How do you get through challenging times?
One breath at a time
The only time in my life that compares with current times for intensity is when my oldest daughter became ill at age 4 with an unknown liver disease. Despite a liver biopsy and many other tests, doctors were never able to diagnose the condition. Spending time in the hospital with many dying children surrounding us was heart-breaking.
Having the specialist tell us in shock after the liver biopsy, “This has been going on for much longer than you thought. There was so much scarring that the biopsy sample just fell apart. It just fell apart.” Later when asked how serious her condition was, he answered, “She won’t die in the next year.” I felt my heart shatter at those words and I struggled with their reverberations for years. We went through several years of ups and downs, never knowing for sure what the outcome would be. It was a bitter-sweet time. And I was so young when it happened that I had few tools to help me weather it.
Fortunately my sweet and ever-loving husband, Jon, was a rock through all of the struggles. He insisted that since none of the doctors knew what was wrong, we should follow our own best judgment. And we did, sheltering her from things we knew caused flare-ups of her condition, insisting that she rest even when she didn’t want to. Finally after years of weird symptoms and issues, when she was 13, her pediatrician told us that we could stop doing regular blood tests to monitor her condition as the tests had been normal for over 2 years. He then added, “Do you know how lucky you are? I’ve never seen chronic hepatitis heal before.”
Lucky and Blessed
I still feel lucky and blessed all these years later watching our healthy and active daughter mother her children.
Fortunately over the years I’ve gained some tools to use in challenging times. They don’t take the fear and difficult feelings away, but they make it easier to keep going breath by breath, minute by minute.
The events we are living through remind me of that time. There is much uncertainty. It’s easy to believe the worst. We don’t know how long it will last. And we don’t even fully understand it.
I wouldn’t say that I feel lucky and blessed to be a white person in today’s world but I do feel the privilege and advantages that my skin color gave me. George Floyd’s murder last week by police officers was a sobering reminder of the dangers I do not have to face.
“I came here to inhabit a body that would allow my soul to experience. So I am not my body. I came here to experience the grandest thought. So I am not my mind. I came here to experience the deepest feelings. So I am not my feelings. I am all of it: thought, feeling and experience. That translates to awe, joy, and reverence. For all life, for all beings, for all Creation. Knowing this, understanding this, makes living the hardest thing of all—but the joy is in the challenge, the gradual day-by-day becoming.” — Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations
Instead of Worry and Despair
Sometimes I despair that it feels like there is nothing I can do to change things regarding systemic racism, devastating climate change, and the virus that threatens us all. Other times I worry about what might happen. In those times I remember to center myself one breath at a time.
The only thing to do in each moment is the next right thing. You cannot control the uncontrollable; you can only control your thoughts.
You have to learn to select your thoughts the way you select your clothes every day. That’s a power you can cultivate. You wanna come here and control your life so bad, work on the mind. That’s the only thing you should control. If you can’t master your thoughts, you’re in trouble … stop trying. Surrender. – Richard from Texas in Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Instead of imagining a world destroyed, I imagine a world where we have learned to live together in peace with reverence for all life. And instead of focusing on negative images, I choose (moment by moment) to focus on beauty. Breath by breath is how I get through challenging times—one breath at a time.
My you walk in beauty.
0 Comments