Accustomed, Usual and Habitual…..or Retro?


rotary phoneI’m so used to holding a remote and getting something accomplished – unlocking the car, turning the channel on the TV, getting into my garage – it all becomes a part of my efficiency. Not a huge problem, until it becomes a part of my expectations.

I have been known to point my car remote at my front door fully expecting it to unlock or beep to lock. I have been known to wonder why they haven’t created a remote to start and stop the microwave. I recognize that we are in the digital age and don’t have to wait impatiently for the rotary phone anymore, but my expectations remain for everything to be equally efficient and technologically accessible.

We can Facebook message someone across the world. We can instanteously text message anywhere in the world. I have to wonder, has this instant access made us to build unreasonable expectations?

I could point my car remote at my kids all day, but they still won’t love broccoli. I cannot zap away their need to change and grow and be in conflict with us as parents or their friends at school. My kids will grow up in plenty of time, why rush it. What is so wrong the the pace of a rotary phone kind of life?

In this digital-have-anything-get-anything-fast culture, how have those expectations affected our health?

I know in my journey through Lyme, I had never before fought a serious health battle of this magnitude, so I didn’t think I had any expectations. But didn’t I?

I expected people to be compassionate. I expected doctors to understand and be able to fix it. I expected to not “miss a beat” in my life and miss out on everything going on around me. I expected friends and family to stick by me and get what I was going through. I expected to get better, faster. I expected everything I tried to work and make my body respond faster and easier to healing. I expected after a period of hardship for it to be DONE.

Can any of you relate? The habitual trend in our society is for the valley to be short or not deep. For the essential truth to be found under the first rock we seek to find it. For the usual suspect be exactly what the first doctor was looking for and the first treatment works.

Overcoming chronic lyme disease feels like walking into a whole town full of rotary phones, beta visions, and Commodore 64s on dial up. Nothing happens as expected and surprises lurk under every corner we peer under. Good surprises and some incognito as setbacks.

That is why Lyme community support groups are popping up all over the country and online. This is a hard battle and can be long and tear down every single expectation you may have had about your health or about the healthcare industry. But brace yourself, the rebuilt self on this side of the storm is more glorious, more forgiving, more gracious, more grateful, more resilient and more understanding.

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:19)

Blessings,

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