I’m fifty-nine and living in a tiny cottage I designed and built myself in the midst of densely forested woods. My property borders thousands of acres of protected land in central Florida.
As the pastel shades of dusk soothe a hot summer’s day in June of 2002, I bathe myself in my outdoor shower.
Can anything be better than this, showering in the open under the sky?
As I wash myself, I notice a brown spot on my stomach.
Is that a mole?
No, that’s a tick.
Hmm. No big deal, I guess.
I remove the tick that’s reluctant to end a gourmet dining experience.
I’m unaware that the tick I pulled off my body has left behind bacteria that will soon rape my life.
Tragedy strikes merely one year later. The catastrophic effects of neurological Lyme disease force me to take drastic measures.
My heart weeps as I sign the papers selling my property I can no longer manage. I move in with a friend who offers me a home.
I’m too sick to sit at my desk and I can’t remember how to do the work I’ve done for seventeen years. Tears falling from my eyes speak of sorrow, as I sign retirement papers to end a job I cherish.
There’s no longer enough energy to take care of my eight-year-old dog, Forest. My soul aches as I bend over and kiss my precious companion with his face full of questions and walk away, leaving him at his new home.
By April of 2004, I’m too ill to take care of my barest necessities. My sister and brother-in-law offer me their help and a place to live in Georgia. I know I must leave Florida, my life-long friends, and my mom.
When I wave goodbye to my ninety-two year old mother sitting in her wheel chair on the sidewalk near her apartment, grief shreds my heart. I somehow know I’ll never see her again.
For eight years one treatment after another fails to halt Lyme’s destructive path in my body and soul.
Hope evaporates.
Feeling worthless and depressed, I try to kill myself.
That doesn’t work either.
Can’t figure out why all those drugs I took didn’t take me out.
Maybe what a friend says is right, “God’s not done with you!”
Months drag by.
Today is cold – January 4, 2010.
I wish I felt as cheery as the sun shinning in my window.
I’ve just finished a book my therapist, Brenda Stockdale, published a few months ago: You Can Beat the Odds.
I place her book in my lap to reflect on what she’s said about using science based, mind-body medicine techniques to enhance one’s immune system and restore health.
Spectacular!
Mapped before me, I see my healing pathway in Brenda’s creative, informative work.
In a moment of energized awareness, her creative spark ignites my own.
I can design a way to heal myself using mind-body medicine techniques.
God, I see Your hand in this – the Great Designer.
You’ve shown me how to heal through Brenda’s work using my wonderfully designed mind-body connection.
I’m a pauper of sorts.
I at once feel the full measure of my diseased poverty and the blessing of untold worth You’ve revealed to me.
Funny how the two, side-by-side, display the majesty of Your love for me in a way I can understand.
Using You Can Beat the Odds as a handbook for healing, and with my therapist’s well-honed expertise at giving wise, intuitive direction, I develop skill at using mind-body medicine techniques to enhance my immune system.
Using my own creative mixture of music, affirmations, imageries, mind-stream journaling, and mindfulness meditation, my broken heart and ravaged body begin to heal.
By March I’m certain I’ll be well enough to do something I’ve been dreaming about – a fifty-mile, solo canoe trip on Utah’s Colorado River. I schedule my adventure for September knowing that I’ll have good reason by then to celebrate my release from Lyme’s torture.
In the middle of September, as I’m ending my canoe trip on the Colorado, the metaphor of my journey thrills me:
Without a doubt, I am done with Lyme disease.
I beach my canoe at The Confluence where the Colorado and Green Rivers gurgle and swirl in delight over meeting one another.
I am safe. I am well. I am filled with wonder.
On the wet sandy beach, I sing and dance to the rhythm of joy in my heart.
The canyon walls echo – a standing ovation of sorts.
Yes!
After taking a bath where the two rivers merge and eating a snack of fruit and nuts, I pitch my tent with the door facing The Confluence that’s less than ten feet away.
I sit down at the door of my tent willing my senses to be fully alive to absorb the beauty of God’s creation.
The sun grants a cooling shade from behind a cliff, while the remaining rays describe the canyon wall across the Colorado River in gentled hues of terra cotta.
In a deep blue sky, an incandescent moon rises and shimmering stars begin to appear; flittering bats make dainty silhouettes in the sky above my tent.
I wiggle my toes in the warm, fine sand while the Colorado and Green rivers continue to utter gurgles of greeting as they join to travel on a shared destiny.
My light heart capers in the air.
Then, the Great Conductor casts a spell of mystery and unmistakable Majesty.
Classical flute music echoes in the canyons and dances in the breeze.
Embraced by this exquisite beauty and with tears spilling from my heart, I reverently and humbly bow my head and weep with joy.
With the rivers, the moon, the flute player, I, too, was summoned to be here in this Divine moment.
Indeed, God’s not done with me
Copyright Ó 2012 Carolyn Graham All Rights Reserved
