Setbacks. Ugh. They are impossible little tyrants that pounce on you from out of nowhere. They get in the way. They slow down progress. They actually have the power to just randomly drop in your perfectly normal day and literally stop everything.

Like a cold, stone wall right in your face.

As nurses, we work hard to protect our patients from setbacks. In an oversimplified nutshell, that’s what we do. That’s why we come to work.

Sometimes, though, no matter what, setbacks happen, anyways. Then it is our job to help frightened, discouraged patients to fight back. It is our job to lend them strength, point them to hope, and offer comfort through our nursing interventions.

Sometimes this works, and progress is restored. Sometimes nothing works. Then it becomes our job to help them accept their setback … to teach them to push forward … keep pressing on … anyways.

But, no matter what, setbacks are hard to accept. We all have them. We do. I have personally spent the last several days stuck at home struggling through my own little sucker-punch, and I can tell you right now that I personally am not a fan of this. Not. A. Fan.

I want to be out helping people. Not staring down a stone wall. Again.

My journey with Lupus is teaching me all about this in a very real way. It has transformed my life into an unpredictable blur of highs and lows, stops and starts, progress and setbacks. Living this way is not easy, and there are times when it’s definitely not fun.

But it is what it is. It’s written into my story. It’s mine.

It was given to me by a loving God who has always given me everything I need, exactly when I’ve needed it.

Although it’s scary every time I’m stopped like this, I also can’t help but be thankful. Because it has changed everything. It’s changed what’s important. It’s changed what I see. It’s changed how I see.  Indeed, it has.

We all have setbacks – we can’t choose not to. But we can choose what we do with them.

I’ve learned that giving them a greater purpose helps – it shrinks them somehow. By magnifying the beauty of God’s greater, perfect plan, the ugliness of any setback is diminished right back down to it’s rightful size.

Of nothing.

So, hopefully, with all this in mind, I’ll be taking my setbacks with me back into that hospital tomorrow. With renewed strength. Ideally, it will be to help someone avoid their own setback. I pray.

Or perhaps, instead I’ll be using my own setbacks to teach someone else how to accept their own … how to keep pushing forward … how to keep pressing on … anyways. With renewed strength. Only God knows. Praise be.

Thanks for growing with me. ❤

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)