Not Expecting to Be Here - And Yet

It always comes back to forgiveness. I don't know what will come next in life. Oh sure, there are things for which I have made plans - but whatever comes next may not go along with those plans - even the many assurances that things will go just as I planned.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the morning in which I thought there would be no more mornings - no  more coffee (ahhh) - no more touching - no more hugs - no more game playing - no more smiles - no more oatmeal - no more words of love and acts of love. The very kind and gentle nurse went through the ritual shaving. I never thought my groin would need to be shaved for surgery done on my chest - but there is always the 'in case we need to...'

Sitting here in a coffee shop sharing a table with a fellow-frequent-coffee-drinker is something I have come to accept as the way things have been and will be. Ha. And yet, here I am. In many ways I am more tuned into the way life slips by if we do not look up and take notice. I keep finding out that being alive takes some discipline - some intentional movement - some words spoken that may be too easy to leave unspoken - some touch that seems risky - some ordering of the day that disrupts the day as I thought it had to be - some vulnerability that really seems to go too far - some availability that moves me out of my world as I want it. The discipline of being alive.

And yet, I know that there are ways to be alive and yet know nothing of life outside of the world I create for myself. In fact, most of the world is not like the world I create for myself. It is much more strange - grand - odd - wonderful - dangerous - loving - simply beyond my control. At times I glance back in time and think of how things could have been different - but now is now - not then. So the discipline continues - breathe.

So it was five years ago that I settled into the possibility that tomorrow would not arrive as I always expect it to arrive. For the moments before the nurse let me know that I may start feel;nah ;icv a;va.n,
I found in those moments of floating away - a strange peace. I realized there may be no waking up within a fog of anesthesia - there may be nothing - a nothing beyond my control - therefore, a nothing I need not fear for I would not have to be in control of it. It would be an endless freedom - an unknown freedom - a rest-full freedom.

But then, there were tubes - painfulness - fogginess full of delusions - voices known and unknown. I had completely let go - but then - I returned.  Though the moment prior to surgery is still one of the most memorable times of my life - an act of releasing that I prayerfully long to experience every day. For in that release, there was no worry - no need to get anything right - no judgment - no expectation at all. Forgiveness is like that place - it opens me up to whatever - even a return to what was. And yet, it is the power to let go and acknowledge that neither life nor death is able to separate me from the promise of life that is able to creatively open up the day. That unknown day - that day at hand - that day up ahead, is a gift always amplified and dignified and realized more fully through forgiveness. To take leave of what is and experience the free-fall into forgiveness takes us into a life we have yet entered. It is though, we are handed an opportunity that never ceases to present it self - even when all we expect is death.

Many thanks to all those who have forgiven me and given me new life. Many thanks to those who have been able to live with my inability to forgive - therefore giving me another chance at life with them. Many thanks to all who have experienced me in that fogginess of neither life nor death and yet were willing to stay by me and hold my hand and offer me another opportunity to enter the land of forgiveness.
TRRR