Putting Life On Hold

     Last night I slept in my own bed for the first time in weeks. You know the feeling?  Comes after a long trip...Even coming off the best of vacations, there is no place like home ...no comfort compares to that of your head hitting your own pillow (and in my case, with cat a close second plop after that).
     That said, I wouldn't call it the world's funnest vacation. For a girl who's not been off her farm for nearly 5 years now...(Gardens and goats'll do that to you) yes, it felt odd that my first trip away would be a 4-hour road trip to Atlanta to be with my brother as he works his spinal cord rehab program...
     As for Ed, he's doing well, (thanks for asking; thanks for prayers) though for sure it is not easy in anyone's book. The day to day work is exhausting physically, mentally and emotionally, and while wired optimistically, neither of us are foolish enough to think we won't have our moments. (We have been warned...And they have teams of support for when these happen, thank God.)
     Not a day goes by that Ed doesn't thank me for (his words, not mine) "putting my life on hold for his..." The thanks I gladly take.  I thank him too. I am grateful to have a brother who's alive right now, so he and I will do our parts to keep the gratitude beach ball thing volleying...
     But as it pertains to Ed's statement, I want to be perfectly clear: My life is NOT on hold. One doesn't put life on hold; life is not "on hold-able" that way...Time marches on. Life is a fluid and rapid river of boundless energy, activity and options, full of twists and turns and he just hit one.  But for sure, there is no "hold" button anywhere on this ride.
     What's more, "putting life on hold" (which for argument's sake, we'll define as stopping what you were going to do, to be there for someone else) is a breeding pool for resentment, and resentment is an emotion we're happy to leave out.  But more important, this whole notion of giving up mine to help you live yours is a bogus proposition, and fortunately, since perception creates our reality, the good news is the slightest tweak in perception can change your world entirely... So framing this notion properly-- and from the get-go --is critical to me.
     Would I have CHOSEN Atlanta as my dream destination first vacation off the farm? Probably not. When it comes to vacations, I prefer England, but I don't think of my life in terms of "work days vs. vacation" anymore, so a road trip is a road trip...(It was actually fun packing my dog on this one, as dogs serve to remind, do they not, just how exciting the smallest thing can be? Roz has kept me going, plus I had also asked for that (i.e. how to properly train therapy dogs for folks who need them, and look at us! Up close and personal that little exercise has been!)
     But when viewed as one continuous journey (as opposed to stopping and starting to get to one destination) a reroute through Atlanta is another stop for directions if you ask me.
     When (past the trauma phase) the doctors looked at us and said, "The best care in the world is 4 hours down the road" it was a no brainer for me. (Ed was a little less spontaneous only because Ed likes seeing people and wanted to make it easy for his family and friends to visit him.) And while that whole social element IS something to factor...(morale being everything on a journey like this)  hey, guess what? In addition to our family back home, we now have new family here...We make new friends everyday...people whose lives, like ours, wound up detouring through Atlanta...people who didn't set out to meet us anymore than we set out to meet them, but people who today touch our lives in ways we could never have imagined.
     Would I be doing something else had this not happened? Sure. Plan was to do what I did last year about this time: grow a garden...hug some goats...add a few more rows of lavender to create my own English garden someday. That will still happen. Or it won't. But whatever happens, life today is anything but "on hold"...It's different...Unfamiliar even. But my life right now is unfolding in ways I, myself, would not have been creative enough to have scripted, and when I stop to think "Just what did I ask that gave me THIS as my answer?" it started to dawn on me that I did, in fact place this order.
     Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't have wished a neck injury on my worst enemy, and certainly not my one and only brother, but I AM living what I asked for. (Sometimes you have to stop long enough to try to remember.)  Flipping through my journal pages of weeks ago, I had requested (and still request) to experience life more deeply...savor its moments more reflectively. (Talk about a slam dunk. You want to really get reflective try looking around at others who, like you, know their lives will never be the same again...Talk about a wake up call...If you don't think THAT will streamline your priorities...)
     More than ever my life, today is unfolding...expanding... widening...deepening. I am suddenly off my farm and out of my comfort zone, tossed wide eyed and and looking in all directions in a world I had paid precious little attention to before...Sure there are different kinds of beds, an odd assortment of chairs... there are also dog parks to explore and helpful strangers showing up in just the right instant to lend a hand... This place we've been living (and I'll be writing more on it in days to come) has the oddest assortment of energies, in this vast array of packaging....Sure, there are some physically challenged bodies, but I don't know when I have walked down hallways or sidewalks and observed (much less felt) so much love...This place houses some of the most sensitive and precious people ever to walk (and roll) the planet, and to think, Ed and I have the honor of meeting them.
     So to be clear Ed...Thanks for the gratitude....That, I will never reject...But for the record, my life is anything but "on hold" for you.. To the contrary...life is about as wide awake and brimming with new experiences as I'd have ever dreamt of living it...What's more each day I'm handed new insights...new ponderables...new sensations...to go along with it...
     For what it's worth,  I don't call that "on hold" ~
     I call that fully living... Living life with meaning...
     To live each day deliberately, with intention, and compassion and hope and appreciation for the smallest of gestures....What could possibly be greater than that?