I am kind to all my illnesses. Instead of shutting them out, I tell them to come in and get warm by the fire. After all, we live in a house full of cracks and the wind is always blowing through it. We might as well sit together.
Sometimes this appalls me, and I wonder why I'm treating my weaknesses like guests. I think I should put them out like dogs and train them to be neither seen nor heard.
And sometimes this amazes me, and I think that it must be the source of everything about me that is truly beautiful.
I have decided that I would rather feel the wind on my face than be safely barricaded, and I would rather have fellowship with myself than be locked away in pieces. After all, I have been bludgeoned enough by my life; I need not add insult to injury.
And every once in a while, I get this glimpse of myself from some other, unearthly perspective. For one moment, I understand that my illnesses do not make me weak, though I am broken by them.
I see suddenly that I am a creature of dazzling light and all the light pours out of the cracks and all the life flows in and out of me freely, and I converse with God. He has made His home in my house.
And then it passes, and I am just a woman who bites her lips too much and never leaves the house and is too anxious to answer the phone when it rings, and doesn't wish to pretend otherwise.
