Courage (Reprise)

I'm going through a season of courage. It's not as great as it sounds. In fact, I don't feel courageous at all. I choose to be. And to be perfectly honest, sometimes courage feels just plain awful.

Lupus gives me a lot of opportunities to be courageous. Sometimes, I don't want to be. Sometimes, I wish I could just hide from the world. Sometimes I wish I could pretend that I don't have lupus and that my life was like how it was before. But that would be a lie. I do have lupus. This isn't life before lupus. This is life with lupus. And I choose courage because I don't want a pretend life. I want a real life. 

And that's what I'm dealing with right now. I've chosen to not just survive, but to live. Right now, my life is very hard and full of hard decisions. But I don't regret doing what is hard because I know that in the end, it will be worth it. I've learned to see past this moment. Past today. I've learned to see long. To see what matters most. I don't want to wake up twenty years from now and mourn what could have been. So I make hard choices. On some days, I mourn the life I used to have. Some days end in tears. But, it's okay because everyday,  I live. And twenty years from now, I will look back on today - pain and all - and know that it was worth it.