Look here: I posted on the BLOG!
I'm bursting with things to say and reflections to articulate and share, and I can't get them out. But here is one small thing for the day--one achievement--and for this I am grateful.
It's important, if possible, to set at least one goal and accomplish it every day. It's part of living with chronic illness. Even if it's a really, really, really small accomplishment. Find one thing you can do, one challenge (tiny, tiny challenge, don't freak out, don't overdo it, a "baby step"). Do that. Or if you try but fail, find something smaller. Make a half step.
When you achieve something during the day, rejoice and be grateful. You have grown as a human being. It's humiliating, I know, but the "measure" for growing as a human person is a mystery to us. The measure is in the hands of Someone Else.
As I said in my book, there were days when my goal was to get from my bed to the chair in the living room so as to be closer to Eileen and the kids.
Of course, I never felt satisfied with that (just as I don't feel satisfied with this blog post right now). But what I'm talking about here is not satisfaction. It's living, growing, moving forward, becoming more human according to the rhythm of the mysterious journey that each of us has been given in this life.
If and when we find ourselves in circumstances where we are immobilized, where all we can do is lay there and breathe, then let's breathe! Breathing, if we think about it, is a living image of so many things. But never mind that now. Breathe. Say "yes" to the gift of existence, go forward from breath to breath with trust in that gift, and let each breath speak its own gratitude.
This is the stuff of which real heroism is made.
