A very special word of appreciation for the generosity of a group of anonymous donors from our community at Runnymede UC that collected $1050 for Jan's rehab. You are a concrete expression of the Kingdom and make life very beautiful with your love. You make our Father proud and make us feel embraced by a thousand arms.
We will always treasure the imprints you have left in our hearts and in our lives.
Fede and Jan
Monday, November 27, 2006
Feeling and healing
Dear Jan:
Last night you couldn't make it to the Sunday Night gathering. Your heart wanted to attend but your body just refused to cooperate. Being forced to sleep just highlighted the frustrating slow pace of healing and its side effects. How can you find some satisfaction in your everyday life when the choice is forced on you to stay and sleep instead of doing something fulfilling with your community? It seems that you have to subordinate even the simplest desires of your heart to the healing imperative, and everyone who knows how independent you are, also knows that this proposition won't work for you. You face a real quandary.
In this sticky situation, you are being pulled in many more directions. On the one hand, your healing implies staying with medication just to avoid more seizures which could cause more damage, the drawback is the drowsiness it causes, "my eyes want to stay closed all the time, my body does not want to stay awake, I sound and look dumb when I am not..." you say again and again. The process of healing looks as if it is a slow awakening to what life might be.
On the other hand, your emotions are very much on the surface of almost every interaction you haven: you cry when you can’t get your thoughts out, when movements are too fast, when you can’t remember where you left something, when the voices sound too loud, when the world just don’t seems to be the same, and there is little to laugh about, you sob, “this isn't life, it would be better just to go to sleep for good..." Some days disappointment and discouragement are so big that they look like the only option in the horizon is to push the stop button.
On the other hand, there is the resilient Jan we know that keeps walking tall and maintains faith high, this is the Jan that wants to think in the long term to keep things in perspective, this is the one that asks: “what is the lesson I need to learn from this? What is what I need to see in the middle of these circumstances? How can I internalize that God’s time is not my time? How can I live the fact that I am not my circumstances?” The inconveniences of the healing process are insignificant compared to the new lease on life you have been given and the new vision you have about pain, illness, suffering and life.
On the other hand, we know that we have each other and that one day we will look back and say: “Where did we get the strength to walk this far? Where did all these footprints on the way come from? How many people were walking alongside all the way?"
-Fede
Saturday, November 25, 2006
2 lessons from pain
Dear Jan:
You are very familiar with pain. You wake up with pain, you take your breakfast and the medication reminds you of pain, you go through the motions of the day and the constant presence of a dull pain forces you to cry, to slow down, to struggle with the movements of life. I am surprised of how valiantly you set aside this pain and sometimes enjoy life.
Many people have discussed the nature or the reason of pain. Take for example the book of Job from the Bible where the reason for pain is a bet between God and the devil; or take any article from an American newspaper where you can see that the main reason for their fear is the pain they remember from 9/11.
Pain, fear, dissapointment, sadness. If we go beyond trying to assign guilt, we are left with a question about what is the purpose of this pain in your life? How are we supposed to understand the tremendous disruption of our lives as a result of the aneurysm? And, I don't mean only the physical pain, because there is a sustantial emotional and spiritual pain that has been part of our lives.
I read a dozen books on pain in life. But this does not alleviate the experience of pain, it just provides a framework to answer the big questions. The irony is that it is the small questions, the constant dull pain, is what breaks the soul and the resilience.
A poet said that love and pain are the two wings of life. Lesson one is that you can't have one without the other.
Lesson two, is that however despicable and horrendous is the experience of pain, it can produce a beautiful character or a bitter attitude.
How paradoxical!
-Fede
You are very familiar with pain. You wake up with pain, you take your breakfast and the medication reminds you of pain, you go through the motions of the day and the constant presence of a dull pain forces you to cry, to slow down, to struggle with the movements of life. I am surprised of how valiantly you set aside this pain and sometimes enjoy life.
Many people have discussed the nature or the reason of pain. Take for example the book of Job from the Bible where the reason for pain is a bet between God and the devil; or take any article from an American newspaper where you can see that the main reason for their fear is the pain they remember from 9/11.
Pain, fear, dissapointment, sadness. If we go beyond trying to assign guilt, we are left with a question about what is the purpose of this pain in your life? How are we supposed to understand the tremendous disruption of our lives as a result of the aneurysm? And, I don't mean only the physical pain, because there is a sustantial emotional and spiritual pain that has been part of our lives.
I read a dozen books on pain in life. But this does not alleviate the experience of pain, it just provides a framework to answer the big questions. The irony is that it is the small questions, the constant dull pain, is what breaks the soul and the resilience.
A poet said that love and pain are the two wings of life. Lesson one is that you can't have one without the other.
Lesson two, is that however despicable and horrendous is the experience of pain, it can produce a beautiful character or a bitter attitude.
How paradoxical!
-Fede
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Fotos
Dear Jan:
Here is another picture from the dance:
We went to Lindsay on Friday to make some minor improvements to the kitchen. It was a long day for you. at the end your body was just refusing to even walk from the car to the apartment. It is so easy to forget that your energy sets imposes sharp limits to your working time. The house is not selling, so we will have to re-list it with a new price. I wonder what the lesson is about the house. You said,"wouldn't it be nice if we lived here and you commuted to work?" but we both know that the cost is too high.
Yesterday we decided to finish a project started before the aneurysm: to complete the upholstering of two old arm chairs. You were having fun choosing fabrics and directing the work. We'll see the results...
-Fede
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
