Flat-On-My-Back-Sciatic-Blues {Five Minute Friday} ⋆ A Delightful Glow

A year ago, I was flat on my back and then flat on my face.

Literally.

Lower back pain that kept bothering me and continued to get worse and then erupted into sciatic pain down my leg and into my foot.

And if I were going to choose a color to represent this haze of days, well, Blue, of course.

Sunny yellow couldn’t do. Vibrant red, one of my favorite colors, doesn’t catch it. Rich, graceful purple ~ no. A vibrant lime. Huh-uh. Nothing felt vibrant at the time.

Blue can be calming. Blue also represents feeling down. When I think of haze, I think of bluish tones.

A year ago, I felt awash with tones of blue all running together. Yet, there were yellow linings sketched around the edges and bouncing and reflecting and coloring throughout.

It’s been on my mind a lot. This past year has held a lot for me.

I want to remember. I don’t want to forget. There are moments I won’t ever forget.

It grew me in compassion for suffering people and people plagued with debilitating diseases that do not change and worsen over time. My heart aches at all the suffering there is. My efforts may not feel like they put a drop in any of it. But every effort counts and multiplies just like grains of sand form a seashore.

It is the yellow in the blue.

I don’t know if the people who blessed us felt like what they did counted as much. It mattered a lot to me. To my family.

The kindness of other people literally poured out on us. The soup my friend brought that I still think of and how good it tasted and I ate it for breakfast and for lunch. My brother and my brother-in-law grilling nearby and my family able to drop over and eat and bring back leftovers. The gratefulness I felt to have my family fed and cared for because of the willingness of others to share of their time and their groceries and drop off food at our door.

The thankfulness I felt again and again for a comfortable place to live and to be, even when I couldn’t get at all comfortable.

The thankfulness I felt for doctors and medicine and the hope I had that I would get better.

And such heartfelt gratitude that in it all, no matter what happened, God was there. God was good. God saw me. God saw my family. God KNEW our concerns. He’d been there way before these events ever started happening in our lives.

So, Blue.

But blue is beautiful. I’m a lover of color and there aren’t many I do not like.

And lessons are lingering for me from those days of blue. I’ve felt the whispers of stillness, of patience, of waiting, of simply trusting, of letting go, of gratitude upon gratitude, of praise.

There are times when my heart is just so full and I don’t feel there are words to express or to explain it to anyone else. Sometimes there is no way of fully understanding unless you’ve hiked the very path. It just can’t be fully visualized or comprehended unless you’ve really seen it with your own eyes.

Red glows forth better now than yesterday. I love better now because of pain.

Yellow splashes brilliantly. Thankfulness for kindness brought my way because of pain.

Royal, kingly purple underneath it all representing my KING. My Redeemer.

And the blue has become breathtakingly beautiful as the Master Artist has brushed and touched and dabbed and filled in places with colors of all kinds.