Community...something I always believed to be important, and easily accessible when I needed it. I found community in my church, among my like minded friends, and at work. Community served me well in these places...helping me feel accepted, validated and loved. I would seek it only when I felt I needed that dose of love and validation. Being a confident, independent, strong willed person, I found that I didn't need to seek community often. I was able to achieve most of what I set my mind to just by working hard and setting my goals. Being independent gave me great satisfaction. It made me feel less vulnerable. It made me feel strong.
Then in 2005 I gave birth to our son Will via an emergency c-section, and as he was air lifted to a children's hospital only minutes after he was born, with my husband following in the car, I found myself alone and vulnerable, trying to recover in the hospital with this question: Who woould be my community now?
Who could I bring into this world of pain and suffering with me? How could I even ask? The answer that I decided upon was "no one". I needed to fix this. I needed to make this right. It was my responsibility. It was my child. So isolation and loneliness were at my side over the next 3 months while Will was in a NICU fighting for his life, undergoing more than 20 surgeries, and me at his side...trying to fix this and make it "right".
What I discovered during those lonely months was I could not fix him. I could not make him normal. I could not heal him. I could not save him. I could not make this "right". Some of my first thoughts and fears after he was born were how would he fit in? Where would his community be? The doctors kept telling me what a unique and medically challenging boy I had. They did not have any cases to refer to...he was so different. So they could give me no hope and comfort in what the outcome would be. I saw for him a future of vulnerability and isolation, and wondered if he would even survive. How could he?
Then after 3 months of fighting and struggling with this huge responsibility...this burden of trying to make my son "right"....I collapsed in my kitchen floor...crying out to God "What do you want me to do?! Tell me what to do!" And He said to me in a calm, sure voice "Let me have it." I had been struggling with this thought for months now. How could I surrender my child to God when I felt so responsible? So afraid if I let go he wouldn't live. Besides he grew inside of me and was born this way so it must be my fault...my responsibility. Right? I needed to make it right, because I must have done something to mess up God's plan for my child's life. Surely His plan for Will was to be born perfect and healthy. But broken and vulnerable and desperate in my kitchen floor after months of struggling to keep our raft afloat in the rapids of this river we found ourselves in, I simply said to God, "Okay." And ....
Immediately the river was calm!
And what I have discovered floating in this calm, beautiful river is that Will is perfect! He was born exactly the way God intended. He is special and unique, and will change the world because of it! He has already blessed so many at the young age of 5 demonstrating his courage, love, and surrender. He is a survivor of 25 surgeries, including a lung removal last fall, and CPR on the operating table. Not only has he survived, but he LIVES life with exhuberance...riding his bike, swimming, and running almost as fast as his 7 year old brother! This weak, vulnerable, different little boy of mine walked 628 feet only 3 days after his lung removal, when the expectation of the shocked therapist was only 10 feet. And Will's community? It is everywhere he goes...it is always among him. He has shown me that it is our diversity that connects us...it does not separate us! The fact that each one of us is a marvel is the one thing we all have in common. The marvelous thing is that when we come together in our differences.... we become whole.
So my dream for our community is embodied in the Foundation for Community Wholeness. I want us to believe, and I want our children to KNOW that we all "fit in" simply by being ourselves. And that the river of community wholeness is filled with love, respect, and acceptance, and....
It is calm! It is beautiful! It will set you free!
Please join the Foundation for Community Wholeness as we marvel in the uniqueness of the child within us all, and as we HONOR DIVERSITY and CELEBRATE UNITY!
Angie Cross
President
Foundation for Community Wholeness
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Am so proud to be part of the Board of Foundation for Community Wholeness. The educational opportunities are going to be awesome!
ReplyDeleteAngie, you have initiated something wonderful and your story will touch so many. We all have our own stories and have experienced pain in different ways but pain is pain. Being excluded or being told you're not ok can be done in so many ways, verbal and non-verbal and the affect is hurtful all the same. There is a little video on youTube Brene Brown on "The Power of Vulnerability" when she spoke on TEDtalks. This might be enjoyed by some readers.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to share a little story with you.
A month or so ago an Indian Vedic Astrologer spent some time with me after analyzing my chart and introduced several suggestions. One was to deal with Saturn, (which he described as a planet of the poor, deprived, homeless) He said I want you to give to this group of people, not money, but food !! and do it every Saturday.
So every Saturday morning I make a sandwich with love and care, first day I went to the market and bought a lovely fresh bun, some Black Forest ham, came home made a sandwich added a little Dijon mustard, cut it in half, wrapped it in waxed paper, put it in a brown bag and went for a walk. I happen to live in downtown Toronto in an area where it's not difficult to find someone in need. The first week I walked over to a man sitting on the sidewalk with his back against a building smoking a cigarette, I said something like, "here is a nice nourishing sandwich" to which he said "I'll eat it after I finish my cigarette" The following week I walked over to a young man and this time I said "how are you" he said "hanging in" and I said "I've made you a sandwich". He immediately opened it up. I returned home and immediately wrote an email to the Astrologer to let him know of some of the changes I had made since we had met. I said the best change of all was the simple act of giving food on Saturday. I realized that I have been so focused on giving my love to a select few people. It now feels so good, and very personal too, to look eyeball to eyeball and say to a total stranger, "I've made YOU a sandwich"
We are all connected, we all share this planet, take from it, use it's resources. We can all care about each other and care for each other. Not very complicated at all. Simple wholesome gestures, simple acts that just might make a difference and we may never know how much it meant to that particular person on that particular.
Keep the faith, you're a gift to the world, my darling. Auntie Gayle xoxo