The 25th Ebenezer
So, over the past month I’ve been counting down the days to my 25th birthday.
Generally when you think of a birthday, you think of a large group of people celebrating the year their friend had that has passed and celebrating the next year to come.
Only I don’t want to celebrate.
What I mean by that is, this past year has been really hard. There’s been some moments of pure joy, victory, friendship, kindness, and love, but there has been a lot of darkness, pain, loneliness, sorrow, and brokenness. I’ve had to realize how very real my limits are and try to reconcile myself with that. In a lot of ways I am grieving the life I thought I’d be having.
So all of this is kinda dark. But it’s your birthday Hilary, let it go for 24 hours, right?
Well, what I do to celebrate my birthday is limited by what my body will allow me to do.
I’ll summarize it all by saying that I have widespread pain in every single joint and every single muscle in my body.
On a good day the pain is a 4-5 and on a bad day it’s a 7-10.
4-5 means I can probably do something involving standing or walking for up to 3 hours without causing extreme pain but then the rest of the day I am sitting, laying down or sleeping.
7-10 means curling into a ball in my bed, listening to The Chariot, crying, and praying for the pain to end.
This has been my life since the beginning of April.
It’s hard to be hitting this mark in my life because I remember when my sister was turning 25 and it felt like she was gaining footing in life and was walking confidently into adulthood. I foolishly compare myself to those around me and selfishly am jealous of the struggles my friends face.
I want to be worried about getting enough hours at work and studying diligently to gain the grades that will allow me to pursue what I want to but instead as I write this, I am praying that I can finish typing out what I need to before the pain reaches climax and I have to curl into a ball and give in.
I’ve been thinking about life a lot lately. I’ve dealt with a lot of depression this year and many times found myself praying for death. But eventually I realized that as selfishly as I wanted to pray for it, I could no longer do so.
I’m a big sister. Not by blood, but a big sister nevertheless.
In life we find people and we love them enough that at a certain point we feel certain that we would die for them, take a bullet for them, and take their pain if we could.
And though that is an honorable feeling and statement, for many it is a hollow one.
It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience. -Julius Caesar
My sacrifice is to live for the people that I love. To suffer for love. To suffer for my little sisters. To suffer for my parents. To suffer for my family. To suffer for my friends. To endure.
And I’ve found something that makes the endurance beautiful. What if the pain that I now know is preparing me to be able to speak to someone else’s pain in the future? What if God has given me the pain I now have so that He can redeem it in being able to pass on some of the strength I’ve gained to another who is waning?
I’ve seen it happen before. God has redeemed pain in my life that I never would have thought He could have by the sharing of pain, excessive crying, vulnerability, and the deepening of a friendship I feel sure will last our entire lives.
Pain is a uniting force. At some point in our lives we’ll have all experienced it.
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these. - George Washington Carver
So I was talking to my mom, I love my mom, about how I didn’t really feel like celebrating anything and she said that instead of viewing it as a celebration I could view it as an Ebenezer. An Ebenezer is a reminder of God’s presence.
God’s presence in my life is marked on every wall of my heart. I’ve scribbled my pleading into it’s walls and beat my fists against the vessels pushing life through my body. God has taken my hands in His and let me cry into His shoulder until the wee hours of the morning.
An Ebenezer.
I like it.
It’s been so hard. It’s been more than I thought it would be in so many ways. My little sisters, hugs from my mom, texting with friends, kindness in small ways, loving notes, beautiful words, listening ears, and very present help in all this trouble; all of these are a part of this 25th Ebenezer.
This is my Ebenezer, my testament to what He’s done.
Happy Ebenezer Hilary(me).
Yours sincerely,
The Undefeated
