You ever feel like life is just
piling up on you and there's no method to the madness? I have a teammate who’s a freshman this year. She tore the ACL
in her left knee during her senior year of high school, and was out for the
first month of this fall season while still rehabbing from the surgery. Her first
week back into full-contact practices, she landed awkwardly in a 1 v 1 drill
and tore the ACL in her right leg. She had surgery on it this past weekend, and
through talking with her about it, I’ve come to realize two very important
things about the process of dealing with life when it’s hard.
The first thing
I’ve learned is directed not to people with POTS, but to those of you who know
someone with POTS – the families, the friends, the teammates, etc. Having a
community of support is crucial to making it through difficult situations, and
you will never completely understand the impact that your presence has on us.
The night after her surgery, we went as a team to visit Karlee in the hospital.
Granted, she was still a little groggy and she was obviously in some pain, but
it was incredible to see her face light up at having people care enough to show up and sit with her
for an hour or two, make her laugh, and pray with her. It’s amazing what the
presence of people who love you can do for your spirits, and what even
ill-phrased, ineloquent words of encouragement mean when everything’s going
wrong.
You see, we gain
strength from you simply being there. I
know. It gets hard after the first week or two to really care anymore, because
the newness of someone you love having POTS has worn off. It gets easy to move
on with your own problems and get tired of ours. But we need you. So please,
stay there for us. It doesn’t take that much effort, really. We just need your thereness. That’s not a word, I know.
But it’s what we need.
The second thing is directed back
at the potsies. I may have already written a post on this, but it's something we need to be constantly reminded of, and something which popped backed into mind while talking with my injured teammate. Sometimes, life sucks. We’re all well aware of that fact.
Sometimes the problems pile on and before you know it, you’re waist deep in an
emotional break down wondering how in the heck anything that’s happening has a
purpose. And of course, that’s always the moment when some well-meaning person
leads you back to Jeremiah 29:11, “I know the plans I have for you,’ declares
the Lord, ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and
a future.’” And you sit there and think, “There’s no way this will ever be for
my good, where the heck are you God?” And you get angry.
Well,
let me give you some background on that verse that your well-meaning friend neglected to tell you. It was written by the prophet
Jeremiah to the Israelites at the lowest point in their history as a people. Jerusalem was in ruins, the Temple
was destroyed, and they were forced out of their holy land and into Babylonia as a conquered nation. Everything that they
held dear was gone, and to top it off, in previous verses, Jeremiah has told
them that it’s going to be a long 70 year exile, and not the quick easy exile
that the false prophets keep proclaiming. God had allowed his chosen people to be ransacked and nearly annihilated, and then tells them that they'll stay in this inglorious state for an entire generation. And yet it’s at this point, in this
hell-hole of the ultimate disaster story, that they are reminded of the promise
that they are not forsaken. In their misery, they are given a promise that there is a plan. And in case you've forgotten, it's a plan that led to the salvation of humanity through Jesus Christ.
Sometimes,
God lets us wander in the desert for 40 years. Sometimes, He lets us lose
everything. Sometimes, He lets the brokenness of this world inflict damage on
His broken people. Just because you can’t see a reason in it, and just because
your plan played out a little differently in your head, does not mean that you
are forsaken. It doesn’t mean that it’s not part of a greater plan prepared by
an infinite God for the good of his children. If you have a God big enough to be mad at when life goes wrong, you also have a God big enough to have a purpose that your finite mind can't envision. There is a purpose to the chaos
that is POTS. Don’t ever forget that.
My name is Amy Swearer, and POTS stole my life. I'm taking it back.
