Thoroughly Alive

When the bench was placed, probably sapplings were all that stood in front of it. Now, the trees are about forty feet tall. The view is to the left or right of them.

The evening cool has come after a long hot day. The breeze displaces my hair and I like it. Messy hair is a sign of high fashion or exertion.

The effort to walk to this bench from the car is not my legs or breath. Notwithstanding the way my ribs hurt from puking a bad piece of pizza and the rest of the day's consumption for three hours, two nights ago, my body can go the distance. Only my left arm and shoulder hurt from needing to downsize to a single toed cane from a tri.  The effort comes from the decision to become strong enough to walk around the whole lake like I used to be able to do.

The goal is to walk freestanding. My gluts and quads need to be quite a bit stronger to accomplish that. Walking is primary to achieving that milestone. Using a cane, having downgraded from a walker to a four toed and now the tri, is progress. It forces the weaker leg, the new leg, to remember how to bear weight and create balance with the other leg; to stride.

I look at the people using wheelchairs and remind myself the worst did not happen.

Taking a risk on that surgery was the scariest risk I've taken in ages. All I knew was, in the natural things seemed to be lining up. I had to let everyone else hold the supernatural in their hearts and hands.

The surgical team is arrogantly smug with the success of  their work. Well they should be! I have a new leg, a new body. A new life.

So I keep coming to Greenlake and attempting, step by step, to recover the acuity to walk around it. When this was our family neighborhood,  I could lap it, all 2.8 miles,  in 45 minutes. This evening I have walked the requisite five minutes in one direction. On this bench I rest a bit before heading out in the other direction.  Since I found that easy this time out, I am to add one more minute next time. Then another, then another. Gradually, I will be able to turn around and face the aqua theatre to return to the car without having to rest.

When I can do that thirty minutes in one direction and then turn around and return to the car, I will know I can do the lake again. I'm figuring the first time will feel like being set free.

This morning Facebook brought up a 'memory'. It was about making the most of adversity. You know what I like about adversity? The best way to go through it is thoroughly alive. There's this new popularity about paying attention to your breathing and it relaxes you. It's true. If you pay attention during adversity, big or small, someone cuts you off while you're driving, or those terrible rainstorms in the South right now, you begin to acquire the skills that deepen typical, non adverse living.

While I was first recovering from doctors opening up a seven inch spot in my thigh, holding all my soft tissue aside and cutting away diseased broken down bones in order to put in a titanium prosthetic with a pretty pink ceramic ball, I was on a light dosage of oxycodon and heavy duty tylenol - insert little trademark thingy please. Two weeks into it, switching to just Percocet. I expected that the pills would do what ibuprofen does;take away the pain. Not so. They just made me not care about the pain. It was such a foreign experience for me. I discovered I had to will myself to wean from them before I developed a habit of not caring about pain. It was an attractive idea, that of not having to pay attention to pain. I understood a whole segment of the population I had not before comprehended.

Since 1984, I have been committed to being fully alive. I had a moment. I said out loud to God, "I will do anything to not have to live like this anymore." It is not a lifestyle American pop culture indulges or cares for. No little lies, no speeding forward unconsciously, no external definition of self. I lost a lot of people who were afraid of my decision. They were not interested in anything deep or confronting their pain. I was very very sad when they left. I got through my sorrow by committing more deeply to 'thoroughly alive'.

Whether or not you choose to be thoroughly alive IS a choice. Deeply alive, rigorously, assiduously, methodically, comprehensively alive. It is the decision to be alive in the natural, AND be alive in the eternal, the sphere beyond us and all around us we do not see. It is the decision to live incarnationally in both the now and the not yet, or the big picture we can't physically see.

Dealing with pain and moving beyond it requires existence that has a wider perspective, a deeper meaning. It is a trial and error process of discovery.

The first step is to say it. Commit to it. "I want to be thoroughly alive".  OK. You're out of the car. Now figure out and take the second step. Take a deep breath, exhale, and pick up your feet.
Love,
Deborah

Of Hips and Walking and Unknown Days Ahead...

Whew! A week of miracles happened the second week of April 2016. If God had drawn a line on my timeline marked "BB" and "AB", signifying the division of my days into those filled with obstacles that seemed insurmountable and those that involved breathtaking new opportunities of happiness and ease, it would be that week.

Four days in a row, events occurred freeing me from shackles of opposition to living each day using my full potential of gifts and talents and wisdom.

Day one- a surgeon agreed to operate on me, giving me a new hip and repairing damage that was 55 years old. My mobility would be improved 200%.
Day two - a transcript was freed that had been used to keep me from proving I had taken a certain set of classes that endorsed my professional credentials.
Day three- I was accepted into a degree program to study music composition and English.
Day Four-I signed with an agent to represent a portion of my body of work, out in the world.

I was breathless. I knew how Joseph felt when he was placed in the palace after decades of wrongful imprisonment.

Sixteen weeks later, I am leaning into the execution of my days with these new parameters. With not a clue as to how to live in this new way, with these new freedoms, I  take it second by second. A minute, an hour, a day, is too large a chunk of time.

What would you do if a chronic obstacle was removed? What would you do if four obstacles were removed?

What do you do with sudden freedom?

All of my life habits had to change. Previously arranged around compensating for the obstacles,now, daily disciplines need to support the new freedoms.

With a hip that now works and is strong, I learn to stand tall, and walk on my leg in a new, more trusting way.

No longer discredited as someone who is unqualified, it is on me to display the education for which I worked so hard, so many years ago.

What once was just a dream, full development of my love of music and becoming a better writer, is now an item requiring the scheduling of office visits, and classes. and arrangement of time to do justice to the learning process.

The opportunity for my words to reach a wider audience, offer more encouragement to more people, presents a to-do list and a willingness to order my life such that I could engage more relationships with more readers. It made my efforts to do so a collaborative effort where I need to rein in my 'Lone Ranger' and allow myself to have someone else speak for me and my work. Surrender and trust to the nth degree and days filled with hard deadlines and new requests for my highest and best are now de rigueur. Do you notice the shift in tense? The change was immediate. Overnight.

Before the surgery, the doctors were concerned that I had been disabled for so long, unable to walk properly, I would not be able to wrap my brain around walking again. My prehab included accepting immediate change. Indeed, the first words I heard clearly in recovery were 'She's weight bearing'.
Five hours after surgery I stood tall with my feet on the floor and walked fifteen steps. They wrote the number down on the whiteboard. "Fifteen steps". Green marker, as I recall.

After years of professing belief in a God who loved me and wanted the best for me, with no natural circumstances to give evidence of that, I was now in the middle of four different stories, examples, of situations that could only be explained by the existence of a profoundly loving God who had my best at heart. My faith was put to the test, not to get me through, but to move forward in blessing, because it apparently was true. What I believed was true. God loved me, wanted the best for me and had 'plans for good and not for evil.'.

The story of Jacob is about his hip reminding him Who is in charge. I have that. Joseph, after decades of imprisonment, was vindicated regarding unjust accusations because someone noticed he had a gift. Check the next box off. And the last two items, the remaining miraculous opportunities, present me with,once again, as I had in the desert, walking in blind faith that I will be able to hear the Spirit instruct me in the ways of swimming in a larger pond, in a stronger actualization of my gifts and talents than I have ever imagined.

Blessings. We all pray for blessings. But how do you live with blessings? How do you steward blessings?
Gonna be another steep learning curve. "B" stands for breakthrough.
Love,
Deborah