Ampersand Answers

The Question: How do I let/help people really heal? 

&mpersand Answers: This past Saturday I discovered a sore spot on what remains of my fourth toe. Talk about a sinking heart ... and not only mine, my husband’s too. The thought? Oh my God, are we starting this all over again?! 

Can I tell you? The guilt. The self-blame. The self-castigation. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. There's a story in the Gospel of John about the disciples asking, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" The Nazarene Rabbi says Neither, but ... 

Wow, that was the immediate subtext when I saw the sore spot. I'd done something wrong. 

Turns out, uh, no. Here's what happened: 

The surgeon used a kind of stitch that dissolves into the body--most of the time. Well, except for when they don't. They're called spitting stitches. (I cannot make these things up.) And when they don't absorb as they're supposed to, then a healthy immune system rejects and spits them out of the surgical site.  

My appointment with the doc was Wednesday. From Saturday until Wednesday right before we walked into the office, Tony told me repeatedly that I am superhealthy. (A word that a dear one gave us at the beginning of this odyssey, for which we remain grateful.) 

Well, it turns out that I AM superhealthy, and my body did what a superhealthy body is supposed to do in a spitting stitches scenario. She spit it out. 

BUT my MIND did not. And herein, the cautionary tale. 've been sick, and in and out of procedures and hospitals and crises for the past six months. But none of those things are permanent. The danger is to continue to think of myself as unwell, and not superhealthy. Please add your prayers to mine that we all begin to think of me as superhealthy, and remaining that way permanently. 

This is a great way to unite the things we want to put together and stay together. Keeping others stuck where they are is divisive. Encouraging them to heal is uniting. 

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