Turn the Page

     I'm tired.  Nothing new there.  But I'm tired of being sad.  I'm tired of mourning the life I used to have.  I got my start of the year school letter in the mail the other day by mistake.  When I opened it and realized what it was, it hurt so badly, I had to gasp and hold on the stair railing.  You see, I am NOT starting school August, since I had to leave due to RA complications in November.  I sat down, cried a little, no tears, it hurt to much for tears.  And my heart ached.     Sometime later, I realized, hey this is my life now.  I refuse to let RA define my life.  I am NOT a RA person, I am a person with RA.  I am a swimmer, a quilter, a reader, an Episcopalian, a wife, and a mother.  I am also someone who happens to have the chronic disease of RA.  I refuse to let it be the defining identity of my life.     As I look over all the pages of my life, each page has had challenges and blessings.  When I was a child, I loved waking up every day.  I awoke with a bubble of excitement in my chest, knowing something fantastic was going to happen.  Maybe I would read a good book, or eat a perfectly ripe strawberry out of the garden, maybe I would play "war" with the boy next door.  Whatever happened I knew it would be wonderful.  I knew there would be challenges too.  How to eat supper without getting the giggles and snorting water out my nose, how to play the "be quiet game"(I was and still am sure this is the stupidest game adults ever forced on children!), how to get along with a very bossy older sister and a very spoiled younger one.  But it was my life as a child and it was the page I was on.     Now, the page of my teaching is over.  Yes, it is a little sad.  But it is time to move on.  I've had the wonderful blessing of having my 25 year old daughter home with me for the last year.  She spent a year in China and now was home for a year.  How much of those blessings have I missed because I kept flipping the page back to look at the teaching page?  How many precious moments of this page of life are gone and I never noticed because I was busy being sad?      Well, I'm done and I'm on a new page in my life.  Today when my daughter gets up, we are going to the movies.  As bad as my RA has been is this a good idea?  Who knows?  I'll have fun and take a nap when i get home!  I plan to order buttery popcorn and lick the salt off my fingers.  I will drink an icy pepsi and maybe even be really wild and buy a box of junior mints.  I will let the waxy chocolate dissolve in my mouth until I get to the smooth white, minty center.  I will see how many I can eat without biting them.  Then I will throw a whole handful in my mouth at once and crunch them for a head lifting mint burst.  And on the way home, feeling a little nauseous, we will discuss the film at length, debating it's artistic merits.     And you know what?  It will be good, because this is the page that I am on now.