I'm Not A Jealous Person But.....

I'm not a jealous person but on Friday I got a glimpse at the life I could've had. And for the first time in months, I cried over having lupus.

A life that meant I finished my communications degree and got a job as a journalist like I always dreamed of. That life meant by twenty five I would be on the top of my game with a guy and a car and all the things I thought would make me happy.

Life didn't turn out that way.

• At fourteen I had my first blackout while on vacation in Boston. I shrugged it off as a sign of tiredness and forgot all about it.
• At fifteen and in the middle of my exams, I realized it was that much more harder to concentrate and retain information.
• At sixteen after I was working for the Christmas vacation I had my first "real" scare and passed out on the stairs falling down the flight of stairs.
• By eighteen my episodes were so frequent that all notion of continuing my education was off the cards. I wanted to be well.
• At twenty-one family members thought I was faking and started making comments about my lack of educational continuation or a job. Nothing hurts more than the calls where persons are talking about you as if you are the scum under their shoes.
• Finally at twenty-five and after all the tests, multiple doctors and a lot of research, I presented with every simple of lupus that there is minus one.

It still stings when I see people succeed. I am not jealous that they have done well for themselves neither do I hold their ambition against them but in my heart I hold a bit of pain. Pain that has nothing to do with any physical ailment (although my days can be quite a test of faith) but instead nurses potential lost for the life I knew I was capable of having.

It hurts more knowing that on two attempts I couldn't complete my degree and that I had a wonderful internship that I enjoyed more than any other job I had in my life. It was a job that brought me joy yet it was marred with days of absence from a career I had wanted since I was a little girl.

Heavenly Father promises never to give us more than we can bear and to carry our crosses in time of need but here I am feeling more isolated than ever. Still in my darkest days, the reality of the illness that I will carry throughout my life continues to be a thorn in my side.

I remember reading an article by Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of The Twelve Apostles that said 'Enduring to the end requires faithfulness to the end, as in the case of Paul, who told Timothy, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith' (2 Timothy 4:7). In fact, enduring is one of the hardest lessons that I have learned that Anna aka Sister Fuller and I have butted heads about.

'How do we endure pain?'
That's the question I've always asked Anna aka Sister Fuller who has been a strong advocate of enduring all the things life throws at us. Sometimes on my sickest days when she comes to visit I always shudder at the thought of enduring sickness and trials with a smile plastered on my face. Although the Mormon Messages about enduring and hardship are inspirational sometimes in the depths of our own despair and anguish, we don't always want to listen. I didn't want to listen. I Ramona being of soundish mind DOESN'T ALWAYS WANT TO HEAR TO ENDURE ANYTHING. Yet, with all the missionary swagger that she could possess, Anna always tells me that I should push forward and endure and  that we need to go through hard things so that our testimony will grow.

So even though my patience wears thin at times and the physical pain is often sometimes too much to bear, I know Heavenly Father has a perfect plan for my life.

Hopefully its one without the side effects.