Burning the empty props

On paper, she's looked terminal and yet she risked it for a tenuous surgery and is on her way back – big time.

On paper, I look ultra healthy, and yet the 15 years of fibro have taken its toll physically, mentally and emotionally. I hadn't understood how I appeared medically until two rounds of routine visits in the last couple of weeks. There are no short-cut answers for the pain, although I see promise in a new med that has helped me sleep. Deep sleep that I had forgotten how it felt. A week in and it hasn't performed every night, but when it has, wow, I feel like a different person. I almost want to say how I used to feel, but I am not that person.

Neither is my mom. She's tougher, more resilient, faithful and good-humored than I ever remember. Her path was clear cut for her. Last minute, she found she was a candidate for surgery and, by golly, she was going for it with the best surgeon for her condition in the world. There were bumps, bruises and a lot of answered prayers along the way but, in some respects, she's better than pre-surgery. In others, she's still struggling and engaged in the healing process. Anyone she ever consulted with told her it would be a good year to know how the surgery took. At one month, she moved out of the Cleveland Clinic. At three, she came home from rehab. At four, she and my dad traveled to Florida for a month. At five, she's bent on solving the riddle of her vision disturbances.

Her risk seems to be paying off, which leads me to ask, what have I risked? My typing stops dead at that question. Not sure I have an answer, but growing more certain that risk is where Spirit is leading.

I understand my life path has been irrevocably altered, steering me away from mainstream culture and into a more contemplative mode. In learning to deal with the pain, I have had to deal with myself, shadow and all – and not always so gracefully. Alone in God's presence, mostly. The work is far from complete. The more I do, I see the more there is to do. Stopping, again. I am re-calibrating with that last phrase "the more there is to do." Yes, there is more, but it is out of my control. So much in 15 years has seemed out of my control: my health, my life, my career, my relationships. I keep reading that it's the props Spirit wants us to drop as we enter into deeper communion. Can't say I have always dropped them willingly, but I have dropped many of them.

Last summer, during an unusually vivid time of spiritual formation, Spirit specifically told me I didn't need any props, such as a book, blog or studio. I had not ever heard that term used in a spiritual sense until some Lenten meditations and now I can't seem to avoid it.

Is Spirit asking me to risk the props? Just as my mom was willing to lay her physical life on the line, am I being asked to lay my ego on the line? To let go of projections for name and fame. I've let go of a lot of it, but not all of it. Fear and doubt have also been my props. What would it look like if I surrendered the fear? I sure know what it looks like not to and it's not a pretty picture. I feel so divided, longing to follow God, but feeling caught by daily life, expectations and responsibilities.

Both my shaman and new spiritual director have suggested I burn off those props, the things that no longer serve me or never did. So, I light a candle each time I enter my studio as a virtual reminder. I cut sheets of paper in the shape of logs and have begun to fill the pages with the things I wish to surrender. Next time I meet with my spiritual director, we'll burn them. So far I have: fear, doubt, anger, worthlessness, judgment, disease and lack of trust. I can't even conceive of how much lighter life would without those.

Do I dare?

• How do my paper and real personas fit?
• How is Spirit shaping my persona?
• Who models surrender for me?
• What am I being asked to surrender?
• What can I burn off?


since meeting
her really big goal,
well, shall we say
her second

surviving surgery
was number one

my mom's been
a bit down about
some of the
minor complications

while everyone else
trumpets her remarkable
success

she mirrors my own
tendency to downplay
the gifts and path
I have been given,
comparing them to
what the world
promises

when I can burn
the empty props,
I see how rich
I truly am

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Never alone

Today I am overwhelmed. With life. With my mother's surgery and very slow recovery. With 15 years of fibromyalgia. With teens. With a faith community I feel on the fringes of. With a culture that seems to have little room for me. With stuck relationships. With adjusting who the world told me I should be to what I am. With feeling limited. With wanting more. With knowing when to push. And when to patiently wait. With thinking I should be thankful. With the stress/mess of Christmas.

Pastel and Conte´ crayon on paper

I simply can not move as fast as the world demands. I lost November, but, even then, was physically back in summer. And, I've really been exploring Easter themes, not Christmas. The cross sticks with me. I have had profound, for me, insights about it recently. But, not today. Today, I want someone to listen. Really listen.

I lost in in the sauna after swimming laps this morning. And again in the shower. And I kept thinking about the cross and what this had to do with that. Then I remembered my new prayer: to lay my burdens at the feet of Jesus and give the rest of me to Spirit. Alone in the sauna and alone in the shower, I did feel heard. As a tear rolled down my cheek, I understood it was as if it rolled down God's as well. I had the flash of detaching and seeing how God views me. With love and compassion. I need to offer that to myself.

My heart is aching. Aching at watching my mother live alone in a skilled-nursing center as she very slowly recovers from massive heart surgery. Twelve days on a ventilator and 17 in bed in ICU have taken a toll. One of her new friends learned it takes three times longer to strengthen what you have lost. That was confirmed by one of her three therapists. Heaped on that are the memory loss, the anesthesia and pain meds working their way out of her body. 

Overwhelming until you look at the little, daily things. Such as her color is better. Her voice stronger. Her humor is back. She's made a table of friends. She's been reacquainted with others she hadn't realized live there. Her therapists say she is progressing. She's eating. She's off thickened liquids and swallowing better. She's alive, surviving a complicated surgery.

And she may be home before Christmas. 

Thinking the past weeks have been such a whirlwind that I need to let things catch up in my mind, body and spirit. I may need to feel overwhelmed and sad, maybe even mad. And in all of that, remember to lay it as Jesus' feet and save the rest, the best for God. AND spread some of that on myself.

Releasing a layer of that burden, I can now feel and express my deep gratitude to Spirit for guiding my mother through the surgery and into recovery. For empowering my dad to handle it all, mostly with grace, and keep himself strong. For giving me steadfast sisters to share the ordeal and family and friends who care.

I am blessed. Even on the days I am overwhelmed.

• What overwhelms me?
• How do I deal with it?
• How does Jesus or Spirit enter into that solution?
• What happens when I surrender those feelings?
• How does God transform my life, my pain and my burdens?


moving so quickly,
it's easy to get
caught up

and roll right
along

from task to
task, happy
to have a focus

because the
true focus
may just be
too much

until there is time
and the time
is right

to be with it
all, feeling
alone

remembering to
pray and being

reminded
we are never
alone

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Broken promises, answered prayers

Day 10 of my mother's stay in the Cleveland Clinic ICU and she's progressing S - L - O - W - L - Y.  She underwent a whopper of a heart surgery: two valves replaced, a bypass and calcium scraped off her heart.

This is my second trip here. I journeyed for the surgery and the few days after, headed home for my daughter's 16th birthday, then back with my family in tow. It seemed to do my mother good to see her youngest granddaughters.

Every day, we're hopeful the ventilator tube is removed and, every day, they say tomorrow. Today, I really think they meant it. She's been breathing on her own for five hours. It's labored and I know she's frustrated that the tube is still shoved down her throat. Apparently she tried to get it out as they changed her sheets and gown. That's why her hands are restrained. I hate that. No more than she, I expect. For her own good, they say, but it still sounds hollow and patronizing. I can't imagine these hospital professionals feeling any differently as the tied-down patient. Don't get me wrong, the care here is excellent and so patient- and family-focused. But what seems like common procedure to one, looks demeaning to another.

As she lays here, I keep reminding her of what she knew would be her greatest challenge: surrendering to the healing and recovery. I had't expected it to happen so soon after surgery. I was thinking more like down the line.

Yesterday her feistiness was her own worst enemy as she struggled to mime words with the plastic pipe strapped to her chin and plunged beyond her larynx. I just Googled an image and it made me gag.
...

The tube did not come out although one of the numerous white-coated docs said it was time to quit foolin' around and get it out. Conditions would never be perfect. Some effort was made, apparently, even though my mother is certain they did not attempt to actually [re]move the tube. Disappointing.

One of the many ups and downs we've come to expect and that I am learning to not let set off alarms every time it doesn't happen. Such a lesson in patience and prayer. They promise that if bloodwork looks good they will make another attempt and send us out of ICU. I trek down to the cafeteria once again praying aloud as I wash my hands and continuing silently all through my meal.

My dad goes next and then we decide to call back – enough time has passed – for another disappointment. Instead, we are buoyed with the news that the tube is out. Wow, I think crumpling. It has finally happened.

Each day has become an adventure, some more so than others, but always a slight step ahead. Once off the ventilator, my mother talks incessantly and we feel our visits are too stimulating. Next morning, she's chewing ice chips and getting every doctor to disobey her nurse and feed her. She even convinced the x-ray tech and then Becky, her guardian caretaker, placed a "no ice chips" sign. Then the delusions appear and she's clearly worried about things possibly imagined. To her, they are real. No one happened to mention the reality of cognitive dysfunction following major surgery, particularly long heart procedures.

Finally my dad asks the question on all of our lips; "did the valve replacement work?" Possibly comes the answer. "We'll know Monday after the heart echo."

One day at a time; this truly forces one to live in the present. I am grateful for the baby steps.

• What experiences have taught me patience?
• How aware of that lesson was I at the time?
• How has that affected my current ability to be patient?
• When I am, how am I rewarded?
• What's the relationship between patience and gratitude in my life?

knocking off
the days

one flowing
into another

in the florescent-lit
room with constant
activity

daily promises
broken

constant prayers
answered

God IS present

even if we
forget

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