Tomorrow is a Lovely Day

I'm normally a pretty focused person. When I was young, I could sit quietly and play with the same toy for hours. My mom would walk downstairs to where I was playing and I would have an entire village of Barbies, a zoo of every toy animal I owned, or all my baby dolls sitting in a row on the couch. I was content to play alone, just me, my imagination, and whatever toy I was obsessed with that day. I could stay in that one room, in that one spot on the floor all day. (...well until my leg popped out of place and I burst into tears that is.) In school I never had issues with paying attention in class. I was that one kid that had her hand up for every question, the one who volunteered to help with everything, the one who often was referred to as the teacher's pet. I have never had any issues focusing until recently... I never had any problems until EDS began to rule my life. Now, I get distracted quite frequently. Not because I'm not interested or can't pay attention, but because the pain my body feels is too great to even notice anything else.

I first noticed this problem in class. A relatively boring class, I will say. I realized that having to pop out my pain medicine during class, rotating and squirming because I am so uncomfortable, and just wishing the instructor would let us out early so I could move around and hopefully relieve my pain were all signs that I may have something else on my mind. Sometimes I would completely miss what the teacher said and just hope that it wasn't important. Other times I gave up on even trying and let my body drift off to sleep while my professor forced us to watch a video (Yes, VHS) completely in Spanish. So what, I hurt, I'm tired, I deal with it.

I deal with until I realize that it affects my learning about the Bible, my worship, and my time with God. A few weeks ago in Church, I hurt. Badly. Every part of my body ached, my stomach felt like World War Three was happening inside it, my head felt as though a heavy metal band were having a concert on my brain, and my joints felt 80 years older than they are. When I stood to sing, I got dizzy. When I closed my eyes to pray, I felt like I could fall asleep. When I tried to take notes during the sermon, my head was in a fog and could only feel my pain. Needless to say, I wasn't getting much out of the church service that day.

I never have pain free days. I have days that I don't hurt as badly. I have days where I work through the pain. I have days where I try to be normal. But some days I just can't. Some days the pain gets to me. Some days I get down. Some days I just can't ignore what my body is going through. Some days I just cry and crawl back into bed. Some days my pain distracts me from the world. Some days all I can do is look forward to tomorrow.

But that's the nice thing about life; we always have tomorrow. With tomorrow comes a new sunrise, a new opportunity, a new hope, a new love, a new joy, and a new smile. Sometimes I live for tomorrow.

"It's a lovely day tomorrow, 

tomorrow is a lovely day,

Come and feast your tear-dimmed eyes 

on tomorrow's clear blue skies,

If today your heart is weary, 

if every little thing looks gray,

Just forget your troubles and learn to say, 

Tomorrow is a lovely day."