Have you met those hearty types who insist “anyone can” do stuff? (Usually things that they are personally good at, and therefore assume everybody is the same.)
“Of course you can!” Hmm. I beg to differ.
I’m glad I’m not an alpaca. It may be handy to chew your own knee and scratch an ear with a convenient hoof, but I can’t do that. I’ve tried. My knee and my teeth don’t meet up even when I’m sitting in a chair! And the last time my “hoof” reached my ear, I was about six months old.
I have a friend who is adept at Tai Chi and enthusiastically suggests people do the movements as good exercise. I have a problem with that: it hurts too much, and my balance is not good when I’m doing normal things (let alone contortions and stretching).
Physiotherapists on the Pain Management Course tried to help us learn Tai Chi, confident it would do us good. Several people tried it and found it helpful: it is supposedly the gentlest and easiest form of exercise there is. However, fibromyalgia has never read the textbooks on Tai Chi, and despite the professional optimism “anyone can” there are a good number of fibro patients who physically CAN’T.
“But it would do you good if you only tried it…”
I have two replies to that comment. My first is unprintable and unusable in polite company. The second may well involve a suggestion of forcefully planting a size 11 boot in a place that will make YOU walk funny.
“Anyone can paint a picture. Anyone can learn the piano. Anyone can learn a foreign language…” Trust me on this- it isn’t true. And that needn’t be a problem. Anyone MAY be able to learn some skills with paint. Some folks I know should be legally obliged NEVER to go near a piano! As for learning a language… I wish, I really do.
We are different; we’re good at different things. I love to encourage people to explore and develop their potential- but many of us never quite manage to fulfil our promise/potential. That is especially true if we are pressured into the wrong route by listening to wrong assumptions.
Developing fibromyalgia has literally been a pain. More correctly, many chronic pains and various weaknesses. Paired with a touch of arthritis, changed body chemistry, and a few other complaints, fibro is a crash course in learning to adjust and adapt to a new and limited way of life. It has some positives: I am better able to empathise with the struggles and suffering of others. Fibro has also made me reset expectations of what I should reasonable attempt in life! (I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, not even the insistent “hearty types” of unrealistic optimism and “gung ho” attitudes. See earlier comment about size 11 boots...)
Paul wrote about the place of suffering in life and the value it can have as we share honest love in community. There are not easy answers for every situation, and no “one size fits all” remedy to sickness and trouble. Nonetheless, as Paul discovered, there can be redemption of the pain and loss as we learn to comfort and console others. God is walking with us- and He knows what we can and can’t do. Help is offered by the Lord, and within the Kingdom community, but real life always gives real bruises.
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort." (2 Corinthians 1 v3-7)
The Reflectionary 