“My Bones are in Agony”

 “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one. Lock it up safe in a casket or coffin…but in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will begin to change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable” (C.S. Lewis). 

I hate that quote. C.S. Lewis is my favorite author, because his words are so powerful; unfortunately, I don’t often take them to heart. Instead, they are pretty words on a page that should mean something to me, but don’t. 

“To love is to be vulnerable.” Seriously, I hate that. It wasn’t until I learned what it meant to be an 8 (the “Challenger”) on the Enneagram that I fully understood why this bothered me so much; I honestly thought I was broken, and I was really embarrassed by how I viewed vulnerability. My husband, Ethan, is a 9 (the “Peacemaker”), and he has a really difficult time having “tough” conversations. I love conflict - it’s intimacy to me. It brings the deep things to the surface, and as a result we become closer. But his 9 resists the “tough” conversations, and I called him out on that a few nights ago. His response? 

“You like to say that I don’t like hard conversations, but you don’t like them either, Taylor.” 

I fought my way out of that argument (just like you’d expect an 8 to do), but last night I felt very convicted by it. The truth is that he was right - I only like the tough conversations that are easy for me. But the “tough” ones that require vulnerability on my part? Oh, hell no! But that conviction has weighed heavily on my heart. After wrestling with it, I decided to share something I haven’t written about in a while, because it makes me feel very weak:

I’m sick. I’ve been sick for over half of my life, and I’ll probably be sick until God takes me Home. 

I’ve never shared a picture like the picture you see below. It might look posed, but I took that picture in the middle of a total breakdown last Friday. I was in so much pain, and nothing was helping. I was curled in a ball, sobbing, with my whole body feeling like it was being crushed. The fibromyalgia and arthritis were so intense that I was shaking; my heart rate and blood pressure were through the roof. In my pain, I begged God to just take me Home. I didn’t want to be here anymore - the pain was too intense. I don’t know how to live the rest of my life like this. 

David said it so much better than I ever could: 

“Heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. How long, O Lord, until you restore me? I am worn out from sobbing. All night I flood my bed with weeping, drenching it with tears. My vision is blurred with grief; my eyes are worn out” (Psalm 6:2b-3, 6-7a, NLT). 

It’s really, really hard living with chronic illness. It’s hard looking normal, hearing, “but you don’t look sick,” over and over again. It’s hard when I have to cancel a sub job or postpone a baking order, because I feel like I’ve failed. It’s hard to cancel on plans, because I feel like a disappointment. I have to put a wall around my heart when I ask for prayers, because it makes me feel weak. When I have days like I had on Friday, it feels like I’ve done something wrong, as if I’m being punished for something. I don’t want to talk about it, because I feel weak when I do. 

But I don’t want my heart to change; I don’t want it to become unbreakable, impenetrable, or irredeemable. So instead, I fought my fears and I shared this today. To love is to be vulnerable. I hope post this can help you feel safe to be vulnerable, too.