Do you remember that story about the girl who was stuck at the bottom of the well in the 80’s?  Fine.  I’ll stop pretending that I don’t remember her name.  It was Baby Jessica.  Don’t pretend you don’t remember Baby Jessica.

Well friends, today, we are going to address your Baby Jessica.  We all find ourselves at the bottom of a well from time to time, and usually, unlike Jessica, a mob of firemen, news reporters, cameras, and empathetic mothers are not rushing to our aide.

I’m going to, potentially, hit a nerve, especially with the chronic disease community, but I think it’s a nerve that has been left untouched and it needs a little stimulation.

So here it goes: There is a strong possibility that you are sick, that you are depressed, anxious, or not healing, because you forgot about you.

We do a fairly terrible job of protecting our own welfare.  We’ll stay up all night with our babies, work overtime for our boss, clean up shit after our dog, but we won’t even give ourselves twenty minutes a day to just be.

I branded my Instagram account and blog with the name, River + Quill, for various reasons.  The quill, for writing, which should be obvious, but the river part held something a little less literal. 

Yes, I live in a city on a river, but typically, at least once a year, it is the bearer of a dead body.  Not a particularly cozy meaning for a brand name.  I chose River, because because of the way it represents water: the flowing of it, the coming to it, and the flowing with it.

I know not all of you believe in a god, but I know most of us have a belief in something bigger than ourselves, so even if you’re not into the whole “scripture’ thing, just think of it as some amazing poetry with me for a second, would you?

Proverbs is a stunning book to read, because every time I do, I feel like I wander into a new part of the garden.

I went to a Christian school, so often times, after memorizing a verse and repeating it back, and then hearing it in chapel a bazillion different times, and then hearing it in church for 20 years after that, again and again and again, it starts to lose its luster.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, just think about words.

We use these letters, which make sounds, which connect together to make a bigger sequence of sounds, which means something?  So weird!  And yet, so absolutely amazing!!  More than that, we put together these sounds, to make words, that have meaning, and then we go even further, and connect the words together to make sentences and ah! My mind is blown.   And then we add punctuation, inflection, and use all of this linguistic magic to express all of the stuff we have going on in our heads and in our hearts in order to communicate to other people.  Then they use these same series of sounds to communicate back to us, what is happening inside of them, and friends, this is soooo much weirdness and beauty that we simply take for granted.

Words can just be words, and we can stop allowing them to seep into where they came from in the first place (inside of us).  Just the same, scripture can simply be words, or it can be poetry: A living language of love and life giving possibilities.  I really wish we would stop using it in defiance of our brothers and sisters and start using it to love them.

This verse I am about to share, from Proverbs, never meant a whole lot to me.  It sounded good, sure, but it was just a bunch of letters and sounds until an autoimmune disease tried to steal my life from me, and now it means everything.

It is from Proverbs 4:23 and says, “So above all, guard the affections of your heart, for they affect all that you are.  Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being for from there flows the wellspring of life.”

The affections of your heart “affect all that you are”.  All of it.  The emotional, AND the physical.  Friends, this is some good stuff.

Because we are talking about words and their deeper meaning, I thought I would go ahead and look one up.  Wellspring means, “an original and bountiful source of something”.  Also, “the head or source of a spring, stream, river, etc.; fountainhead.”.  You catching onto the whole river thing?  Wellspring is also defined literally as the place where the well springs, or where the water starts to flow after you have dug deep enough.  Thus, a well.  Thus, Baby Jessica.

Ok, so, this word, wellspring, means the very source that something comes from – the place where all the flowing of water begins. There is no river if the wellspring is dry. 

Friends, when I got sick, the wellspring was dry.  I didn’t think it was at the time.  I thought I was happy.  I had just had my third baby, and I thought everything was good until it was taken away by the pain.  But I wasn’t guarding the affections of my heart. I was giving all of me to everyone else.

I couldn’t give any less to them.  They were three tiny people that I loved and needed me to survive.  I loved being needed. But, I wasn’t giving myself time to breathe, time to hear my own thoughts, time to create, or time to be. I’m pretty sure this is why most mothers of young children are so worn out. 

Yeah, they got maybe three hours of interrupted sleep and are exhausted, but more than that, they have not been allowing themselves to be, even for a short amount of time and the wellspring of life is dry.  As Richard Rohr says, they are out of the “flow”.

If there is no wellspring from which the river flows, my friends, the river will run dry and we will suffer the consequences.

I confidently believe that many of us are stuck at the bottom of the well.  We’re just a bunch of Baby Jessicas with no hope in sight. When I did a little research to make sure my recollection of the Baby Jessica saga was correct, I found an image of the front page of a paper, which read, “Alive!”. 

What made Jessica’s story so incredible is that we all expected her not to make it, right?  More than two days in a well, and there’s no way she’s still alive, except she was.  We LOVE the Baby Jessica story, well because no-one wanted to see a baby die, but also, because it broke all the rules.

Within the chronic disease community, I see the tendency to accept the dried up well.  Our doctors tell us we’ll be sick forever, implied in the word “chronic” and all too often we accept it.

You can be sick, but still be alive!

I know that I am one of the lucky ones who has gone into a remission of sorts (I wouldn’t say total remission, because I still experience symptoms daily, but nothing that stops my world anymore).  I also know that hearing this, if you are in a place of pain, with no hope for improvement, it may make you a bit angry.  “It’s nice for you Callie, that you got better, but I wish I was better so much, and yet here I lay”.

Can I say something to all of you in that position?

I am so sorry.  

I love you.  

Your life still matters.  

You deserve to live.

The whole purpose of this blog was to be a place where you could be real about the raw emotion that comes with pain.  It’s ok to be scared and doubtful.  I still experience those feelings.

We can’t pretend we’re out of the well, when we’re in it. 

I want you to know, I am doing all I can to try to help you survive.  It’s not your fault that you are where you are, and it’s not your fault that you’re not getting better. I just want to give you permission to pay attention to something beyond the physical, as I found it helped me get beyond the physical pain, even when I was in it.

Take twenty minutes away from sleep tonight or tomorrow morning and pay attention, guard your affections!  Just be what you know you were called to be so that the wellspring flows with an abundance that takes you where you were always meant to be.

Maybe the pain will go away, or maybe it won’t, but at least you will be living in the truth of your existence.

It’s easy to think in absolutes and in future, long term goals.  My goals were often: healed, remission, pain free.  But then, every day that I woke up and I wasn’t healed, in remission, or pain free, I drew more within myself.  I died more and more each time this goal was not attained.

When I started living in the idea of “healing” and not “healed”, I felt the anxiety start to dissipate.  

Suddenly there wasn’t so much pressure to be better.  I didn’t have to face the constant question of “Why am I still in pain”?  That question often came from other people as well.

I accepted that the pain would be with me, even for the long haul.  However, I also decided to gift myself with the things I have mentioned.  I fed a part of myself that the pain couldn’t touch and I felt like a flipping bad ass for being able to be in a state of “healing” that my disease could no longer influence.  I think it was a sense of control which, as you know if you have a chronic disease, was something I had very little of.

If you are in any sort of pain, this is not the end of your story.  It’s just the beginning.  It may be difficult to see that now, but there is a purpose beyond your pain, or even because of it.  I don’t believe you are in pain for a reason, though.  I hate it. I wish I could pull you out of that well with everything in me.  Just promise me, friends, that you won’t give up hope, that you will live in “healing” and stop striving for healed.

Let yourself thrive in the affections of your heart; in something that your disease, your pain, your anxiety, your divorce, your addiction, your depression, or your suffering, has no admittance.  

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I’ll keep you up to date on new blog posts, as well as keep you on the inside loop of the progress of my upcoming book launch! Thanks friends!  

What are the affections of your heart??  Share with me below!  I would love to know!