Photo by Charles Williams

By Sarah D. Park

“If anything crazy happens, you’ll call me, okay?”

“You got it. So I’m off the meds completely? You’re sure?”

“For now.”

In the 14 years since I had been diagnosed with lupus, there have only been three times I’ve ever been completely off meds.

#1 – I received prayer at a highly charismatic church and “I see water washing over you” was spoken over me. In faith, my family believed God had done something in me and I stopped taking meds. Two months and a few bald spots later, I went back on them again.

#2 – Mom had heard through a friend of a church member of a cousin that there was a miraculous acupuncturist in Irvine. Someone even flew over from Canada to regularly receive treatment from him. For a year under his care, I became a pescatarian (read: identity crisis for a carnivorous Korean) and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Cue my legs retaining water, bloating my feet to a size that couldn’t fit my shoes anymore, and I retreated back to Western medicine.

And now today. #3.

I’ve slowly tapered off taking Prednisone, then Plaquenil, Cellcept (mycophenolate if you want to save money by buying generic), that scary time I had to self-inject Acthar, and lastly, Lisinopril. I am finally rid of these unwelcome house guests! And good riddance to the cocktail of side effects that have quietly run me through a gauntlet of physical, mental and emotional challenges.

For the fortunate majority of people who have dabbled in short-term sickness, there is rarely a fear of the next time. Once fully recovered, any wails of existential crisis are swiftly forgotten in the bustle of life — you are once again invincible and life careens on.

My day-to-day norm has been illness rather than health. I hear third time’s a charm, and I hope I’m more prepared for what it means to adjust to health this round. The thing is that I’m not used to it.

No more excuses

“Because I’m sick” is the panacea of all excuses. No one questions it, and there’s the bonus of sympathy and perhaps free food of the comforting variety. To a unanimous acceptance, being lazy is transformed into being restful, and Netflix is not an escape but a mandate. I am but a victim of circumstances beyond my control — what’s a girl to do?

In health, sickness isn’t stopping me anymore. It’s just me. I’m responsible for living in that reality now. It turns out, laziness is actually just laziness; unfulfilled potential feels better as a lofty dream than as a hard tool in my hands. The capacity spent bemoaning my condition is freed up, and I have to face how God has made me and what I’m going to do about it.

Squinting

Yet pain or illness is often inconveniently accompanied by a shortsightedness in the present. This hurts now. This is hard now. I don’t want to think about tomorrow. In order to not continue living in fear or dread of the future, to more soberly see my life and the options in it, I squint. Really.

I used to wake up every morning, asking God, “Please. Let today be worth living.” I would search and squint, looking as hard as I could to find something that made that day worthwhile. Just make it work: thrift stores, Jamba Juice oatmeal, kale, gospel songs in my key. Dare I say, I remember those days more vividly than the days I live now.

Gratitude is a dogged endeavor to consciously see with clarity, and when done without compromise, it loosens the clenches that suffering has on my attention to the present. As I adjust to health, I get to dream again into the future. Squinting shows me what is possible and good even in a bed-ridden existence, and thereby how much more is possible and great when I’m walking around.

Hope

I don’t have to live a life accommodating my sickness anymore. Prior to today, hope was so incremental. It’s exhausting to go up constantly for prayer and come back to my seat in the thick of God’s silence.

But in the aftermath of the Lenten season, I’m realizing that God has a hope that is the kind I don’t know what to do with because it’s not a hope I tried to wrought from my own hands. It was just given to me. Jesus is a hope that lasts for eternity and eternity started when He died for me. I am going to live a life as someone who was saved from something. From sickness, from sin, from death. I get to live. Truth is, I’ve been living. The doctor just confirmed what God had already started and completed in me.

So. Here’s to your health, and mine. Starting now.

Sarah D. Park is a managing editor at INHERITANCE magazine, a freelance writer and a member of Ekko Church. To her delight, most of the time, these positions are conduits for her to press an exposed nerve in the status quo.