My tears are filled with the early days of bewildered sedation in which I learned to follow my husband’s directing and cues and I never wondered or cared “why”. They were hard times. From the inside, I felt as if my concentration was consumed with placing one foot in front of the other, all the while trying to remember the fact that I couldn’t walk – I couldn’t even sit up or extend my hand. Focusing intently on the jobs given me (deep breaths in, wiggle your toes, tell me where you are), I was fortified by looking around for approval that I was doing it well. Today that remembered helplessness makes me cry…for the shame of it all, and the relief that I am no longer there.
I also carry the months of pain and disability in my tears. My daughters placed me from a wheelchair to a toilet, and they learned the rhythm of pulling my leg straight out as I lowered myself down so that my hip could extend that battered limb. They helped with the showering process that we finally whittled down to one hour – excluding drying my hair. Until then I hadn’t considered the effort of walking as a price to be weighed against the value received. Some days the shower wasn’t worth the energy outlay. My nights were measured by audiobooks and an Australian serial of eighteen seasons…and then increasing the time I could bear to spend lying on a bed, beginning with fifteen minutes. I mourn the toll it took on a twenty year old son and sixteen and eighteen year old girls to face that with me day and night for weeks, and I weep with the knowledge that my family would not and did not leave me in that place alone.
My tears hold the solitary days of “recovery”. I alone could do the work of rebuilding muscles and increasing mobility and flexibility. I was tired of being handicapped, tired of being weak, tired of all the concessions that had to be made for me. But I had to begin with the breathless, sweating two minutes on the elliptical and work my lungs and heart and legs for three months until the day I reached 15 minutes on that dreaded warm-up machine. All the book knowledge in the world could not stand-in for the physical training contrary to my natural inclinations, but vital to my survival. And one day I cried from the effort all through my hour long session. However, those grueling workouts enabled the thankfulness and pride that watered my eyes as I mounted four steps and received a rose from my daughter at her high school graduation two weeks ago.
This is a portion of the emotional mural in my background when I see someone who prayed for me – who carried me. Because, I was carried. Without the arms and hands and love and tears and prayers of God’s children I would not have had the weak, faltering courage to continue on day after night after day for these seven months. So, there is release in that tear-filled hug, as well as an acknowledgement of the enormity of the grief and pain. Above all there is an emotion toward God deeper than “gratitude”, unable to be confined to vocabulary, for the triumph of being enabled to stand and hug a friend who didn’t know the details, but still helped with the load.
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
Romans 8:18-21
