thankful thursday

I want you to know that I am sick of my nest. I would have never imagined that could happen because I love, love, LOVE nesting. Through all of my back pain last year, my nest was my refuge. Every day while I was struggling to stay at work, I would literally count the hours until I could come back to my nest. It was the only way I was ever truly pain free.

I can't escape the pain now. The nest doesn't take it away. The things that I entertained myself with for all those hours - all those computer games - I can't sit long enough to play. I can't focus on anything. The position that always made things comfortable with my back - hurts as bad as anything else.

And it's Thankful Thursday.
I haven't given up on going to work today. I've been up since about 3am with an upset stomach which hurts but not as bad as it's hurt in the past week or two. The problem is that every time I go to the bathroom I have to use a squirt bottle to clean up - just like after having a baby.
I'm thinking... if I pack the squirt bottle off to work with me... it just might work, at least for a few hours.
Since I'm in the back office now, I will be closer to the bathroom.
I think that a little return to normal life will do a lot for my mental well being.
Even if I'm not yet ten feet tall and bullet proof.
Even if I'm a little slower.
I've been afraid, not just of the pain, but of not being good enough at what I do to handle our competitive office setting.
It feels like a huge risk, but I have to take it. I have to risk failure. Crazy, isn't it?
When I first moved here to the mountains from Jacksonville, I was so broken. I was shocked to hear a new co-worker describe me as self-confident. I had zero confidence in myself but what I did have was a ton of God's grace and a lot of people praying for me and a determination to make a life here.
At some point over the last year I stopped living my life here. It hurt too bad. It hurt to move. It hurt to sit. It was easier (I thought) to check out and hide here in the nest than to risk pain.
Are you seeing my dilemma here? I've spent a year running away from pain... tucking myself into a smaller and smaller corner to try to avoid pain and now there's this new pain that never goes away no matter what I do. It will. This is an acute situation that will heal, eventually. That healing hasn't happened in the time frame that I gave it but it happen. But for now, until that happens, exactly what do I do with myself? What happens when you can't escape the pain?
You find a way to live your life in SPITE OF the pain.
I have less confidence than I had when I moved here but I have an even stronger testimony of how God works in SPITE OF us.
I don't know what lies ahead today. I'm supposed to move into a new office but I'm not cleared to lift anything yet.
I'm going to get a shower and pray.
I'm going to try to sit a bit and see if I can - right now it's painful but yesterday I ended up with a good hour or two that wasn't uncomfortable.
I'm going to push myself beyond what's comfortable, step beyond what I know I can do, stop hiding from the pain and take a risk.
Happy Thursday, y'all.