Blessings in Disguise

I have always been a strong believer in "blessings in disguise" -- and I just want to find them as fast as I can, so that Karma or whatever it is will let me move from pain to pleasure. I've found and pondered three from our recent crisis that have crystalized in the many hours I have spent here in the dark listening to the hum of Max's many life-protecting monitors.

l. We are the lucky ones. We've met many people in ICU with whom we have shared a special bond of tears, pacing and wringing hands. We've seen them face with courage and faith the news of permanent paralysis, devestating brain damage and death.

2. I have a new respect for nurses, and the incredible stress and difficulty of their jobs. Visualize it from their point of view with me. People in crisis come into their lives for a few days or weeks; demanding, needy, traumatized and so completely obsessed with their own trauma that they don't even recognize the nurse as a person at all --- then, poof, both patient and their annoying families are gone and the next one arrives. It is the same thing over and over and over - just like a nightmare version of the movie Ground Hog Day. I admire those who have the compassion and patience to be good nurses, and we've been fortunate to have a few extra special ones so far.

3. My dear husband, David, has finally had his protective wall shattered. This is a wall he built around his heart starting at 5 when his parents sent this gentle and sensitive child to a boarding school in Africa run by brutal and sadistic Catholic priests. Since this was really the only choice for Colonial farmers in Africa, the parents did not want to believe the stories of their children and wrote them off as childish imaginations and exagerations. David spent 13 years in boarding schools, building that wall around his heart one stone at a time.

When he was 19, David's family lost their farm and home and almost all their possessions in Africa when all colonial farms were nationalized by the government. He had to come to the United States with nothing but his shattered dreams of continuing his farm and father's safari business. This event devestated his family, and David in particular, who reacted by just building his wall higher and thicker.

With his father's death and each subsequent heartbreak, his heart's fortress became almost invincable -- until the call on March 31 came about our son Max being attacked with a baseball bat. I was in Denver, and David rushed to the hospital to witness his son bleeding, semi-conscious and near death. On the life flight, David held on to that wall, but when the chopper landed at the hospital and he was met by our church elders and told by the doctors that Max had to have emergency brain surgery, his fortress crumbled. Tears flowed, his gentle heart was exposed, and for the next few days he was overwhelmed by emotions that he could no longer lock away into dark dungeons.

This brutal experience has softened him, his heart has opened up like the spring flowers that I just noticed today, for the first time, since our nightmare began. If David can hold on to this new, fragile open heart, and not be so afraid of feeling, I think it will be one of the most important steps for him to begin finding and fulfilling his great potential here on this earth and into his eternal progression.