Sometimes There's Only the Job

Today I found a new blog, Autographed Letter Signed. The piece, Sunday Soliloquy: Chicken Soup For The Motherless Daughter’s Soul, is so heartbreakingly lovely, it made me realize that I must write one of the posts that has been ruminating in my mind these past days.

There is so much I want to do. There are so many ways I want to participate in the great drama that God continues to unfold in our nation and our world. The time I spend in bed irritates me. Doing laundry on one day should not knock me out the next and the next. I should be able to go to a friend's birthday party and then get up and do something, anything, the next day. I want to be stronger than I am and I really haven't understood why I am so overwhelmingly fatigued. Then last Monday my doctor (who is really a wonderful doctor and among my favourite people) took a look at my bloodwork and said, "Hmm. Your kidneys are only functioning at 60%."

I am rather stupid about these things particularly since I decided to stop searching the internet for every word on every report. I have no way to put all that information in context and reading Lancet* is really no help. So he explained to me that kidneys are supposed to function at 90% or better and 60% wasn't good. He did tell me that they wouldn't think of rushing me to hospital until functioning was down to 20% but I was a bit preoccupied with that 60%. He instructed me to tell my rheumatologist that I have kidney disease associated with autoimmune disease.

I don't know if the disease can be treated, if functioning can be restored. (Well it can - but you know what I mean.) And of course, the internet is still no help. This kind of kidney problem is the most difficult to treat but who, besides a doctor, knows what that means. My rheumatologist will have all the information this week and hopefully, she will have more answers.

But I do understand why I am so much weaker, so overwhelmingly fatigued. Right now, my primary job is to be ill and so I shall do the best job I can. And when I can type out a few coherent paragraphs or twitter 140 characters that make sense, I shall.

To do the job, that's enough. I needn't define it - I can't define it. But when it presents itself, when it stares you in the face, when you know this is the job I must do, the only thing is to do it. And to be grateful that God trusts us so much. And maybe He'll have a different job for me next month.

*I think I have previously intimated my nerdiness. I understand a subscription to Lancet is absolute proof.

** Two friends have already offered me kidneys which is just so absolutely lovely but let's still hope I don't need them.