Am I Lyme or is Lyme in Me?

The question is this. Have you had Lyme and been sick so long, you feel like its a permanent appendage or a part of you? Do you feel like you are becoming Lyme with a capital L and losing your first name and identity? Who were you before this even started, or is it to hard to remember anymore? Does that version of normal seem like a fuzzy dream?

Jeff Manion wrote a great book called the Land Between. This state of chronic illness in Lyme, forgetting who you were before and not yet getting to be who the healed you is yet – is a great example of the Land Between. It is a chasm of between the old not sick you and the new not sick you.

Do you have a choice to be anything else in your land between than just a Lyme patient? Can you be more than a sick person, depending on all those around you? Can you be you and still have Lyme? Can you be you and be chronically sick simultaneously?

Being you takes more effort than you think you can muster right now. You feel you only have room to heal and get healthy and fight this dog-goned thing. How do you find you in Lyme? How do you keep Lyme from becoming the only part of you that remains? How do not let Lyme eat away at the precious parts of your soul worth keeping?

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

The biggest challenge I faced was wondering what my identity was all wrapped up in before I got sick. Was my identity anchored to the eternal things that don’t fade and don’t get rocked and destroyed? Was my identity my job, my looks, my health, my work ethic, my children, my marriage, my friends, my church? Who was I before? Was I a person worth holding onto through the think and thin of Lyme?

I had to let God show me the parts of myself that were not eternal and not anchored and completely unhealthy and change them. Get rid of them. I had to allow myself to be refined. If this Lyme wasn’t going to make me a better person, then why fight my way through it? Just to be exactly the way I was before? What a waste of character building opportunity.

I had to allow myself to become more me. The me that God wanted to see and use and spend time with. The me that would be a better wife and mother and friend and sister and daughter and neighbor on the other side.

Lyme is not me. But I let Lyme change me. I believe in allowing Lyme the opportunity to alter and heal my spiritual and emotional self along with my physical self, I healed more fully and completely. I believe I am now the version of me that I allowed God through Lyme to make of me.

My identity is tied to God and his plan for my life.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)

Try looking at yourself in the mirror and asking out loud some of these tough questions. Look yourself in the eye and ask who you want to be after Lyme. What do you want your identity to be tied to?

Blessings and healing,

Janice Fairbairn – The Lyme Evangelist

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