! When I looked at the heart rate chart, I was amazed that most of that time I was in the "exertion zone" (pink on the chart). I was just sitting in my chair! I wasn't vacuuming or lifting heavy boxes or anything! For the first time in my life I was able to "see" my stress.

If you had asked me that morning to look over a list of options of how I'd like to spend my pace points that day and "be angry at my desk" was one of them, you can be certain it wouldn't have been in my top five. But that's what I chose. 

Here's the Thing: Now, at least, I know it's a choice. In the future, now that I have this knowledge, I'd like to choose differently. Next time I'm faced with an email that upsets me, I'd like to pause. I'd like to give the situation over to God. I'd like to take a few deep breaths. I'd like to pray about the best way to proceed. And only then would I do something. Also, I'm taking the advice of a friend and avoiding checking my messages at all until after I've done my Bible study in the morning!