This is what Tess and I did today. Its not all that singular in itself... nearly every day we go outside together to embrace nature and each other. It is a particularly good example of how we manage our pain and our lives as two disabled people, and unlike most things we do, it provided a pretty picture. That's what makes it a suitable subject for a blog post.
(You need to understand that scrabble is about the most romantic thing we can do in public and not get arrested. We took scrabble on our honeymoon- we have the pictures to prove it! 
)
)Our original plan was to take our scrabble game and go to a state park which is just 5 miles away. We go there as often as we can, however today it wasn't possible. I was in no shape to drive, and Tess was only going to get in a car were it taking her to the E.R. So rather than give up on our planned date, we improvised, and this was the result. We are fortunate enough to live with my mother whose flower gardens are extensive and beautiful. Even when we can't drive somewhere, the yard is beautiful, and always provides us the opportunity to feast on the beauty of God's creation. (You can't see it in this picture, but the yard is bordered by two creeks, it really is idyllic.)
That's the moral of the story for anyone who is facing the challenge of living with disability- don't let the challenges of life overcome your ability to live it. What ever it takes, find some way to embrace and express your core self. Tess and I happen to be scrabble fanatics and nature lovers, so by means of a card table and chairs and my mother's flower gardens, we were able to have our nature/scrabble date. It didn't go exactly as planned, but it happened.
Being disabled calls for a lot of ingenuity and creativity. What is easy for "normal" people can be a nearly insurmountable challenge. None the less, its worth surmounting it. Little victories are still victories, and you need these to survive and even thrive.
I have so many blessings and advantages in my life as a disabled person. I have my wife who loves and understands me thoroughly, who is also disabled- so my misery always has company. I have my mother's beautiful yard to go out and be in, take pictures, do some light yard work even. I have my camera, and I'm fortunate that my fibrofog is rarely so thick as to interfere with my ability to use it.
When I was first diagnosed with fibromyalgia almost a year ago, I started the blog "theartofsuffering.blog.com" in order to encourage other suffers to use art as therapy and as a means of expressing themselves. Well, art is not just a static thing like a picture or a painting, sometimes there is an art to how you go about living. Encouraging others to practice that art is the point of this post.
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