You Are Not Your Illness

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When I was first “initiated” into the chronic illness community with my Lyme disease diagnosis, I started to notice a cute little nickname for people like me: “Lymies.” While I understood the lighthearted solidarity that was meant by the term, it always rubbed me wrong somehow. I had Lyme, yes, and I certainly wasn’t ashamed to own my lot in life. Still, I couldn’t call myself a Lymie. It felt like reducing my identity to my illness, making it the center of my existence.

But as I recovered, I found that despite my refusing the Lymie label, my illness had subtly encroached on my identity. I no longer knew how to live a normal life. Now that fatigue and pain were not in the forefront of my daily existence, I had to relearn what it meant to be myself. Lyme disease stripped my identity to bare bones and forced me to rebuild it, a process I’m not sure I could have done without my faith. Even in the darkest moments when I felt like my illness was robbing me of everything that made me who I was, that was the one thing that stayed constant through it all, the one thing bigger than Lyme that I could hold on to. 

I don’t think there’s necessarily any harm in using terms like “Lymie.” But it does get me thinking about the many ways we can turn our circumstances into an identity that controls our life. Those of us who struggle with chronic illness cannot avoid the fact that our diagnosis (or lack thereof) is a significant part of our lives. We can’t afford to turn a blind eye to reality. Yet if this reality becomes all-consuming, we begin to lose the sense of who we are apart from all the pain. And even if we have the determination to fight our way out of the physical pain, we can be left emotionally lost and lifeless. Strangely, getting well can be as difficult as being sick.

If you are in the midst of a chronic illness journey, have you asked yourself what defines you? Do you find yourself adopting labels, making excuses, and accepting illness as normal for you? Let me remind you, you are not your Lyme disease. You are not your fibromyalgia. You are not your depression. You are not anything that disrupts the whole person God made you to become. Instead of a victim mindset that surrenders to your circumstances, you can choose active acceptance. Look your illness in the eye, acknowledge it, and resolve not to let it tell you who you are. Find your constant identity that is bigger than the limitations of your pain. Sick or well, you have a life to live. Make the most of it!


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