I asked a friend, Nancy, to respond to this question and also to describe some of her daily challenges:
The “uneventful everyday” is a mixed blessing when caring for a person with a chronic illness, in my case caring for a person with Parkinson ’s disease (PD). One person described living with PD was like trying to drive with the brakes on.
After I'd been out of commission for a few months, my pastor made a passing reference to "these chronic conditions." I corrected him—my condition wasn't chronic, it was just slow to abate. Now, five years on, I still don't know what to call my dis-ease and wonder whether I will ever feel “normal” again. But my dictionary defines chronic as "persisting for a long time," and there's no denying it's been a long time.
If I resist the word "chronic," I hesitate to claim "pain" as the problem. I've told doctors often that I don't really have pain. Rather, various discomforts and malfunctions, sometimes manageable, sometimes incapacitating, have wreaked havoc with my life and expectations.
Confronting God Loss and grief are everywhere in the landscape of our lives. There is nothing in human life to...
