On Hiatus

In Bermuda? No,wish we were. Still pain free? No- In the hospital instead. Once again, I am being reminded that life can change in an instant. A week ago, I thought I would go to the ER to check out a problem I'd been having while I was actually having it. Here I am, a week later, still here and awaiting surgery. Our bodies are "fearfully and wonderfully made..." and it's a wonder that they work as well as they do.

The people who care for patients are grace-filled gifts of God. I admire their devoted service even in the midst of the hurricane. They were here and they stayed the night. One nurse convinced a friend from NC to come babysit the children while she tended to her responsibilities here. Medicine is a calling and I've seen commitment in every department. I have an opportunity to reflect back to them the goodness that I see.

My stay has been a blessing in that I have felt great love surrounding me at every turn. My wonderful Paul is my constant support as we share another one of life's adventures.

Rejoice always, says the Apostle Paul. When things aren't going well, that's hard, but there's love to be found in every circumstance, even if we have to supply it ourselves. That is something that changes the face of anything.

Pain Free

In getting up from the sofa to come to the computer and begin to write, I realized that the pain in my legs that I usually experience in that process, wasn't there. I had had an easy night, too, flipping over from side to side without having to gingerly push my body with aching leg muscles. I had walked up the stairs and hardly noticed the effort. For the last 15 hours, I have been pain free.

What a gift! Medicine is the tool, but God is the one who gives me the grace to be grateful for the respite. To those of us who have had a broken bone and been unable to use a limb, its eventual healing makes the miracle of motion very obvious. To me, to be able to put one foot in front of the other without noticing the effort makes me aware of how amazing locomotion actually is. Maybe it takes absence to notice presence and be grateful for it.

There is so much about living - the way we move and breathe and exist; about our relationships - the way we communicate and love and feel empathy; about our experiences in society - the way we interact as cultures, genders and age groups, that I have taken for granted. Today, I won't.

Disappointment

Last week I went to Duke University Medical Center for an appointment that had been scheduled four months ago. The purpose was to discuss some ongoing problems that have stumped my local doctors and I was impatient to get there and hear some insight from the great "expert."

There was none to be had. The physician was distracted, rushed and unprepared. In the week since the trip, the promised referrals and paperwork have not appeared, even after several follow-up inquiries on several fronts. There has been no forward progress. I seem to have meandered down some side road, instead.

I've been asking myself how this could have happened because the entire visit had been lifted to God since the start. I, and so many others, have prayed for this doctor since April and asked for wisdom for him and blessing for me. Yet, the outcome, from my perspective at least, is a disappointment.

Even as I write this, however, I know that my questions replicate those asked by pray-ers throughout the millenia. When people have their expectations dashed, we all ask: "Where is God in this?" The hiccup that got in the way of my positive outcome was inefficiency and ineptitude; for others, it may be a far more serious appearance of evil or tragedy. In the end, though, the question is the same: "What happened to the prayers that went up to God about this?"

The underlying question is actually a more basic one: "Why bother praying?"

The answer that strikes me this morning sounds rather prosaic: "Does anyone have a better idea?"

Prayer is a positive, life-giving force that we send forth into the void. It unites those who pray and this changes the world. While I was praying for the Duke physician, love was directed into his life. I don't know how this has affected the man he's been and the decisions he's made since April, but I do know that there is enough stress and negativity in anyone's life that something positive can't hurt.

As for me, the experience of praying for a particular answer might have narrowed my insight into how I might be healed through other means. In expecting the Duke doc to be source, I was making my own diagnosis, when, in fact, the problem may not be in his area of expertise at all. Being disappointed at the outcome is like being annoyed that the lamp doesn't come on when I've actually flipped the switch for the overhead fan. A more fruitful prayer might have been for generalized healing, not a good experience at Duke.

Which brings me to the question that is really the most basic of them all: "What do I really want to be the outcome of my prayer?"

Ultimately, I believe, all of us want to be happy and at peace within ourselves. By praying for specific answers that we think will lead to that, we set ourselves up for failure. God respects free will and a prayer that involves someone else's responses to God's leading is problematic.

Inner peace in the midst of the difficulties we face would seem to be a more effective prayer. God can work with us directly and there are no intermediaries to foul up God's design. So, the better prayer for me is to be at peace with whatever state of health my body is in today while, at the same time, relying on the evidence that Jesus went about healing, not refusing to heal.

As God said to Jeremiah:

For I am mindful of the plans I have for you...plans for your good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Disappointment, then, becomes my choice, not God's.

I like His vision better.

Back Flip

When I was a little girl, I loved to do what today would be called gymnastics, except back then, there weren't any lessons or trainers or facilities full of equipment. I was reduced to climbing up the molding around the arch that separated our dining room from the living room and doing somersaults down the front lawn. And back bends.

Ah yes, I could bend over backwards and touch the floor behind me. Now that athletic females - including my own granddaughters - are crowding the sports facilites, I've longed to do those back bends, flips and jumps on a trampoline. Yesterday, I got my chance at a setup at the local Mall.

I was there to give the world's greatest grandchildren a chance to have their flying moment, but when I got there, I wasn't 64 anymore. I was 14 and my body could do anything and my muscles and health problems didn't exist. What was I saving myself for?

As they strapped me into the harness, I wasn't nervous, just thtrilled. At last I was going to get a chance to break the gravity of earth and soar effortlessly through the air. I was giddy. I jumped...and jumped again...and soon I was higher than the second story of the building. I felt free and happy and very young.

And the back flip? A bit different from a back bend, but as I brought my knees up to my chest and dropped my head back, it suddenly happened. I was over! I had done it - up, back and over. I mentally crossed off another wish on my Bucket List of Life.

The moral of the story? Do it now. Whatever it is that will give you pleasure and allow you to experience life to its fullest, give it a try. I might have hurt myself as I bounced up and down and rolled my arms in a 360 degree arc, but I've put up with a lot of pain doing things that were a whole lot less fun. The "what if's" are a cautious way to live life, but there's a lot left on the table at the end. I think the "why not's? allow us to feel and experience the potential within.

T.S. Eliot wrote about J. Alfred Prufrock who measured out his life "in coffee spoons." Suppose we chose to fill a tea cup or even a Big Gulp instead? I don't want to reach the end of my days, how few or many that they may be, and say "I wish I had...". I want to be able to look God in the eye and say "thank you - how good it was!"

Sunflowers

There's no mistaking a sunflower. It shoots its way into the air and everyone knows it's there. Its stalk is strong and its seedy face is turned so that all passersby notice its presence. A sunflower strides through life; it doesn't creep.

Other flowers are more sedate. They might be delicate or low to the ground. They have their seeds deep inside and tread softly through the fields of our dreams.

Still others walk a path between the two, not calling attention to themselves, but providing a contrast so that their own beauty becomes evident to all who look.

In the garden of our existence, we, like the flowers, all have our part to play. Sunflowers that are planted under low hanging branches have to twist and bend to find their sun and get mangled in the process. Hothouse flowers brought out into the elements suffer blight and are full of holes. Bushes that live in the shadow of a larger plant remain scrawny and thin.

Jesus said that He came that we may have abundant life and the best way to achieve this is to be fully who we are. God created us with wonderful talents and personality patterns that were there at our birth. Trying to become something else just means that we are a mediocre knockoff of another plant in the garden. The place we've been given to occupy is meant to accommodate who we are - and all of our potential. God is delighted when we fill out the space he's allotted to us.

Be a sunflower; be a rose bush; be a pine tree, but above all, be who God made you to be.

New Life

This blog has reached a milestone: this post is #100. When I started last June, I thought I'd do this for "awhile." Who knew? The Spirit always arrives in unexpected ways.

My unexpected experience at the Wellness Center at the B&B near Charleston continues to change my life. I returned on Tuesday for another Reiki session and some inner healing work with Diane. It's amazing to say that in three hours one's life can change, but mine did. I have a new commitment to life and an understanding of the part that my subconscious has played in my own health.

I have always shied away from the idea that I could be contributing to my body's frailty in some way. That kind of responsibility was too much to accept. Yet the more Diane and I talked, the more I could see that I was using various symptoms over the years to cope with deep psychic pain. This line of thinking links our minds and bodies and explains the one in terms of the other. We are a system of systems and it's unlikely that our minds can isolate patterns of thinking and inner pain from affecting our bodies. Pain seeks a release and if it is ignored, it will find its own outlet.

Diane led me to face the emotions that lay at the base of my distorted view of life and the inner healing session culminated in a choice to accept and love the self that God made me to be. It sounds so simple, but it was powerful.

I played a game as a young child that serves as a wonderful metaphor for what happened with Diane. The game was called "Under the Blanket." My friends put a blanket over me and then they kept asking me to to pass out to them something that I didn't need. I gave up a shoe and then the other shoe, a sock and so on until I was down to my shirt and shorts. I remember thinking that if stripping was the price of their friendship, I wasn't going to play their game. I stood up and took off the blanket and everyone cheered. The blanket, you see, was the thing I didn't need.

Towards the end of my inner healing session, I saw myself tightly enclosed in an L-shaped box. Being in that box is akin to being under the blanket. My emotional pain had demanded portions of myself for its expression over the years and I had given up my uterus, a knee, my thymus gland, and various muscle and joints. The ultimate demand, of course, would be my life.

In the box in my mind, my torso could move a bit, but my legs were stretched out in front of me and I couldn't move them. That made me feel frustrated and annoyed. All of a sudden I pushed out the walls of the box and stood up. I wasn't going to be "boxed in" any longer. The box was the one thing I do not need: my fears and the compensations I've made for not feeling worthy.

I feel so much freer today. I know that my body will be a good barometer for how well I am coping with my own and others' expectations. I also know that my life is much more in my control than I had previously thought. This is God's gift: "I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly."

To the abundant life!

Connections

Often we talk about illness being genetic, but my experience at the Charleston Wellness Center added an additional dimension to that reality. Not only can we inherit a damaged gene or two, but we are also prey to the attitudes, fears and pain that pass from family to family as the generations pass. The wounds of our great grandparents can be as present in our own time as they were in the past because of the stories we share and the attitudes we unthinkingly absorb.

For instance, my father’s ancestors fled the potato famine in Ireland. My mother’s people left a deprived situation in Norway. In both cases, there were many mouths to feed and finding enough food for them all was a daily concern. The feelings involved must have covered the gamut from fear of want to guilt over not providing enough to shame over wanting more when others still had to be fed. To them, food was an enemy to be conquered; food was the answer to the problems of life.

My extended family and I all have digestive problems and the attitudes we have are rooted in these experiences. In our ancestors’ homes, food was always associated with tense dinner times or guilt ridden conversations. Food was the barometer that measured the quality of their relationships: providing it, eating it and giving it up as a sacrifice were signs of love. In these households, food was not nourishment for our bodies, it was legal tender. Every time we, their progeny, eat and drink, these attitudes are present in our emotional genes.

As I’ve thought about my connections to all those who have gone before me, I feel deep compassion and a strong link to each of them. They were doing the best that they could and each person in the chain bears the wounds that came with the trying. I am a product of these individuals, but I have the choice now to continue to internalize their fears or bring healing and forgiveness to them.

I’ve chosen to do the latter, but as I entered into their pain through prayer, the list of people I was remembering grew longer and longer. Each person had touched another person who had touched another who had touched another and I soon realized that I would wind up praying for the world. We are all connected to each other and because we are all in God, we are all one.

I think this is what is meant by Jesus taking on the sins of the world. He saw through all our poor choices to the pain, guilt and terror of everyone who ever lived and who will ever live and loved us all. He reached into our heart's pain and cried out on our behalf: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” and brought pure, unconditional love and forgiveness to us all.

We can look back on the legacy we’ve inherited and do the same. We can stop passing on the pain by entering into it and facing it and healing it. This is more than an intellectual exercise. In our empathy, we unite with those who have gone before us. Those in our past become present and we make room for God to bring us peace.