Confessions of a Muscle Affected by a Neuromuscular Disease

1. I will give you strong days and I will give you days full of fatigue when you will feel like I’ve strapped a 50 lb. weight to your arms.  I will never tell you in advance what kind of day tomorrow will be…it’s part of my charm.  I will teach you patience.
2. I will get weaker over time.  It will be scary when it happens because you’ll find, quite suddenly, that you can’t do something today quite the way you did it yesterday.  I will teach you acceptance.
3. You will wonder what I will take from you next (Eating?  Brushing your teeth?)  It is my secret.  I will teach you to surrender.
4. I will make you look awkward in public when I prevent you from reaching out to shake a stranger’s hand, or make your head flop from side-to-side as you cross over the grass in your wheelchair at the church picnic.  I will teach you humility.
5. I will make you long for things every mother should experience – braiding your daughter’s hair, wrapping your arms around her when she cries.  But I will teach you there are other gifts you can give your daughter besides the hum-drum, everyday ones any mother can give.

Most of all, you will not like me.  I don’t get to be your friend and see you embrace me with love and admiration.  I will make you struggle, I will hurt you and I will make your life very, very hard.  You will struggle every time you put on makeup or raise a fork to your mouth or get up out of bed.  I am not fun, and I don’t ask you to pretend to enjoy me.  But, you will learn that I am a chosen for you specifically by God.  You will do with me what you are meant to, and the lessons I teach, you will receive.  So you will take me, you will put up with me and, eventually, you will embrace me as part of you. 

Ultimately, you will become grateful for the person I make you into. 

Trust me…