press forward

youve-got-this

You’ve Got This!

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I’m grateful that there’s always hope…

I’m down in the trenches right now; wading through the waters and climbing up and down some rough terrain.  It gets discouraging in these spots.  When I’m here, I start to lose hope that I’m going to find the right answers and heal.  I question if the things I’m trying to do for healing are the right things and if I’m on the right road.  There are those moments when things seem to be improving; when I feel better for a while.  During those times I get so excited and have great hope that I’m moving forward in the right direction.  But then suddenly my body crashes.  I’m filled with pain and fatigue, and my stomach reacts to anything that I eat.  After this goes on for several days, the discouragement really sets in, and I start to allow myself to lose hope.

This is when I mentally pull myself back to the mountain peak where I have a clear view of the horizon.  I’m having to remind myself to do this again now.  I have to fight against the negative forces that are pulling me down.  I have to remind myself to keep pressing forward and not stay stuck in the quicksand, and to stay focused on the positive so that it can grow and I can hold on to hope.  I have to rely on the knot that is strong and keeps me going; to have faith that I will make it through. I’ve written about all of these things, and I truly believe in these principles and have seen them work for me many times before.  So now when the discouragement is here, I have to do some mental work- to put myself back to these places and really use these tools to help me continue on this rocky road toward my goal of a healthy and energetic body.

I know the journey is hard!  I know it gets so tiring to keep pushing through the challenges over and over again.  We have our moments of discouragement and moments when we wonder if the effort is even worth it.  I don’t understand the degree of what you may be going through or how severe your challenge may be, but I do know that it’s hard!  So I want to encourage you and encourage myself.  I’m standing at the sidelines cheering us on.  We can do this! Let’s think about our view of the horizon and remember how magnificent it is, and how possible it really is!  We’re going to get there; I just know it!!

You’ve got this!!

Photo by Tommy Lisbin on Unsplash

PRESS FORWARD

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I’m grateful for a better perspective…

This chronic illness journey is always full of ups and downs. Sometimes that’s in a physical sense, and sometimes it’s emotionally. A couple of years ago during one of my more emotional lows, I was really struggling every day with having a hopeful outlook that things were going to get better. I found myself in the habit of having the response, “I’m hanging in there!” I didn’t think much about it, and I used that phrase to myself and others for quite some time. Then one day it hit me that this phrase was actually pulling me down more than I had ever realized. This realization came as I was pondering on the phrase “Press Forward!” I have a heritage of pioneer ancestors who crossed the plains under very difficult circumstances in hopes for a new start and religious freedom. Their journey was long and hard, and they didn’t know for sure how long it would last or what was around the next corner. But they eventually made it! They did this by pressing forward one step at a time, even when it seemed almost unbearable.

I shared this with a friend of mine who has also gone through many years of chronic illness. We talked about the two different phrases, “hang in there” and “Press Forward”, and we compared the images these created.
“Hang in there” brought an image of a pile of quick sand, with us standing in the middle. Above our heads was a branch hanging over the quick sand extending out from a nearby tree. We were grasping the branch with both hands, not sinking in the quick sand, but just “hanging in there” in exhaustion. Not moving forward, not moving backward or going down; not moving at all. Just hanging. I thought of how exhausting it can be to have this illness, and how I was feeling so stuck in the emotions of just dealing with it and thinking of it over and over again. And in doing so, I wasn’t getting anywhere. In fact, I was actually slowly sinking, on an emotional level, without even realizing it.

Then an image came into my mind of “pressing forward”. I thought how the journey with my illness compared in a way to my pioneer ancestors and their journey. Their road was long and hard, yet they had a goal in mind. They used that goal to help them press forward and keep moving one step at a time, even when it was so hard and they wanted to give up. I thought about how hard my illness was and how I didn’t know what was around the next corner or if there was even an end in sight. But could I change my perspective and make the journey a little easier, with a little more purpose? Instead of it being so hard and just hanging there, could I at least move forward one little step at a time, despite how difficult it was? Could I create a place of hope where healing was possible; a place that I could move toward? I determined that I could! And that change of perspective has led me down a whole new path. It’s now a path toward healing, and one that is filled with hope and determination to get well. And all I did was change my phrase; my perspective. I’m no longer “hanging in there”, but I am “PRESSING FORWARD” every moment of every day. I still have plenty of very hard mountains to climb, but when it gets so hard that I just want to give up, I put the vision of “pressing forward” in my mind, and it helps me to keep putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward toward my goal of healing.