27
Oct

Plan B

What do we do when the script for our life doesn’t work out?

How do we graciously slip into Plan “B”?

This is a question posed in the book Mr. Owita’s Guide to Gardening – How I learned the unexpected joy of a green thumb and an open heart by Carol Wall.

Each of us must cope with unexpected illness, trauma, disease, or other experience in our lives. How we deal with it will, in large part, determine the course of the rest of our lives.

Fool’s Gold

“Healing (is) a process, that is much more than the curing or eradication of disease. ‘Cure’ is fool’s gold. Something is going to get all of us. We will all die. Healing involves our response to this certainty – our understanding of our place in the universe and our purpose in this life.” If you’ve ever been diagnosed with something that has no cure, as Anne and I have, this statement takes on a special significance. We’ve had to learn to let go of our expectation of getting “cured” in order to focus on attaining our best health possible.

We are NOT what happens TO us, but rather how we choose to deal with it.

Anne and I are continuing to learn this lesson with chronic illness. In some ways it is even more challenging than a terminal illness. Disabling chronic illness also involves grieving the loss of life, but doesn’t end with premature death, as a terminal illness might. Rather, symptoms may continue with no end for the rest of our lives. Upon diagnosis, and in the aftermath of treating / coping with a serious illness, it is easy to adopt our disease as our new identity. In such circumstances, it helps to remember “We” are NOT our illness. We are NOT our diagnosis. We are NOT our symptoms. We are much much more.

Seasons Change

“Mr Owita resonates with so many people because Giles and Carol teach us that we are not defined by our afflictions – we are to bear them with grace and dignity. We are to understand that ‘the ground in winter which looks awful… it is gray and yellow and hard as a brick… holds a thousand lovely secrets’.”