Last year I could barely muster the desire to do the DPP. I was definitely riding on the energy of all of the awesome Project participants who were eager to get started. This year is different. While my margins for a new project feel insanely minimal, my enthusiasm for a Facebook full of Christmas-y pictures is very high indeed. I. am. ready. I’m ready for Christmas cookies. I’m ready for lights. I’m ready for Jesus—O come, o come, Emmanuel!
This year has been one of the darkest of my entire life and I imagine it’s the same for most of you. Very few of us have considered a pandemic before 2020. We’ve never been so concerned about germs in our lives. I now own masks for almost every season and I’m more concerned about toilet paper than ever before, despite having plenty to take care of my family’s needs. I’m forcing Vitamin D and Vitamin C on my kid at every turn and, oh yeah, forgetting to throw a little Zinc in there, too. I’m missing potluck meals at church like you wouldn’t believe, and I will never ever ever get used to not being able to hug the people I love when I see them in public. We don’t even do fake arm hugs in the air anymore; 2020 has pounded that out of us.
But all is not lost. No, many of us are seeing the light creep in through the cracks in our lives. Joy finds its way in. And in the darkness it might be true that joy is more obvious than ever as well. There is sweetness in a family walk around the block. A back patio fire pit can still bring loved ones together. A waffle outside a restaurant’s doors can taste especially delicious, and supporting local businesses feels like a treat rather than a chore. Saying hello to more neighbors, greeting each other’s dogs. Hanging Christmas lights early to light up the dark nights. Snuggling close to your love for a basement date with cheese and crackers and Netflix isn’t the same as a night on the town but it is GOOD.
My cousin passed away yesterday. She would’ve turned 33 this month, and typing about her in the past tense feels utterly surreal.
Paula was born when I was ten years old. I must have been hoping she’d be born on my early December birthday, but she chose to make her arrival in November. She was the first child born to my Uncle Tim and Aunt Jan, both of whom I loved very much, and I was profoundly excited. Though I had loved on dollies my whole life, I never slept with a stuffed animal until someone gave me a small teddy bear for my 10th birthday. I named her Paula. That Paula resides in my closet. My cousin Paula now rests, her spirit is at home with her Lord and Creator.
Paula was vivacious and thoughtful in turns. She had a sense of humor that cracked me up. It was whip smart and hilarious and could touch on any cultural reference. I didn’t always understand the actual punchline, but if Paula was throwing down the joke it was for sure snarky and funny.
Paula had such an openness to her that children loved her. My daughter Livia especially loved being around Paula because she was so much FUN. I want to text Paula right now, demand that she still lives, that a cruel joke was played yesterday, and then laugh about the dumb moments we shared together. Paula witnessed our dog Shiloh snarfing down a snack from the coffee table only to literally spit it out when my husband Jeremy (his Alpha) came down the stairs. A dog spitting out a goodie? I’ve never seen it happen before and never will again, but it happened when Paula was staying with us for a holiday and it made her and me laugh over and over again.
Paula introduced me to new music. She was open with me about her struggles and her love for her Savior and desire for a closer walk with Him. Once she knew that chili and cinnamon rolls were a THING here in the Midwest she never got over it, insisting that it was a super nasty combination. She was wrong, but that’s okay. ;)
Paula carried the intelligence of her dad and the compassion of her mom throughout her 32 years. She loved her family. She loved her pets. She loved her friends and particularly cherished her years playing ultimate frisbee. She loved her church, and she especially loved children.
Paula, I have loved you since the moment I knew you were a wee person in your mother’s womb and I shall love you into eternity. How grateful I am that I will see you in heaven, in perfect wholeness and at perfect peace. But for now, I miss you like nothing else. You are irreplaceable and one-of-a-kind. No one can take your place in my heart.
The clock silently slipped past midnight and revealed a new date on my phone as I caught up on social media before falling asleep. November 14, it read, and I felt the time shift from 25 years as a type 1 diabetic to 26. Twenty-six. Twenty-six years ago I was the same age that my daughter is now. Sixteen. Junior year at Southeast High School. I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing: singing, acting, joining clubs, spending time with friends, taking challenging courses, and plotting an accolades list that would get me into the college of my choosing. At the time I felt like type 1 diabetes destroyed my world. And to be fair, it did for awhile. I traded a week of school just prior to Thanksgiving break for a week at the hospital, learning about syringes and counting carbs and low blood sugar reactions and the way high blood sugars would cause dramatic complications. I cried a lot. I mean, a lot a lot. Diabetes was not on my to-do list. Back in school I felt like a teetering toddler, getting my bearings and figuring out how to live a new life in a body that didn’t really look any different. I could fit in there. But at the many doctor’s appointments and trainings at Children’s Hospital in Omaha, I was a drippy, angry, sad mess of a teenager that had just been given a giant curveball in life.
Over the past 26 years diabetics and non-diabetics alike have asked the question, “What’s good about diabetes?” That question made me rage. NOTHING, I said for many years. And still, I feel that deep in my soul. Diabetes is a mess-up. It’s a stain, a mistake, a tragic fall within the human body where my very own autoimmune system has betrayed me. In that sense, there is nothing good about the whole shebang.
But here I am, 42 years old. A productive member of the community I live in. A wife. A mom. A woman who has loved other people’s children and who strives to love others well. And you know what I see so clearly today? Type 1 diabetes has made me who I am.
Okay, so let’s not get dramatic about this. I believe God is sovereign over all things and that he knew T1 would be part of my story. Joni Eareckson Tada in her autobiography Joni refers to our lives as masterpiece paintings on a stretched out canvas, only we can see just a little bit of that canvas at a time. My story is a beautiful one. It is a particular one. And so so so very much of who I am today began with a diagnosis of diabetes on Monday, November 14, 1994. Other than my childhood moves across the country for my dad’s work in hospitals, diabetes was THE thing that began shifting me from someone who expected the world to go her way to someone who empathized deeply with others in pain.
Diabetes changed me.
For so long I was dead set on putting diabetes last on my to-do list. I ran the race of life and pursued my goals. I married my love at a young age and finished college while he worked through grad school. I proudly earned a teaching degree. I continued a life in ministry, in both paid and unpaid positions, and learned about the way the church is uniquely equipped to serve the body and soul as it follows Christ’s leadership. Meanwhile I was inconvenienced almost constantly by diabetes. I didn’t always have money to deal with the unscheduled ways diabetes wreaks havoc on a life. By forgetting to fill prescriptions early I learned that kind pharmacists can be the most blessed people to walk the face of this earth. I learned that normal people activities like walking the hot pavement of an amusement park in the middle of the summer revealed my abnormal need to consume sugar to avoid passing out. I had to eat when I didn’t want to and skip eating when I was super hungry. All par for the course for a diabetic. I had to drop almost $100 on a vial of insulin as a very poor 23 year old after my prescribed bottle got too hot in the cab of our moving van. I missed a ski trip with my youth group girls in order to visit an ER after puking all night, and I very memorably got diagnosed with diabetes ketoacidosis (DKA) after years of putting diabetes in a low position of importance. DKA will kill a person, and that was the closest I’ve come to death in this race so far. It scared the tar out of my young daughter, and though it wasn’t a turning point in my self care, it was the beginning of the curve towards giving diabetes the attention it needed.
As much as I long to ignore diabetes, I cannot. And now T1 is receiving the attention it deserves from me. Others might do woodworking, or be the DM for Dungeons & Dragons. Some might join knitting clubs and others might run marathons. I do diabetes. And I do a host of other things. You would not believe the strength of the T1 diabetes community! These people are warriors and can do any of the activities I mentioned above. But for all of us, diabetes requires a gigantic portion of our brains. The good news is that I am trying to take great care of myself these days and I treat T1 like a hobby. I’ve learned to stop and eat when my body needs to be fed. For years I stopped and fed my babies first, always sticking to their timetables and doing what their little bodies needed, as moms do. But now it’s me time. I change out my infusion sets every few days. I recharge and tape the CGM on my arm every 7 days. I pause to check my glucose at home, in bed, in the aisles of Target, before I drive. And I put juice boxes and fruit snacks on my Walmart shopping list and then gently remind my kid not to drink the last of the apple juices just in case I need them. She’s polished off the Sprites and Diet Sprites for my sick day regimens, so those will go back on the grocery list next week!
I take care of myself. And by doing this, I’ve learned that all of us human beings are limited creatures. If I had to pick one word for the year I would pick LIMITED.
Last year my friend Emily and I led a bible study group through Jen Wilkin’s None Like Him and In His Image. One of the biggest take-homes I got from those books is that God is so very other. He is not like us, no… we are like him, in teeny tiny shining ways. I struggle with my limited nature all the time. It’s a way that I want to be God (instead of being content to just try to be like him). I want to be good at ALL THE THINGS. I want to learn ALL THE THINGS. I admire someone and want to be that part of them I admire. I don’t like having limits and boundaries and things that get in my way. I. am. limited.
Diabetes is one of the things that limits me.
But guess what? If I think about it for more than two seconds I know that you have limits too. We all do. We are all born into limited bodies. We all have limited amounts of time to enjoy each day. We have limited skillsets and limited gifts and when it comes to you I embrace that! I love what YOU bring to the table, but I struggle with being content with my own limitations.
All that being said, I’m coming into my own in my early 40’s. I’m glad I have eyes to see how my limits sometimes chafe me, because in seeing this dilemma, I know it won’t rule over me forever. I’m beginning to value and appreciate my boundaries as a human in the way I value and appreciate others. Case in point: being grateful for diabetes. (Yes, even typing that sentence made me throw up in my mouth a little.) I’m not exactly grateful for the brokenness of it, but I’m grateful for how it has shaped me. I love others better because of type 1 diabetes. I can empathize with others’ plights because of diabetes. I can mourn in your hospital room over the baby who never opened his eyes, I can cry on the phone over your diagnosis, I can pray for you in a different way and tend to your lows and highs because I, too, have been there.
The T1 diabetes diagnosis when I was 16 didn’t reroute my life, it set me on course to be who I was meant to be. And for that I am thankful.
Getting to see this sweet family in the middle of Covid isolation was such a treat for me! It’s a special joy to see these little girls grow and develop personalities and preferences. Thanks for spending some time in the autumn sun with me, Alex and Kat!
