Today is an anniversary for me. The word anniversary brings to mind celebrations, joy, and an acknowledgement that, however broken the road was that was traveled, the journey was worth it.
The truth is that not all anniversaries carry this kind of sentiment. It was a month ago today that I was diagnosed with diabetes. I don’t write these words with a sense of depression or sadness, and obviously, I don’t write them with a sense of heightened joy. These words are more a statement of fact — a certain reality. Life has changed. The past month has been full of learning curves, alterations in routines, and adapting new rhythms in my daily life and in the life of my family.
My sleep is still interrupted a lot during the night with leg and foot discomfort, and the muscles in my body are aching like crazy for some reason. It might be that I’m exercising for one of the first times in my life, and my muscles are wondering what’s going on as they stumble out of hibernation. It also could be the second insulin they put me on. The doctor said that one of the side effects is muscle soreness. Either way, the past couple of mornings have been painful.
We’ve made our eight year old daughter our Motion Coach. She’s responsible for making sure that we’re staying active and getting enough exercise. It seemed the most logical thing to do since she’s the one in the house with the most energy. It keeps her involved in the changes our family is going through, and she loves telling people, with a certain sense of satisfaction, “I’m their coach.”
On the positive side — always looking for that silver lining — I’ve felt an increase in my energy over the past couple of weeks. I wake up more refreshed and my mind is clearer. I feel more level in my responses to things. And my moods don’t swing as wide and often as they once did. (Our good friends John and Jen introduced us to a word for this a long time ago — moodball. Oh, was I a moodball.) I can feel my body getting better. I’m not fully where I want to be. There are still the bad days. But I’m feeling an upswing.
Here in western Pennsylvania storms are hard to spot unless it’s directly on top of you and you’re in the midst of it. We have too many hills to see things that are miles away. I once took a motorcycle trip to South Dakota. It was beautiful the entire way there and back. I rode through state after state through sunshine and rain. I have various memories of each state, but one of the most prominent memories happened in South Dakota.
It was night and there were no lights on the road other than the headlights on my bike and the occasional oncoming vehicle shooting past me. The land was flat and the road was straight as an arrow for as far as I could see. I was focused on the yellow and white lines on the road when a crack of lightning lit up the sky. The odd part was that I didn’t hear thunder. The storm wasn’t overtop of me — it was miles away over a little town that I could only see when the lightning occurred. It was beautiful. Every time the lightning would light up the sky was awe-inspiring. There were more storms during that trip as well. Some I saw from afar, and others I had to pull over and wait out. But there was a certain beauty in all of them.
I’ve always enjoyed sitting in a dry place watching storms. I like the sound of the rain as it lands on the ground. I like watching for lightning as it announces that thunder is on its way. When the lightning and thunder are absent, and my daughter wants to play in the rain, I’m reminded of the magic it feels like as a child that water is falling from the sky. How cool is that?
But storms also remind me that there is a certain sense of risk in it. That lightning is not only beautiful but also powerful and dangerous. Our next door neighbor — Uncle Bob — had his barn burn to the ground one night due to a lightning strike. The storms bring a mixture of dark times and, at the same time, a natural beauty that can’t be found anywhere else.
In Shauna Niequist’s book, “Cold Tangerines”, she talks about the tough times we go through. The dark places in our soul where we have to ask the hard questions about ourselves.
“I have found a strange beauty in the darkness, one I’ve never seen, a slower, subtler beauty, like how an old woman’s skin is more telling and rich than a teenage girl’s, how a storm can make you feel more deep emotion than a sunny day ever did.”
This is the process that started for me a month ago. Life was going to change. I don’t want this to come across as overly dramatic — although it feels like I’m already headed down that path. Diabetes is manageable. There are plenty of people who have worse changes going on in their lives. Things that they didn’t ask for and are out of their control. I am blessed to know that I can at least partially control the outcome of my diagnosis. But the point, I believe, is the same. There is a darkness that all of us have to go through at one time or another. In the midst of it, when it’s right over top of you, it can be noisy and scary as the sky throws down water that pounds on your skin and bolts of lightning flash out of nowhere. But when you can find that place of contentment — be it in a field while you’re still getting wet or huddled under an overpass on the side of the road — you realize that this particular storm — this piece of darkness — is the beginning of a new day. A new understanding of how life may be different, but can still be not only good but better.
I’m finding that contentment. It’s not here completely. But I’m finding my way.