By Lois Hewitt

This age we live in where people post their entire life on social media may be a bit out of control. But I just watched one video that really hit home.

The woman in the video lives with a chronic illness and it showed some of the struggles she deals with every single day.

No energy / loads of energy
Being fine / not being fine
Wanting to shower / too weak to shower
Crazy activity / crawling to bed to “just lay down for a minute”
Binge eating / thinking I never want to eat again
Brain fog / extreme clarity
Being clumsy / being more clumsy

And so much more….

I thought it was just me.  Struggling every day, sometimes every hour, with opposite ends of energy levels. 

One minute I’m crying because I’m so blessed, then I’m crying because “my life isn’t working” and then I’m just crying for no reason. 

One minute I’m cleaning everything, the next I can’t even move.

This has been my life for years, now it’s amplified. I thought it was only me.  But when I opened my eyes to the lives around me, I realized that it’s not isolated. It’s not just a few. So many lovely people deal with all kinds of chronic illnesses everyday.

“Well you certainly don’t look sick”  is one of the worst things to say.  I may look okay on the outside but inside I’m fighting to stand up straight.  Or someone may be struggling to breathe or not fall down or any number of things.

My eyes were opened today that clinging onto your own sanity due to illness is at epidemic proportions.

Many times it is those things you cannot see.  The things that maybe cannot be treated or diagnosed are the things that weigh heaviest on a person.

Jesus calls us to love our neighbors (translated to mean everyone).  We do not have the ability to see inside another person’s soul, to see their pain, past or present.  We cannot see what hurts physically or emotionally.  We cannot see from the outside what is happening on the inside.

I guess that’s why Jesus called us to that because we all suffer. We all hurt. We all have our cross to bear.  Kindness helps soothe the pain.  Gentleness eases the anxiety. Caring bring healing.

I used to think it was just me who suffered in silence. Thus my world just revolved around me.  Now, thanks to my new reality of cancer, I see it’s not just me. It’s all of us who are struggling.

So as Jesus calls us to be kind and loving, today I will try to be more like Him.  To see others pain as I move through my own.  To care for others when I need caring myself.

Maybe that bigger world view will actually ease my own struggles as I take my mind off my own woes and look at someone else’s situation.

We are all in this crazy world together. Facing things that scare and confuse us. We all struggle at one time or another. 

Being kind and gentle to one another is a beautiful gift to give. It not only touches the other person’s soul, it heals our own.

I guess Jesus knew what He was talking about when He called us to love one another.  Today I will love like Jesus.