Running with a limp

People often ask how I'm doing. I wish that were an easy question to answer. I try so hard to think of a simple answer, but there just isn't one. Grief is so complicated.

I liken it to a terrible injury.

Imagine you get into a traumatic accident. You are taken to the hospital, where you rushed into emergency surgery in an attempt to save your life. After hours of surgery, the prognosis seems quite good. However, the doctors were forced to replace a few of your shattered bones with metal rods.

For the first few weeks the pain is unbearable. The most simple tasks send radiating pain throughout your entire body.

As time goes on, you are able to do more. You attend physical therapy sessions and slowly learn to perform the tasks that once came so easily to you. Soon, you are walking again.

Eventually, the day comes when you are able to run again. You may even go on to run a marathon. Time has made your body stronger, despite your injury.

But no matter how many marathons you may go on to run, you will still ache. After all, you lost bones. You nearly lost your life.

On some days, the ache will creep back in. Perhaps you landed on your leg wrong, or maybe the pain was caused by a simple change in the weather. On some days you are crushed with the realization that you can't do some of the things that you used to do. Sometimes you can predict when the ache will come and other days the pain blindsides you.

The dull ache will always be there and on some days will feel like a sharp pain. Sure, you may dance. You may go on to run 100 marathons. You may compete in the Olympics. But it won't be without the ache until you reach heaven.

And that's okay.

I was never promised a pain free life. I was never promised to have it easy. I could have absolutely nothing on this earth, but if I have Jesus, I have everything. When I step into eternity, nothing else will matter.

That is not to say that it doesn't hurt. Or that it doesn't ache. I simply mean that I am running again, in both the literal and figurative sense. I am able to function. I am doing the things I once enjoyed.

But I am changed to the core. In some ways I'm the same girl that I've always been, yet on the other hand I'm a completely different person than I was a year ago.  I will be "missing bones" and living with a limp until the day that I breathe my last breath on this earth.

But I'm still moving forward. I'm still running with a limp and clinging on to hope.