Category Archives: acceptance

acceptance, anxiety, Blindness, Childhood imagination, disability, family life, father daughter moment, father son moment, feeling different, inspiration, kids' imagination

Miracles Abound, But We Probably Miss Them

12 Comments
If you need to be this close to the TV to see it, you just might be legally blind. K is, but if she is this close she enjoys watching races.
If you need to be this close to the TV to see it, you just might be legally blind. K is, but if she is this close she enjoys watching races.

Recently, my daughter was made fun of at school and began to feel awkward having a water bottle with her in class. “Dad, when will I be able to stop drinking water during class?  It’s bad enough I fart, but I feel them all looking at me when I drink.” The perils of second grade can be hell on emotional well being.

I told her to remember she is a miracle. She has lived through more than most of them ever will. She needs to remember she has lived through 4 or 5 (depending on how some exploration is counted) heart surgeries to deal with her pulmonary atresia, and she had a stroke. She has been sick enough to die multiple times. She has the scars to prove her courage and toughness.  What’s more, she has bowels which aren’t moving food like they should. So she has a choice, either take the chance given to her by multiple miracles and drink the water or let the stupid things thought by 2nd graders rob her of the life she is lucky enough to live.  I told her she is given a chance so many would love to have, but it’s her resilience which will make the rest of us look to her for inspiration.  Then I had to explain “resilience.”

The irony is I ask her to be tougher than I am all the time. I tell her she and her siblings are my miracle, keeping me alive. We called the school to make sure the teacher is aware what is going on and how dangerous it would be for somebody with her heart condition to become dehydrated. We are debating as she enters a new school after our move next fall whether to schedule a class with her new school to explain disabilities and hers in particular.

It is hard to mention people’s lack of ability to see what others go through without pictures of K.  Of course I find it hard to mention “not seeing” without pictures of her.  There is hard to define justice in the joy I take from “looking” at her looking at the world around her.  I wonder what and how much she sees.  Then I marvel at the speed she chooses to live with reckless abandon.

"OK I see a change in the ground. I don't know how far, but lets jump."
“OK I see a change in the ground. I don’t know how far, but lets jump.”

On a somewhat related but funny vein, O’s class must have had somebody mention Nazis.  He said he was thinking about them again when he heard about them in the Sound of Music.  Then on Saturday morning, he said, “Dad, I think I know why they were called ‘Nazi.’  I think they could not see the goodness in different people.”  I told him he can be very insightful at times, and I was glad for a morning of the thoughtful O (leaving out the “instead of the grumpy O who usually graces us in the morning”).

Cinco de Mayo, Boy Scout style.
Cinco de Mayo, Boy Scout style.
Share
acceptance, MLK, Mountaintop, MS

Have You Been to the Mountaintop?

5 Comments
  Take my Hand…The song Martin Luther King requested be played just before he was assassinated.
Martin Luther in his last speech spoke of the time he lived being the one he would choose. If offered the chance to live with and see the great philosophers of Greece, or see Lincoln sign the Emancipation Proclamation or even hear the speech where a president of a struggling country declared “We have nothing to fear save fear itself,” still he would choose to live in the last half of the 20th Century. He felt as if he had a duty having been allowed by God to see from the mountain top. He spoke of encountering the hoses and not fearing for he knew water…He was able to accept his lot, his role in life. He spoke with a sort of a acceptance of hardships inflicted upon him and those he loved. He even accepted the threats and the injuries, and ultimately he was killed, but as I listened to his last speech I never got the impression he was giving even an inch of himself away in his acceptance of what fate decreed. To see the speech,
Acceptance is something I’ve not come close to achieving. A large part of me looks at my MS and tries to pretend it’s just another obstacle to be ignored and denied until I can no longer do so. For what it’s worth, this attitude drives my wife nuts! I understand why, it’s just if I stop when I first feel signs of my body stressing, I may as well stay in bed. For me, stopping to ask for and receive help for every inconvenience would require me to stop being whom I wish to be.
Why define yourself by what you can and can not do? My first thought was “Well then how are we to define ourself?” The best I can come up with is “Why not define yourself by your dreams, what you attempt, and by whom you inspire?”
Remember, so much can be and is done by those who never stopped to consider why they couldn’t.
I wish I had MLK’s view from the mountain. For now, I’m happy to live now with the hindsight of history to let his words and deeds along with the words and deeds of all those who came before me inspire me.
Have you ever stopped to think who makes up the mountain of your inspiration? Parents, holy men and women, and thinkers of by gone eras have all added to the mountain I see before me. Thinking of the view I imagine if only I could climb it. However, I find myself more often than not wandering through the darkness holding a torch hoping to find others to ease the loneliness of the dark. http://thelifewelllived.blogspot.com/2007/07/year-into-it-all-when-i-first-began.html
I envy MLK’s dream and vision. I also find it interesting to think MLK’s I have a dream speech is the one for which he is most famous when I think the mountain top speech is every bit as good and significant.
Share