“So after the stem cell transplant, when will I get back to normal?”
“Your bones still won’t be rebuilt,” said the doctor, “so you need to stay on this medication for a couple of years. Welcome to your new normal.”
My brother has cancer. That’s his new normal. He takes lots of drugs, and chemo. He’ll keep taking them.
Such is life, and so it goes, really for pretty much all of us.
What at first is shockingly foreign, must become a familiar traveling companion to us. We may not like it, but the new normal won’t go away just because we want it to. Inveterately along the way, there is no going back to an old normal.
We want to go back. We are wired for living in what we know, for nostalgia. We seem to have a thing for the familiar, a proclivity for the way it was, but reality has no such tie.
Reality marches on, with no sentiment. A wheelchair arrives at our door with no tears from the front walk.
Get used to it. It’s easier if you do. Life is an adaptation.
God is in this. Nothing surprises him but he constantly allows life to surprise us. The best thing to do with surprises of all kinds is to welcome them, to embrace them, to dance with them, to jump into them.
Just before you crash, lean forward, and shout, “Hallelujah!”
It’s more fun than cussing.
Thrive! 