50% worthless

I was asked recently if someone could interview me about me and my illness(Fibromyalgia) and if I had an angle for the interview. I'm still thinking about it, but one thing that kept going around my mind was how being only able to work 50% makes me feel less. It makes me feel 50% worthless. 50% less of a wife, a mother, a friend, a... anything or anyone. Because when I have worked 50%, I don't function normally the rest of the time, as long as I don't work - the rest of the time I need to recooperate, to rest, to be able to go back to work again. I sometimes feel I only have 10% of my life left. And it hurts.

I feel like the following sentence that I read on the internet: "I am a person who wants to do a lot of things trapped in a body of a person who wants to sleep alot".

It is like loosing someone, just that the someone is you. The one you used to be, the things you used to do, the things you thought you would do in the future. Like someone so eloquently said it is like

"not really living while silently wishing for death". 

And now I have to apologize for being very dark here, but it is what my darkness feels like. And I spend some time there. But. And there is a big BUT. I have a light that lifts me up. Again and again. Sometimes the light is extremely small and barely there, but I depend on it. And I am immensely grateful for it. I have the gospel in my life. I know that despite the darkness, the pain, the constant exhaustion, I am of worth, I have value.
I am reminded time and time again that I actually am of worth. No matter what I can or cannot do, I am of value. I am not worthless. Not 50%, not 10%. Because my worth does not depend on my performance. My heavenly Father loves me. Not because I do all the things he wants me to, because I don't. Not because I am perfect in any kind of way. Because I am not. But I am of worth just for being me. For being a child of God. And so are you. No matter what you think you are, you are a child of God and he loves you. No matter what. When you stop loving yourself, he loves you. Even when you forget he does.

I just watched an episode of Poirot and Agatha Christie really know how to say it. The following sentence uttered in English with a Belgian accent, was like balm for my soul:

There is nothing in the world so damaged 

that it cannot be repaired by the hand of the almighty God. 

I encourage you to know this, 

because without this certainty, we should all of us be mad.

So even in our darkest hours, we are loved, we are valued. Even if there is darkness, there also is light. I have made myself a note to look at to remind myself that some days are less dark. It reads like this:

Some days I can't, but some days I can! 

It is to remind me that yes, life sucks some times when I am ill, but sometimes it doesn't. And when the dark days come, I, and you, need to remember that good days also come. They both exist. We need hope. We need to appreciate the good in the middle of the dark. Because it is there. And we can be repaired. If not physically, then at least our souls can be repaired.
I am not saying that we always can look at the bright side of life(insert the Monthy Pyton whistling here), I certainly can't. I am just saying that sometimes we can. And those sometimes we need to cling to like crazy. Remind ourselves over and over again. We are of worth no matter what. We are loved no matter what. We are never alone.

I wish you the best in whatever circumstance that you're in. We are all in some kind of circumstance. Even if you consider yourself "normal". We all go through darkness in life. I mean, why would we come here anyway, if we could just surf through life? We are here to learn to deal with whatever we are given. We deal with it in many different ways, but we are still the same. We are brothers and sisters. We are of worth. We are loved.