Each moment I have a choice. I can choose to live from
Love or Fear
When I choose love I feel possibilities, gratitude, and expansion. And when I choose fear, I feel powerlessness, contraction and pain. I have needed to remember this choice these past two weeks as I navigated two hospitalizations of my husband, both late night trips to the Emergency Room, followed by hospitalization, medical tests, uncertainty, and exhaustion for both of us.
“Love and fear represent two different lenses through which to view the world. Which I choose to use will determine what I think I see.”
— Marianne Williamson
Deciding to choose love instead of fear, as often as I could no matter what else was going on kept me from falling apart. I’ve never felt like I was a terribly resilient person nor have I been calm in emergency situations. But the refrain, “Love or fear” keeps guiding me through my fear to a kind of present moment acceptance.
We are home now since Wednesday afternoon. After receiving no good advice on how Jon might heal, from the many gastroenterologists we spoke with, we are now following our own best judgment about how Jon can heal from his on again/off again intestinal bleed. I am grateful to all of the hard-working people in our hospitals. They are suffering from fatigue, burn-out, and staff shortages. But navigating the maze of communication failures, inappropriate medication orders (ibuprofen for someone who has an active bleed going on!), and misunderstandings was exhausting.
Which do I choose?
Whenever I felt like I was at the end of my tether I reminded myself, “Love or fear, which do I choose?” And then I would take a deep breath, and patiently but politely advocate for Jon.
“I don’t always make the best choices, but today I choose compassion over intolerance, sympathy over hatred and love over fear.”
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Most of the time I managed to speak calmly to the nurses but I did speak angrily a couple of times when I had had no sleep for almost 48 hours. Lack of sleep and fear make me very short-tempered. Jon and my daughters laughingly say, “Don’t make Marilyn bring out her Mama Bear.” They are right. I do carry a fierce Mama Bear inside me which comes out when I am riled. But I don’t want to be fierce now. I want to be loving, caring, and compassionate. And I want to see possibilities, not problems.
I don’t want to dwell on Jon’s illness any more today. So far, so good. We are living very much in the moment. One of the things that illness does, is to remind me to appreciate each moment with Jon, including his constant jokes even when he was feeling terrible and having pokes, prods, and tests. For example, when one nurse asked Jon how tall he was, he answered, “6 foot 12.” I could see the instant that she tumbled to the fact that he was obviously joking, and we all had a laugh together.
What do you choose?
Think about how you go about your daily life right now during the pandemic, with fires raging in many parts of the world, hurricanes threatening other parts, the swift changes in Afghanistan and many people there who are suffering, the signs of climate change everywhere. What do you choose? Love or fear?
“There are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt. It’s true that there are only two primary emotions, love and fear. But it’s more accurate to say that there is only love or fear, for we cannot feel these two emotions together, at exactly the same time. They’re opposites. If we’re in fear, we are not in a place of love. When we’re in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear.”
— Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
I know it’s hard to not feel overwhelmed with everything that is happening in the world right now. But overwhelm will not serve you, your loved ones, or the world. Love is the only way, I think, to keep us focused on possibilities instead of problems. What would love do now? We cannot know how the future will unfold. But even in the midst of pain and devastation we can choose to look for beauty, wonder, and kindness. There is so much to love in this world. When we allow ourselves to feel our grief and pain and still choose love, we can bend the arc of the world in a positive way. Each moment I spend with Jon right now feels like the greatest gift.
My wish for you my dear friends is that you find comfort and beauty in the world and when you can, that you choose love.
May you walk in beauty.
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