Lessons Learned

One of the coping mechanisms I’ve used during my life is to try to squeeze out of every experience, however good or bad I may judge it to be, the lessons I can use to move forward. As I wrote in my last post, 2017 and 2018 have been very difficult ones for my husband and me. We’ve both faced health challenges that have derailed the plans we had made.

Like everybody else, I get very attached to my plans. In fact, I often tell clients that I think a lot of the pain we experience in life results from our attachment to our “pictures” of how life should be. But that’s the human condition (unless perhaps one is a Zen master who has achieved complete detachment).

If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you may have signed up for my e-book, 7 Secrets to Reboot Your Bliss. In that little book, I offer a formula for creating the life you want. The formula works, by and large. In my fairly long life, I have manifested wonderful things, things that enriched my life and the lives of others.

Want an example? I received a 100% grant to buy and renovate an apartment complex, complete with social services and a child care center, for single-parents and their families. I owned and operated if for seven years and served countless families, while also creating a great job for myself doing something I loved.

Impressive, right? I agree!

Here’s the thing, however. Sometimes the Universe has a plan that overrides the plans you and I make. After all, life is magnificent, but it’s also dicey. People get sick. People lose their jobs. And let’s not forget, none of us is going to live forever.

So how do we make sense of the times things don’t work out as we desired, or decreed? That’s when we move our focus from the big picture inward to the smaller, more immediate view.

The first step – and the most difficult – is surrender. When I’m in a situation that I really, really would prefer to be different, my human impulse is to kick and scream (or some slightly more restrained version of that). But there is a Universal Law we all need to know. Universal Laws, after all, are the rules of the road for human life. Ready? Here it is:

What we resist, persists.

An unwanted situation will not change, cannot change, until we surrender to what is.

Early this year I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was lucky it was a non-aggressive type. In fact, part of me felt apologetic for whining about it because so many of my women friends have dealt with much worse. But whine I did, in the privacy of my room and to my understanding husband. Then I surrendered. I had it, it was going to take time to deal with, I wasn’t going to Europe this year, so I might as well get with the program.

Using the best tools I know, I wrote down my intentions, my heartfelt desires in this situation, in the form of affirmations.

1) I am completely healed and I go forward in permanent good health.

2) I am comfortable with the way my body looks.

Yes, I know that’s a somewhat petty consideration, but hey – I’m among friends here, right? That’s how I felt.

When I was first diagnosed, I saw a surgeon who explained he would perform a lumpectomy, removing from the top of my left breast a lime-sized section of tissue. I asked if he had pictures of what I could expect, and he replied, “No. The cosmetic surgeons give you those kinds of pictures, but we don’t.” So I went and searched on the internet. The pictures I found were not how I wanted to look after surgery, but of course I would do whatever I had to do to get better.

On the 1st of February, I contacted M.D. Anderson Hospital, home of the Nellie B. Connally Breast Center. A nurse navigator took my information and I sent her copies of identification and my insurance. She said I was good to go. Over the next month she set appointments, then cancelled them, then reset others. It was a frustrating process, but I had heard good things about the Breast Center, and I knew, of course, that M.D. Anderson is highly rated.  However, because I did my therapist training at the Medical Center, I also knew it is a huge bureaucracy, and a bit of a zoo.

On the morning of March 1st, I got a call from the nurse navigator. She was sorry to tell me that, alas, my United Healthcare Insurance would not be accepted by the Connally Center. Apparently that entity was a different legal structure, and did not have a contract with my health insurance provider.

I can’t remember a time I have been angrier. I had just spent a month dealing with these people – time taken out of my healing journey – only to have the whole effort collapse. That day there was a lot of kicking and screaming.

Then, once I had collected myself, Dempsey and I talked. We agreed that, based on our experience of life, this was a clear case of an answer to our longstanding request to the Universe: Grant me this or something better. If it wasn’t going to be M.D.Anderson, then there was something better. I reorganized, resumed my search, and found a woman surgeon in Austin who was using a technique I had never heard of, which she called Reductive Mastectomy. She operated on me, removing the cancerous tissue through the underside of my left breast, then removing the same amount of tissue from under my right. After that, she did a breast lift, thus combining an oncological surgery with a cosmetic procedure.

Both my intentions were realized. My cancer is gone; genetic testing showed I did not need chemo or radiation, and the likelihood of a recurrence is miniscule. I am pleased with the cosmetic outcome. I have a few scars, but only what friends have who’ve undergone a breast lift.

Those outcomes happened only after I surrendered to what was.

I had a similar experience last month when I developed a blood clot in my liver (ironically from Tamoxifen, the drug I was taking to further minimize the changes of a recurrence). I spent about ten days trying to find doctors who had the expertise I needed, who would also accept my health insurance. I encountered what would have been under difference circumstances a laughable collection of communications difficulties. Finally, I surrendered. We decided we’d simply go to the Emergency Room of the medical school hospital and check in, asking to be directly admitted. It was a fairly harrowing 30-hour ordeal, but in the end, I received excellent care.

Here another Universal Law:

Joy is a choice.

In any situation I can choose to be miserable or I can choose to be joyful. Joy is not a reaction to having things go my way. Joy  is not the result of feeling no pain. Joy is my decision to remain open to every ounce of beauty and love in my world, whatever is happening. I cannot always control my circumstances, but I can always control my reaction.

Finally, to return to the view from 30,000 feet, something else happened this year – something wonderful. A young man who is a member of my extended family, someone I love a lot, had been in the grip of addiction for more than a decade. He felt helpless to change things, his health was deteriorating badly, and his own family was painfully affected. For years I prayed daily for healing for him, as of course did others who care for him. Early this year, he gathered together his courage and spent several months in rehab. He returned to his life, restored to the person we used to know, but with a deep well of hard-won wisdom. We believe this is a permanent recovery; he’s doing the work and getting well mentally and physically.

Of course, one thing has nothing to do with the other. His decision was not affected by my struggles this year, nor were my struggles related to his situation. And yet, if God had leaned over and whispered in my ear, asking if I’d be willing to sacrifice my “pictures” for this year for his recovery, my answer would have been an enthusiastic “Yes!”.

There is order in the Universe, I believe, even when we can’t see what it is.