Losing the Labels, While Embracing Our Identity

"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God." - Romans 15:7 (NIV)

I looked over to the right of where I was sitting on the equestrian center's metal bleachers, as we waited for our trail ride to begin. My daughter's Bible study leader was talking to several other women, but I couldn't hear them. Instead, they were communicating with their hands. 

I felt a little left out and jealous that I couldn't be a part of the conversation, because I didn't know sign language, but at the same time I admired them. The very fact they were here at the women's retreat told me that their deafness wasn't going to hold them back from experiencing all that God had for them, and it wasn't going to stop them from having relationships with hearing people, either. 

I asked them, through the interpreter, if I could have a picture with them. I said I wanted to send it to my daughter, whose favorite show is Switched at Birth, a television series about a deaf community. They smiled and obliged, but it got me thinking.

These women had come to the conference with an interpreter, like anyone who spoke another language would, and yet we kept referring to them as members of our church's deaf community. Don't get me wrong, the references were good and kind and filled with gratitude for having these special ladies at the retreat. But I wondered for a moment, "What if they don't like being labeled as the deaf community?"

Giving Thanks for What I Don't Have

“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
I Thessalonians 5:18

“Keep an attitude of gratitude.” I’ve heard that phrase over and over again through the years. For me, it’s what I tell myself when I’m going through a hard time. It reminds me to find the little things to be thankful for, especially when the big things in my life are looming over me like a scary monster about to chew me up and spit me out.

An attitude of gratitude has gotten me through a lot in life. In every situation, from my divorce to my father’s death, I have tried to find the silver lining in the dark clouds. “Well, at least it’s amicable,” I mused about the breakup of my marriage; and “He’s no longer suffering” is what I said when my father passed after a two-year battle with cancer. This “silver lining” approach has become so ingrained in me that my closest friends know that every trial I tell them about will be followed up with the statement “but it could be worse…”

Yes, it could be worse, couldn’t it? It’s easy to sit on our pity pot when times are tough; and yet, when you step outside yourself, you find that even with your troubles, there is often someone else hurting a whole lot more. In the “old days” when I was growing up, parents would remind us of this, even if it were to just tell us to eat all the food on our plates. “Think about the starving children in Africa,” they would say. Suddenly we appreciated that we had food at all, even if it wasn’t our favorite dish.

I am reminded of this today because I find myself surrounded by friends and family members for whom it really is worse. While I sit here typing this blog, I am looking out the window at a beautiful sunny day, thinking fondly about the walk I took in the park with a friend this morning and the laughter we shared over coffee. Sure, I have multiple chronic illnesses and a torn rotator cuff that isn’t quite healed. It can be difficult to sleep and sometimes hurts to get dressed in the morning. I don’t like that.

But then I think about a friend whose child is struggling with depression, to the point of suicidal thoughts. Another friend is sitting at the hospital waiting for the doctor to give him a prognosis on his son suffering from traumatic brain injury due to an accident. One family member’s RA treatment isn’t working and she is facing knee replacement, while another family member is preparing for cancer surgery and chemo.

Having a thankful heart, however, is not the same as giving thanks. Giving thanks is an active verb, not a passive condition. God wants our gratitude, but he also wants action behind it.

Familial Guilt: Is It My Fault? Is It Theirs?

"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?" – John 9:2

I received a call from a dear family friend the other day. I hadn’t heard from her in a while and she needed to talk. After we got through a few minutes of small talk, she said she had to share something important with me: her teenage daughter had been diagnosed with glaucoma.

It began with a straightforward statement and explanation of the doctor’s finding. But then, mid-sentence, she broke down in tears.

“I feel so awful!” she cried. “The doctor says it’s genetic. It’s my fault!”

I listened as my sweet friend poured out her heart to me, so broken that her own genetic makeup – including several chronic illnesses – had been passed down to the next generation.

Familial guilt is all too common…and all too painful.

Just ask the parents of a child who has gone astray. No matter what they may have done right, their question is always “Where did we go wrong?” We blame ourselves when our perfect little babies don’t stay so perfect.

Don't Hide Your Light

“Men do not light a lamp and put it under a basket. They put it on a table so it gives light to all in the house. – Matthew 5:15 (NLT)

As I walked towards the recreation building, off to the side of the church, I noticed the sky. It had turned dark and I knew that it wouldn’t be long before it would open up and begin pouring buckets. There had been so much flooding in the area recently, and I knew that more storms might mean I wouldn’t get home. It didn’t matter, though. I needed to be there.

I entered the building, and an older lady greeted me with a smile. “Are you here to pray, or for the other meeting?” I told her I was there to pray, and she directed me to a table of women who already had their heads bowed.

I was new to the church and didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that an hour beforehand, I had dropped my daughter off at her school bus stop, waited until she was on the bus safely, and then went home and sobbed. It was her first day of middle school, a day we had planned for all summer. Despite her nervousness, it was a day we were excited about. But it was not off to a good start.

Finding Perfection in the Imperfect

How can a mere mortal presume to stand up to God?  How can an ordinary person pretend to be guiltless? Why, even the moon has its flaws, even the stars aren’t perfect in God’s eyes – Job 25:4-5

Two years ago, when I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, I would never have imagined myself saying the words that came out of my mouth last weekend.

“I am already living my dream, every day!”

I was standing in front of a table at a Christian writers conference, where an author and consultant was doing a prize drawing. All I had to do in order to enter was to write down my “big dream” on the paper covering the table.

I explained that I would have to think on it. As we chatted, I mentioned that I had several chronic illnesses, including RA. The consultant immediately jumped on it.

“Well, I’m sure that’s probably your big dream – to be healed!”

Even to my own surprise, I found myself replying, “Actually, no. That isn’t.”

If you’re a spoonie (someone who suffers from a chronic illness) like me, you’re probably sitting there with a look of disbelief on your face, as you read what I just wrote.

Releasing the Ghosts of the Past

“No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.” Philippians 3:13 (NLT)

I hadn’t looked at my high school yearbooks in years. There was no need. That was then. This is now. I had moved on. Or so I thought.

As I reached up into the living room cabinet and took one down, I could feel the memories flooding back. Opening the cover, I could hear the spine crackling, as if the book was an ancient artifact, fragile from years of storage.

I felt a sense of dread come over me. Sure, there were some good times back then, but buried in that book were memories that haunted me right down to the core of my soul. These were not just a few bad moments. These were the kinds of ghosts that I had spent years trying to exorcise from my mind, the kinds that would keep me locked up in a prison of guilt and shame, remorse and regret.

I’m Not the Same as I Was, or Will Be

"You can make many plans, but the Lord's purpose will prevail." - Proverbs 19:21

This is the second article on rheumatoid disease (RD/RA/rheumatoid arthritis) written for Rheumatoid Awareness Day. It is centered on RD Fact #3: Rheumatoid disease manifests itself differently in each person and even in the same person over time.

As anyone with chronic illness will tell you, comparison is not a game you want to play.

I looked around the rheumatologist’s waiting room at the patients around me, sizing up the different situations and noting my reactions.

Young woman with a walker. How sad. I wonder if she had juvenile arthritis or if her disease is just that aggressive?

Middle-aged man with a cane. Hmmm…I wonder what his story is. Knee or hip?

Attractive lady in a wheelchair. Wow. She’s not that young, but not very old, either. Too young to be disabled, for sure.

Suited up business man. He looks just fine to me. Is he really a patient or is he a pharmaceutical rep? 

The fact is, with an illness like rheumatoid disease, we never know what the real story is with others. Looks can be deceiving. 

Even in my own life, I can look at my Facebook page and if you only looked at my photos, you would never know I had a chronic, disabling disease. They show my life’s joys, its triumphs, not the pain I may be experiencing that very same day.


Take my favorite wedding day photo, for example. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Health Central featured my RA story on its front page and used the picture I had sent them of me and my husband with our kayak paddles. There I am, smiling away, looking like I don’t have a care in the world! 

If you take the time to read my story, though, you’ll find that it wasn’t quite the fairytale it looks. The joints in my hands were so swollen that my husband almost couldn’t get the ring on my finger during the wedding ceremony! For days before and after, my feet hurt too bad to walk across the hardwood floor of my bedroom without slippers. And the fatigue was getting severe too, and cut our activities short on our weekend “mini-moon” trip just a short time after our wedding.

That was my life before diagnosis. It got worse before it got better, but once I finally agreed to treatment with a DMARD (disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug), life became good again. If you listen to the audio portion of my story, you’ll hear how I was thrilled to not get sick from the drugs (yay for success with Plaquenil!) and how I felt “great” after a few months of treatment and physical therapy for both my shoulder and knee. 

I can talk about my great trip to Canada last summer, which was indeed made possible by the successful treatment of my rheumatoid disease. I can even show you pictures of me hiking and kayaking! I was never so happy to be able to take that vacation with my husband. But did I mention the ice therapy on my knee every night and the pulley I brought with me to keep my shoulder recovery going? That I am still having issues with my shoulders (mostly the other one now) and that knee? And that my big toe joint hurt so bad on Christmas Day that my husband had to do 100% of the dinner cleanup because I couldn’t stand any longer and was downing anti-inflammatories and soaking my foot in Epsom salts?

I am always going to consider my current life (as it is today) “great” as compared to my life with untreated rheumatoid arthritis. Even with my occasional flares of fatigue and painful joints, there really is no comparison. I’m also grateful that my current state of disease activity is mild compared to that of some other people. But RA is a progressive disease and there is no cure. It’s not uncommon for a medication to work for a little while and then just stop working. The immune system is complicated. There is no such thing as a straight line of recovery when it comes to autoimmune diseases like RA. You take nothing for granted. Every day is different.


I don’t know what my life will look like in the future. I hope it is as good as it is today. Who knows, perhaps medical research will find a cure and I will find remission. But even if that never happens, or I get worse, I know I can trust that I am held in the palm of the One who will never let me go. I can trust that God is good and so are His plans for me. I can find joy, even on the painful days, if I look hard enough for it. I won’t assume my life is better or worse than others, remembering that looks can be deceiving. In that, I can find gratitude and peace. 

I am not the same as I was, nor will I be the same tomorrow. Just for today, I will be OK.

If you have a chronic illness, how much do you compare your situation to that of others? Do you linger in the past or fear the future, or can you rest in the present?

I'm Not the Same as I Was, or Will Be originally appeared on Spring Sight blog, by Linda W. Perkins. Click here for more posts. Get even more encouragement by following me on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. 

Many of Spring Sight's posts can also be found each week on Grace Esedeke's EncourageMe Monday, Crystal Storms' #IntentionalTuesday,  Kelly Balarie's #RaRaLinkUp, Holly Barrett's Testimony Tuesday, Arabah Joy's Grace & Truth, Holley Gerth's Coffee for Your Heart,  and Woman to Woman's Word Filled Wednesday.

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