Normalcy

Two weeks ago I slipped in a puddle of dog pee and ended up in the hospital for a week. I think it’s pretty hard to get compartment syndrome from a badly sprained ankle but that’s exactly what happened. I had emergency surgery the next morning to relieve the swelling and hopefully avoid permanent tissue and muscle damage to my foot and ankle. 

I’m still healing - using all the accoutrements of limited mobility available.  Walker, wheelchair, commode, cane. The pain had been off the charts but is finally easing. Our doctor mercifully put in freezing on the top of my foot yesterday when it became evident that the pain was too great for him to remove my stitches, which were buried under a thick scab. I squeezed Dearest One’s fingers as a distraction when what I really wanted to do was screech.  

Not to sound Pollyanna-ish but I am grateful that all that happed was a sprained ankle. Dearest One was out of town and I was home alone when I fell. I’m thankful that I didn’t hit my head or break a bone. Ironically, I was on the phone with a paramedic when it happened. A new work contact who got to hear me screaming and then wait while I tried to figure out how to talk on a phone that partially broke when I fell.

The normal, boring, mundane things of life are highly underrated. 

~ Hope

 

“The Unfinished Way……”

At supper time I found myself sitting in the parking lot of a local liquor store.  I was once again eating a meal and people watching before I tuned into this podcast. 

I’d just come from a therapy session where I discussed a broken relationship and my feelings about it. So many feelings. At one point I told my therapist that I just wanted her to tell me what to do even though I knew she wouldn’t. We laughed. What’s the point of paying someone to tell you what to do when we both know that lasting change comes when one searches deep inside oneself for the answers. Neither one of us can count how many times I’ve given her a “fuck you” look when she’s said something I didn’t like. So searching deep inside it is. 

Recently when (in my mind) I was comforting my younger self I’d had a picture pop into my head when I reached for her. As she came and sat on my knee she was trying to cram paper bags in her mouth to satisfy her soul hunger.  I told her that paper bags would never nourish her hurt. That they would never fill that gaping hole inside her. My thoughts came spontaneously and I recognized their truth instantly. When I asked my therapist where pictures like that come from, she said that some people believe they come from within ourselves. Our deepest selves. I’d like to think it’s some kind of work of the Holy Spirit speaking truth within my heart. Truth that was planted there from my beginning.

Kate Bowler’s guest on her podcast had a rough start in life. Towards the end of the podcast, when her guest was talking about how her mom died before everything was mended, Kate said, “…the unfinished way that people love us.” 

I need to find a way to be okay with that truth. That the way I love others may never be in the way that their soul hungers for nor may they be in the way I need, either. People can say all kinds of pithy things like there’s a God shaped hole inside that only God can fill but sometimes you just need a little flesh and blood to sooth the pain.

~ Hope