Angel wings

We have been collecting Angel Wings again this year!

Anyone who goes out to walk the beach looks for these delicate and beautiful little shells in the sand.

Connected by just a thin little piece of tissue, these shells show up on the beach left by the waves.  Sometimes the waves are too strong and you will find them broken apart, but mostly they are "Angel wings".  Strange, because the harder and bigger shells are always broken, but these tiny and delicate little shells come through the pounding of the surf.

They come in purple most often...the royalty color; or streaked with yellow, or rarely, solid yellow like the one in the photo above.   Rarely you will find pink....  Some are almost solid royal, some are streaked with purple and mostly white.  And some are White!

In 2012 I found solace each day in finding pairs of Angel Wings, and it was funny that I always found white ones....REAL angel wings.  I was very sick in 2012;  an 8 inch tumor was found in my retro-peritoneal space. My doctor told me I could not go to the beach because we were preparing for surgery, and then he changed his mind and let me go.  Just like this year, dear friends came with us and suffered with me during each day's telephone calls with doctors and floods of tears at the diagnosis....cancer.  But then it wasn't cancer, and then it was.  They were going to do immediate surgery and I needed to be prepared to go back to Atlanta at any time; and then they finally put off the surgery for 6 months.  The medical "tissue board" at Winship Cancer Center at Emory University could not go forward with the surgery at that time.  The tumor was so large and was pressing on my aortic artery, my right kidney, the nerve and arterial structure on my right side, and on and on. They needed time to study it and watch the growth of the mass.

The Angel Wings, for me, were signs from the Lord that all would be well. Through the tears and concern, God was with me.  I felt very alone sometimes, but I was not alone at all.  Every day I found a pair of white Angel Wings in the sand, and every day found hope in them  Others found Angel wings too and brought them back to add to the collection, just like we are doing again this year. I was so sick, and yet I knew that God would heal me.  Six months later, I had emergency surgery to remove the tumor.  It had become to oppressive to body structure, and my organs were not working properly.  It was time to finally make me well.

This year we are collecting Angel Wings for Bill+ and Sheila's grandchildren...not for a sad reason, or a bad reason but for happy times, for the children to have shells of their own of all kinds.
and Angel Wings..............

Jim's birthday

Jim's birthday today!  Hooray!

The day began with physical therapy, and one of my very favorite things.  Jim accompanied me to physical therapy to learn how to do this for me before we left for Wyoming.  If I could have afforded to ship my physical therapist out here, I would have.  She was way too expensive, and couldn't take the time off.

So after stretching myself out and applying warmth to my knee, Jim began the "range of motion" stretches.  This involves my lying on my back with my ankle propped on a rolled up towel, my foot flexed so as to straighten out my knee as much as possible, NATURALLY.  I still have a little bend to my knee after the procedure, and we are working to straighten it out.  It must be straightened out!!

Standing over me, he massages the knee area, back and front for a time, and then clasps his hands together over my knee cap and slowly and firmly applies his bodyweight to my knee, pressing down until my knee is perfectly straight.  Let me just describe how this feels as the knee structure stretches under the weight of someone who is PRESSING DOWN, HARD!  No, nevermind.....I can't describe in words the pain as my knee is forced and held into the correct position.  This is done three to four times. Lord have mercy!

Jim made lunches while I cried for a little while, and hurt, and hated him for a few minutes.  He  made me PB&J....extra PB so that it kind of oozes out like my grandmother once made for me.  He felt really bad that he hurt me...but it has to be done! And we headed out for our hike today.

I have to say that last night, while we were waiting at the trailhead that is usually used for climbers climbing the Grand Teton and other peaks here, we met a group coming down from a climb.  Carrying their ropes, carabiners, and all of their equipment, filthy dirty and scraped and cut in places, tousled and sunburned and energized, I remembered the days that I, too, would come back from a climb in this condition, but so pumped up with adrenaline from achieving a goal....the summit.  NO matter how many times I took a group up, or made the climb with friends, it was always the same:  A Rush.  It was a RUSH to see these folks come down after a successful climb as the sun set and the day came to a close.

I have been walking a great deal since we arrived, on the flats of the valley; a paved trail that winds along the roads out in the sagebrush flats. Each day I have walked a little farther, picked up my pace, walking alongside the traffic on the road.  I have made progress, but it leaves much to be desired.  I am able to look up and see the mountain range, but something is missing.

There are two trails that wind along the lakes that I know I can walk, but my pride...my foolish pride....has kept me from leaving the paved bike trail and accessing these trails.  I ditched my pride today and walked in the forest, following along the lakesides, no traffic to hear or see.  These two trails are meant for those who cannot walk or hike the bigger trails to go high up into the mountains, as I have always done.  These two trails I once scoffed at and would never even consider practice on them because of their ease.  Now these are the trails I use because I can't do the climbs and hikes I once did right now!  Jim points out every other sentence how this is now, but not forever.

We talked today about how, for the last three years, my health has made it impossible to live like I once did in these mountains and this valley.  After the tumor was discovered in 2012, I came home that fall and was very very sick.  No one wanted to remove that tumor; no surgeon would take the case.  When I came here, we were waiting to see how the tumor would grow and change to even afford me the chance of surgery to remove it, or not.  Everything I did that September of 2012 was the last time I would do it.  Everyone I saw while here wept with me at the thought that that trip might be the last time I would come back to this valley alive.  It was miserable and sad.

The tumor was successfully removed by a surgeon, the only one who stepped out.  But in 2013 I was still too weak and in too much pain to do much of anything when I came back to this valley.  I did very little, but I came back here and I loved every minute, and everyone so much. There was so much joy! I was so grateful to God for bringing one surgeon who was willing to take that tumor away.

This summer, the knee surgery that we knew was coming has taken my ability to do much of anything once again.  Once we came into the valley, I felt the energy, but it is not real energy. It  is energy in my head.  It takes all of my energy and all of my strength to walk, to work out at the gym, to stand up for very long.  I am amazed at how weak I am after the procedure in July.  But we knew this...I just conveniently forgot how UNABLE I am.  I never NAP.....I have to NAP....I never go to bed before 2 or 3 am....I can almost make it to midnight....I never sleep in until noon.....it is all I can do to get going.

We drove to the lake and hiked through the forest:

The last flowers and seedheads of fall along this simple trail of so much beauty...I didn't really know, but I did know!

We sat by the lake and had lunch.  The breeze over the mountains blew in a little harder and with a little extra chill with the cold front coming in.  The sun came and went

and we watched as kayakers went by....String Lake, a lake long and narrow and mostly calm and smooth and a place we love to kayak too....was slightly riffled by the wind today but cool, icy green and lovely

and Jim knew what I was thinking....another "thing" I cannot do right now, not because I can't paddle, but simply because I can't get in and out of the kayak....and he said:

Next year, you know it will be next year.....

We packed up lunch as the trail got crowded and noisy....Jim likes my monastic style of quiet and listening...and "Hiked" back to the car....  I like to use that word instead of "walked".  And as we drove back to the cabin after this elegant day in the forest by the lake, God showed me that indeed, I have come a long way in three long years of health challenges.  I'm not hiking paved surface alongside the road, I'm hiking on gently rolling forest trails, and eating peanut butter and jelly while sitting by a beautiful lake. SIMPLE!  I  might be watching kayakers in 2014, but I pray God will have me in a kayak in 2015 paddling the different sections of String Lake.  God has healed me and brought me a long way. He always does, and always has been there for me.  Jim is in charge of reminding me daily when I get discouraged at all of these issues how far we have come from that first phone call telling me of an 8 inch tumor that was crushing me,

We turned up the road to the cabin, and began the drive along the way that has been closed due to a grizzly bear for 2 weeks.  The road is open again, and we are encouraged until we come upon a large group of people running, cameras in hand and on shoulders, leaving their cars in place.  What we fear is true...it is a bear, but not the grizzly, a black bear high in a tree, feeding on berries.  Life is what it is, people can be so incredibly ridiculous, getting out of their cars and placing themselves at the foot of a hill where a very large black bear is feeding.  You know that bear will not come down from the tree and maybe be a little bit upset at the huge crowd gathering below?!  We drive on and stop at the ranger station at the top of the road just beyond our cabin.   The ranger reports, and we go on, and the road is closed AGAIN!!!

Jim had a great birthday, encouraging and loving ME!

My Physical therapist smacked me!!!

And what, I know you will ask yourself, does this subject have to do with Pathways....the title of my blog?

My Physical Therapist Smacked me!!

The answer is, absolutely nothing....this blog post has nothing to do with Pathways...the title of my blog!

Or maybe it does have something to do with it, I don't know.  But suffice it to say that My physical therapist smacked me today, and I deserved it.

I am Two weeks out of surgery to repair a badly damaged knee that I had been ignoring for about 15 years;  thus allowing so much damage that it got to the point that my leg was collapsing on a regular basis. I have flown face forward and down onto such floors as the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, The Basilica of St. Vincent's Abbey, and Hartsfield International Airport, among others.  And so it was time to go and meet with my orthopaedic surgeon and pray not to be yelled at too much.  Need I say that my surgeon had given up on me, and since my father passed on years ago, could not call him to let him know that I was doing extreme damage to myself.

Back when Andrew was much younger, he broke his arm, and Dr. Moeller was the MAN we saw because my father, also an orthopaedic surgeon, had told me this was who to see in Atlanta.  Specifically, we knew that I would need to have knee replacements because of my fondness of jumping off of high places and landing like a cat on targets far below, bashing my body into rocks, and jumping horses, riding rodeo, and doing any number of any kind of sports that were just a wee bit out of the ordinary.  At a very young age, I had some of the most extensive knee injury that anyone had ever seen, and my father wanted to make sure I knew where to go when I got around to it.

Well, I didn't really get around to it until I could actually predict that my knee was going to give way, and then I waited another 5 years before calling the MAN!

When I went into meet with him, it was as though he was waiting for me. He strode into the room and slapped the xrays up onto the machine without even glancing at me, and began speaking as though we had ended a conversation 15 minutes earlier about this very subject.  When he finally turned around with a glare in his eye he said  "So, do you think you waited long enough to do this?  This is massive damage.  How do you walk?"

I was embarassed....but cool....

My surgeon is my friend still, and when we talk with each other about this he casually pats my arm and gives me a hug because he knows what a slug I am when it comes to doing things that interrupt my personal routine.

And that brings me back around to the subject of the post  "My physical therapist smacked me today!"

Why, you ask, would my physical therapist smack me???  Well, Greg also has gotten a load of my "WAYS" over the last two weeks.  Intimately familiar with the knee replacement procedure, there were some things that I did not actually know about it, and so today, when he asked me how I was and I mentioned that the aching I was experiencing was coming from deep within bone and was unrelenting, he did not miss a beat.  His gaze riveted on my husband, Jim, sitting across from him, Greg asked me if I, perchance, had been walking on my leg without using my walker to support myself.  Inside, I gasped.  I could not lie to him and so I admitted that yes, I have been walking short distances, making the bed, doing laundry and other and various chores without using my walker for support.  I have also taken my shower without using the shower chair, standing freely in the shower and enjoying the warmth and comfort.

It was then that Greg, my physical therapist whom I adore, asked for my hand.  I placed my hand in his and he smacked it hard enough so that it stung....SMACK!  Almost as hard as my Bishop smacked me on the cheek at confirmation...but that sting back then stung a whole lot longer than this one did.  I remember flushing a deep red that day in the cathedral in Chicago.  This was almost as bad.

So I won't be doing anything anymore without using my walker for support.  Greg got a kick out of being able to smack a Benedictine sister, considering the fact that as a boy he was smacked plenty on the hand with a ruler in the Catholic school he attended.  His delight was that he could smack me hand to hand...without benefit of the ruler.

I know that y'all will wonder why I am confessing this today here in my blog.  Perhaps that is why this blog is entitled Pathways....Pray about it!

"Show us the Father" St. Augustine of Hippo

Don't go looking for any end beside God, in case by looking for an end beside God, you find yourself being consumed, not completed.  What is an end, after all, but the point we wish to reach, to stop at, and not to look for anything beyond it?  Because if you get there, but are still looking for something, you haven't yet reached the end.  So to reach the end is to reach the spot where you say,

"That's enough."

Philip thought that the Father alone was such an end, and so he said, 
Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us (john 14:8);
 but the Lord showed him that God is the end, God the Trinity.  Accordingly, when you say "Christ is the end," you should not be excluding God the Father; and when you say, "God the Father is the end," you should not be excluding Christ.  Philip apparently wished to exclude him, supposing that Christ was only what he could see with his eyes, so he cheerfully said, Show us the Father, and it is enough for us.

What do you mean It is enough for us?

That's where our desire ends; we won't be seeking any further; that's where we shall find total satisfaction, where we shall say, "It's enough, I don't want anymore."
Why's that?

Because we already know you.  Please show us the Father.  Since we can see you, after all, and cannot see him, we aren't satisfied.  We are overjoyed because we can see you; but show us him, and we'll be satisfied; we won't require anything more.

And the Lord said to him, because he is himself the end, himself the one who totally satisfies, so in order to relieve him of what he was assuming--he was assuming, you see, that he wasn't seeing the Son of God, when he was seeing the form of a servant--so he said to Philip, Have I been with you all this time, and you have not recognized me?

When you are looking for the end, and do not see what you see, well that of course is why you are looking for the end, because you can't see the end standing in front of you. 

Do you not believe, he said, that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?  (John 14:9-10)

Drawn to a Great Truth

......if He should call you, 
Let yourself be drawn to Him.
He may lead you to a great truth.
Do not dwell on yourself, nor should you--
A creature subject to multiplicity and change--
   seek Him.
Rest in tranquility, loftier than action or feeling.
And you will find that as you lose yourself
He will give you strength.

Be pleased to remain where it pleases Him to place
     you.
Straining to find Him is of no avail;
Be at Peace with yourself.  He embraces you.
Return His embrace, but do not feel wronged
When He absents Himself.  Give no thought to yourself;
If you love as you should, you will be filled with joy!
Because that love in itself
Glows with a light that does not fail.

You know that you can only possess
To the extent that He will give;
What He withholds you cannot acquire;
Nor can you hold on to what you have
Unless He grants you that grace.
Your Path from beginning to end
Lies beyond your power;
The choice is not yours but the Lord's.

Hence, if you have found Him know in truth
That it was through no power of yours.
The good that is given you
Comes out of charity; it is a gift,
Not the fruit of your own efforts. 
Let all your desire; then,
Be directed toward Him.
The Infinite One, Giver of all good.

Brother Jacopone da Todi (+1306) OFM

Litany of Spiritual Confidence~In preparation for a Holy Lent

~Lord, keep me close to you~

Lord, I can do all that you ask of me because it is you who strengthens me.

Lord, whenever I fall, you delight in my confidence to trust you all the more

Lord, let me look to you and not to myself to find what is needed to please you

Lord, when I am overcome by fear it is because my peace depends on some thing instead of on your will

Lord, free me from my hidden attachments to self-righteousness

Lord, let me always remember that it is you who move me to ask for your love

Lord, help me to see that the meaning of my faults is to learn to depend on you more and more

Lord, give me the strength to cry out for your love when all that I see is nothingness in myself

Lord, save me from the impulse to look for my peace and security in my own strength

Lord, the more you let me see what I am left to myself the more you give me the grace to cling to you

Lord, to be happy, I need nothing but what you provide for me at every moment

Lord, the more I live in the love you give me in this moment, the more perfectly I am able to suffer whatever comes my way

Lord, when I come to you at those times when I am overwhelmed by my own misery I glorify you the most

Lord, it is in being receptive to you in the knowledge of my own weakness that I derive all my strength

Lord, let me always remember that you want me to let you make me perfect by your love

Lord, the measure of my union with you is my faith in the power of your love to purify me and make me worthy of you.

Heavenly Dream

Several times in my life, I have experienced a Heavenly Dream which always contains a message from God.

Once, the dream was so real and so intense that I did not want it to end, and it included an audience with God,

The dream usually comes at a time of challenge in my life, or at a time of illness or trouble. The dream always begins the same way:

 Ahead of me is a long boulevard bordered with very tall trees, leafless with broad straight trunks until the very top, like Redwood trees. The trees are perfectly spaced, and at the top the tree canopy is sparse; there are no branches at the bottom...the pruning marks remain all the way up the trunk of each tree.  Where the canopy of each tree spreads at the top, a straight line of bright light is formed. The boulevard ahead of me is straight and inclines gently upward, becoming a steep hill to climb. The scene is very beautiful and serene.

As I walk down the boulevard, passing each tree, rooftops come into view.  Walking forward I begin to see glimpses of buildings, not just the rooftops, and then more and more of each building appears.  In each dream, I have been led into a different structure, to discover what is taking place there. Traveling up this beautiful hill, I have been led to discover so much about my life, and ultimately learned God's plan for my life.

This dream began for me at a time in my life when we thought that my life was coming to an end.  I first had this dream in the hospital, and I was very ill.  I learned then that God was with me, and that he would be with me always. My life would continue, and I remember waking to a feeling of serenity and security in knowing what was revealed to me in the dream; and while I wanted to share it, I was almost afraid to tell someone else what I had seen and heard and experienced.

I have returned to this boulevard again and again, and I have come away from each experience with knowledge and serenity; never fear.  

This morning I woke much earlier than planned but fell back into sleep, and returned to this same boulevard again.  It was  identical:  the hill sloping gently in front of me, tree after tree as I passed each one, the bright golden light at the top extending in front of me.  I was led into a garden, and a wide blue lake encompassed the scene in front of me.  The message for me this morning was of peace, and life; a warm and gentle love exchanged with all who were there.  There was a celebratory atmosphere and so much happiness.  I didn't want to leave.  But I remember being escorted back out to the boulevard, of goodbyes and good wishes...And then the dream ended, this time.