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