as healing

My young mom and dad were handed a small cloth that came with some heavy strings attached. “This has been prayed over, if you put this under her pillow every night for a week and continue to pray, Jana will be healed.” Full of equal parts hope and desperation, they brought it home and complied. Mom said there was one night that week I was so sick. She was trying to get me hooked up to my infusion, while cleaning up vomit, changing sheets and clothes and finding ways to soothe me so I could fall asleep. A jolt of panic shot her out of bed hours later when she remembered the cloth. She said she held the fear that she had missed this opportunity or somehow messed it up. I don’t think about this story without heart aching and eyes leaking. Regardless of intent from the one who gave the cloth, they handed my parents the weight of a boulder they were not meant to carry.

What does it mean to be healed? Does it mean better? Does it mean fixed? Do we have a part to play in it? Is it my responsibility? Does it happen a little at a time or all at once? Does it involve pills and operations, prayer and devotion, potions and chants? When it occurs will it be as good as new or just patched up? Do I chase after it until I can grasp it or do I stay content and find it inside? If I research enough, is there a piece of information I am missing that will fix this? Do I pretend that I am happy when I show up or can I be real with them? If I seek counseling, intervention, medical care is that showing a lack of faith? Should I travel to another country in search of it? Should I tweak my diet or add a $400 supplement or switch to all organic or not eat sugar? If they haven’t called back yet with the results, does that mean it is good or bad? Is this in my head, can positive thinking launch me out of the pain? Is it causing a burden on my family? Should I take pain medication? Will that make it worse? Am I making it worse? Am I crazy? Would it make it easier on everyone if I didn’t wake up? Did you just write that in my chart? If pain makes me feel that I am a fraction of the person I was before, is that enough? What does it mean to be a good human? Was it something I did while I was pregnant to cause my child to be sick? Do they blame me? If I call in again, cancel again, will it make me look flaky or lazy? Can I talk to them out loud when I miss them? Are they actually looking down and watching over me or is that just something I say to soothe myself? Is this payback or karma or reaping what I sow? If I keep myself busy, will it make me suffer less or run me down? Do I still have anything worthwhile to contribute? Can I do this day? Do I have what it takes? Where can I find relief? How can I help them get relief? How do I live as a caretaker for someone who is sick and completely dependent on me, and not turn resentful or burn out? Does that make me a bad person? Should I open up and really share how I am doing, or just say great?

Actual uttered questions from living, breathing, pulsing people in deep suffering, loss, or pain. Some are questions that meet me on the mat every morning I wake up, and we wrestle it out.

If that little cluster of chaos was too much and you skipped over, it did its job. People who smile at you and who you work next to or live in a home with are carrying questions like these right now. This minute. While seemingly functional individuals file paperwork and put bandaids on knees and coach little league and close business deals, they suffer. They also try to make sense of that suffering. Not every person is holding deep angst or wounding. Still, I have met enough who do, and who hold it silently, thinking that if their noisy chatter inside is too much for them, it would certainly be too much to unload on someone else. I don’t feel I have to sell this, if you interact with any number of humans on a fairly consistent basis, you are wide eyed aware that people are hurting.

Healing is complicated. Maybe this isn’t true and I just haven’t figured it out, but for me it has layers and layers. I have been processing and even wrote about it recently here. I am usually leery of writing on something I can’t wrap my brain or thoughts around, but this just keeps coming back because I live in a body that doesn’t let me forget.

I have a buoyant soul. This is not a brag, this is a straight up gift. Wiring, disposition, an obscenely large support system, and a faith that digs in past ritual or routine have kept my little spirit floating in some rough waters. My natural default is sunny side up, so it is not surprising that I attempt to reframe struggle and difficulty into possibility and sunshine. I am grateful for it, and it has served me well. I can remember walking down the hall in elementary school to the nurses office to throw up, fix my tube, get my labs drawn and rush back to class unfazed with playfulness and a cheshire smile. Birthdays, first dates, Neches River Festival, high school and college graduation, I have vivid memories of being so sick, wiping it off my face long enough to celebrate or at least participate, and then melting into a puddle of nausea and pain. Our wedding was stunning, every detail and each set of hands behind the day made that ceremony just drip with love. As soon as we were presented as “The Daigles,” our first moment together was my darling husband holding up the creamy satin ruffles of an Amsale wedding gown so that I could dry heave and decompress the contents of my bloated stomach through a tube into the bathroom sink. The celebration and sacredness of our union was begun by my suffering finding some ease in his gentle, selfless presence. That is healing.

That speaks all I know of healing. That snapshot right there, not the one below of us looking the part, but the uncaptured one of us in the bathroom. I see the kindness in his eyes, he sees the weariness in mine. We both know when we open the door we will smile and pause for hundreds of photos we will be glad to look back on and dance to a song by a man we once drove to a coffeeshop in Houston to hear. We will revel in each moment with the zeal and anticipation of glowing newlyweds, but this one still frame, hunched over that sink, is more holy and more meaningful to me than any other part of 11/14/09. He met me in my pain, fully aware it would likely follow us through years and anniversaries, he committed to lend me his strength and promised whatever comes, we will do it together. And I have never been so healed.

And it has come to me just like this, over and over. In friends showing up when I was hiding and in pots of moms chicken soup and in kind words and grace and ibuprofen finally kicking in enough to close my eyes. This is all I know and I am going to write about it until I run out of words because too many people who hurt think healing just may be out of their reach. And what if it is blooming in their backyard or is in the 5th line of the 34th page of a book on the nightstand or lives next door or gives them a hug on Sunday morning and that is exactly enough for them to keep being here today. Healing is wholeness, wellness, restoration. It may not look like what I intended, and maybe that is why I am so quick to miss it. But I know it is here because I am still here, and when I encounter it in all its forms, it keeps me moving forward.

So let’s do this. A wild and crowded scavenger hunt for the beauty and balms that ease us and carry us through the pain. Together we will name them, talk about them, cheer that they exist, maybe even disagree a bit. I think there is plenty of space for that. We won’t have to deny that pain is still present or wait for it to pass to celebrate, but we will party a little bit harder because we know deep suffering unexplainably expands our capacity to hold deep joy. We will keep our eyes open to see what shows up, as healing.