The Power of Perseverance

Do you have any idea how hard it is to clean with one arm? And the left arm, at that. Friday morning I woke up, after having tossed and turned all night with a fever, unable to lift my right arm more than a couple of inches. And that, with a lot of pain! I had gotten two vaccinations the day before-- flu and pneumonia-- and I was having a pretty negative reaction to the pneumonia shot. Maybe I should have waited until I was completely well and off my antibiotics to get them, but I am not known for my patience. So I was a real mess when I went in to work at the church-- staggering, aching all over, and probably a little disheveled.

I really didn’t want to go. I know-- I am not the first person to go into work feeling bad. People do it every day. I can attest to that fact because of the toilets I clean (yes, that is exactly what I mean), and from the cold medicines and Kleenex on people’s desks. But cleaning requires quite a bit of physical energy and endurance as it is. Especially when it come to hefting big, heavy trash bags when one of your arms is out of commission! And that leads me to the power of perseverance.

I have not always been known for my stick-to-itiveness. I have started and quit more pursuits than I care to admit to. Now, I am not really talking about some past romantic relationships here-- those, I should have walked away from long before I did-- in fact, before I got married. But that aside, I have jumped into situations impulsively (or maybe out of desperation), and quickly given up when things got too hard (or too boring). Take helicopter flight training in the Army: having left it when I was 18, partly because of my bad knees, and mostly because I was terrified to give a public speech, I always regretted my chicken-hearted decision. That is probably what propelled me, 4 years ago, to sign up for a private flight school in Las Vegas. It felt like a second chance to follow my dream of being a pilot. I’m sure it was also influenced by my desperation to get away from an awful situation in Illinois, and reclaim some of my spirit that was in jeopardy of being destroyed permanently. Well, long story short, I could not physically handle the flying with my fibromyalgia, but I did get to fly! It was an opportune time to leave anyway, because the school went belly-up within 6 months and all my class-mates were defrauded out of their full tuition (yes, I lost a substantial amount, also). For once I was thankful I did not stick to it.

Since then, having lost much in the economic turmoil of 2008, I have finally learned to put aside my comfort, and even any feelings of entitlement, and plug away-- no matter how tiring, boring, humbling, and inconsequential my actions seem. The fatigue is overwhelming at times, and it seems I will forever chip away at my debt, but it feels good to be doing whatever I can for myself.

So on Saturday night (I still was pretty incapacitated), when my step-son asked if I felt bad, and wondered if I was going to work, I said, “Well, yeah! There isn’t anyone else to clean the church and have it ready for tomorrow morning’s services.” He looked pretty surprised, and didn’t seem to to think it was fair. As I have said many times in the past, life isn’t fair. And as I had told him just the previous week when he didn’t want to study, sometimes (a lot of times) you have to do things you don’t feel like doing. I left my nice, clean church at 11:30 that night, feeling pretty satisfied with myself (and much better than the night before when I left with tears in my eyes from the misery). By the time I arrived for the late service on Sunday morning, you could no longer see clean carpet through all the donut sprinkles. And there were coffee spills all over the tile. Oh well. Such is the circle of cleaning. And if that doesn’t teach perseverance, I don’t know what does.