Tuesday, May 9, 2017

CF Awareness Month Day 9 - Greatest Milestone & Biggest Challenge


I think my greatest "milestone" at this point in life is taking a look back on my last decade of life and feeling proud at my accomplishments despite having CF.  I've had the opportunity to do a lot of awesome things, some of which are awesome in their own right, and some of which are awesome mostly because of the life expectancy that was slapped on me when I was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness at two years old.

In the last ten years, I've: graduated from the college I always wanted to go to (and worked hard to get into!); studied abroad for a summer; held a good-paying, full-time job (where I met my future husband); traveled to lots of exciting places around the world; married a wonderful, funny, more-supportive-than-I-could-ever-have-hoped-for man; purchased two homes, both of which were/are in a neighborhood I love living in; attended and graduated law school; passed the bar exam; landed my dream job as a lawyer; turned 30; and found waaaaaaaaay too many gray hairs on my head due to my advancing age. 😂

That doesn't mean these last ten years have been all bubbles and daisies - there have been many difficult seasons, tears, disappointments, setbacks, hard work, etc.  But I think that's part of what's made these accomplishments so worthwhile.  I guess the "milestone" I see in all this is just that, up until recent months, I can see a normal progression of life - hard work, seeing that hard work pay off, love, getting older, always moving forward.  That feels impressive when science said I should've been dead at 14.

Now, my biggest challenge lies before me.  My health has fallen far in the last year.  I'm scrambling desperately to get it back up.  I still want to have a family with my sweet husband, more than almost anything.  And I want to be healthy enough to enjoy that family for a long, long time.  But it's going to take a lot of work.  HARD work.  And discipline.  And prayer.  And hope.

The Lord has been my joy and my strength through many hard times before, and I'm so grateful I have so many wonderful blessings to look back on in this last ten years to remind me of His goodness and constancy.  Whatever the next ten years bring as I take on this new biggest challenge of gaining back lost lung function and health, I know that He is with me and it will be an adventure, as always. 😊

3 comments:

  1. I am really enjoying reading your posts. It makes me want to join in (I only got through day 10 when I did it a few years ago). Where did you find the list of topics? It is hard to find the complete list!

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    1. Hi there! You should totally join in with me!! I never found an official list for all 31 days, so I've actually just been stealing the images from your blog and from Colleen's blog at Live.Laugh.Love.Breathe, haha! 😂 It looks like she got through all 31 days back in 2013, so I've been reading through hers and swiping the pics - hopefully you guys don't mind!

      I hope you're able to jump in and post some of these too! I love reading about how similar yet different all of our experiences are 😊

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    2. I am sure we stole them from someone else's blog when we wrote ours! I need to go back and read Colleen's 31 days of May. I am impressed she did all of them! My goal is to do some of them before the month is over!!

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