It’s incredible to me how things seem to just show up at the right time. What follows is a true story of gratitude that turned up on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It’s a story told to me by my husband Ed, who spends part of every Tuesday as a volunteer visitor with Mended Hearts. These volunteers go into the local hospital and visit heart patients and their families. To qualify for being a visitor you had to have had a heart related incident.
It is said that some of our biggest challenges turn into our greatest gifts and this is a reflection of that saying.
Just over four and a half years ago, Ed underwent open heart surgery. He was treated with great care in our local hospital and a few months into his recovery was seeking a support group and discovered Mended Hearts, a national organization that had a chapter at another hospital. This inspired Ed to bring the organization to where he had been treated as a way of giving back. It is well known that having support by those who’ve been through what you’re going through is extremely helpful.
This past Tuesday, after a long day of work, we both sat down to dinner and catch up with our day. I am always curious to hear who Ed saw in the hospital on his visiting days and as he told me this story you could see the emotion rising within him. On his way into a ward, one of the nurses suggested to Ed and his fellow visitor, that this particular woman would be a good candidate to see. The nurse pulled up two chairs alongside the women’s bed so that Ed and cohort could sit and visit.
She warmly welcomed her new visitors with a smile and an obvious sense of gratitude for the company. As it turns out she was back in the hospital running a high fever following the insertion of two cardiac stents two months prior. In addition, she had ovarian cancer, which was thought to be in remission but another tumor had just been discovered.
Yet, the woman couldn’t help but share how grateful she was for “all of the wonderful volunteers” or as she called them “angels from God” who visited her in both the cardiac ward and cancer center. She arrived in the United States two years ago escaping the turmoil of her native Egypt and landed in the desert with her husband because her two sons were living here.
Ed said she was just effusive with thanks and smiles. He was struck by the simplicity of her attitude, that even in having difficult health challenges, she was STILL here, STILL alive and ever so thankful to simply still have a life.
This story demonstrates that her focus was on her life, not her health challenges. It is thought that if we can whittle down our thinking to the most fundamental idea of appreciating what we have in this very moment, that the fluctuations of our circumstances truly fall into the background.
This story reminded me to stay focused on what I can do rather than what I can’t. On what I do have rather than what I don’t. On who I am, rather than what I’m not. Coming into the present moment, we sense our breath, our life and our heart beat.
Be fully alive and awake in your experience as it’s happening NOW. Why wait to celebrate this journey until you’re faced with life’s obstacles. As Ram Dass beautifully says, “Be Here Now”.
And as both Ed and this wise woman demonstrated, we can take our darkest moments and turn them toward the light.
