I have the most amazing friend Jenna. I have known her for 20 years, and for the last 5 years, she has been battling the leukemia that entered her son when he was 3 1/2. The diagnosis came on Christmas Day.
Months before that, she knew he was not quite right. Was he a genious? Autistic? Either way, she had noticed a change in his dispositon, and recurring sicknesses and started looking into it.
Earlier that summer, she was given an inheritance and booked her dream hike in Argentina, to be departing on Dec 22 for a month. She paid for the hike, met with the training team and scoured the local mountains like the overachiever she is. Then she stumbled in the scree, fell and hurt her wrist badly. So badly, she felt she needed to cancel going to Argentina. With the refund, and the new difficulties she was having parenting an increasingly agitated toddler, she used the money to go to therapy. Not just any therapy, but a camp in the woods where you recieve about 10 years of therapy in a week of seclusion. She emerged a new person. So calm and whole, able to handle the fits of the son, able to meditate and ask for guidance. She was amazing.
A mere few months later, when the luekemia diagnosis came, she had what she needed to cope. She went to the hospital, administered the treatments, wrote a book, spoke to the media, with a grace and confidence that puzzled the rest of us. Because she was housebound, we spent hours on the phone, and her one constant knowing was this...EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR OUR GREATER GOOD.
It became my mantra as well, in my darkness, I would force myself to try to see the good in everything...
Heck, if she can see the good in cancer, I can certainly try to see the good in my life.
What my relationship with my friend has taught me, is that goodness awaits us all. It may come in a really uncomfortable package, with more dark days than you can imagine, but inevitably, we are destined for success.
My counselor Jo gave me this quote from the sufi tradition-
"When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs at what it has found"
So the lesson today is surrender.
All of those feeling we've had supressed in our dark moldy box in the basement, as we've cleared them away, the feelings and memories have come to the surface.
We are asked to invite them in, and the emotions they bring with them, feel what is happening in your body.
Let them be as they are.
Don't try to fix, change or deny.......watch as they magically pass through you.
I held in my mind a picture of water pouring out of a hose above my head...I can't really grasp it or hold onto it, I definately feel it, but it just flows through...
Don't wish to feel different.
These feelings are meant to inform you....teach you......if you suppress or deny, you won't get the message.
Sadness is normal, it is a healing mechanism, a good old fashioned cry always leaves you feeling better, as through tears the experience can be released.
There's a part in Eat, Pray, Love where Liz is on the rooftop trying to forgive herself over the failure of her marriage.....
She says "but I love him" and Richard says "so... love him".
She says "I miss him", he says "so... miss him".
...and then move on.
Feel it, learn from it, let it go.
