Josh and the kids went today to the waterpark. For Christmas my mother-in-law bought tickets for us all to go together when my sister-in-law’s family would be back this summer. She and her husband and two girls come up every summer for a week or two. After them being out at camp all week, I’d been a little concerned about the kids being out in the heat again all day. Thankfully today was a cooler day, with temperatures only reaching into the lower 80’s. Everybody is exhausted and sunburned, but they had a good time.

I didn’t feel well enough to go along. I’m currently in one of my bodily relapses where I hardly have energy for anything but to rest. I felt it starting on Thursday evening, was in bed most of yesterday, rested on the couch or in bed most of today, while occasionally getting up to switch the laundry. I actually haven’t felt right since the week of getting ready for camp, in that I haven’t felt like I ever completely had a chance to recover from the rock projects. I don’t even really feel like I’m doing much, yet I’m drained and depleted.

For my family this is normal now. I can’t do what I can’t do. I personally tend to grapple at times with how far I still am from my previous capacities. My dad made a comment last summer when he and my mom were visiting one weekend. It was an accomplishment that I had walked there to their camper, and I curled up on their couch and cried. He said, “Rebekah, it could take two years (emphasis his)”, and I thought, “Dear Lord, surely not.” My husband and daughter had figured a few weeks. Months had already been more like it.

But years were beyond my comprehension. He said something along the lines of not worrying about what other people think, or trying to explain it to people, but that this was going to be between me and God. Thinking about it today I hoped he was right, with no answers on when or what healing will be. “How long” is the age old question of the sufferer. One of the phrases that came back to me often in the beginning was “patient in affliction”, with the whole verse saying, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”