Twelve years ago I almost died. Doctors considered amputating my right leg. But one very stubborn infectious disease specialist and an experimental antibiotic treatment ended up saving my limb and my life. I’ve since learned that the distance between life and death can be traveled a few times over—and in my case that highway seriously needs work! The Montreal road of my metaphorical commute towards heaven (IYKYK) is evidenced by the lifelong side effects of my illness.
A crystal ball would have been handy for me to peer into when I landed in the emerg for the first time. Maybe things would be different today had I known then that my choices would mean living with the impacts of that illness for the long haul. (I’ve talked about it here if you’re someone who is into back story). But I wasn’t a good listener in my 30s. Lying in that hospital bed, hopped up on morphine, the question I was compelled to ask doctors wasn’t how I was going to get better. Instead, what I asked any medical professional who would listen was when I could get back to work.
As a public educator the need (the expectation) for self-sacrifice had been drilled deep—by both broken public education systems and scarcity models of social non-care. Looking back it’s wild to me that the specter of death did not loom large enough to provoke in me an immediate change. My body was trying to teach me something LOUDLY but I wasn’t listening!
Perhaps all the more problematic is how, as the years went on, that death specter morphed into something differently insidious: a Jiminy Cricket voice in my ear telling me that pain and death are inevitable…just keep at it because your just rewards will eventually be worth it.
But what rewards?
CoVid was my most influential teacher. (Or, depending on what metaphor resonates, the construction crew who fixed a big pothole in my life.) When it broke into our world it gave me the gumption to finally flick Jiminy off my shoulder. I became a new kind of educator, spending time in very different sorts of classrooms. Listening. My school uniform has become a mismatched compression sock and a step counter. Because walking this road is long so I might as well get my steps in!
Here are two of the teachers who have been educating me of late. I’m still sitting in the learning so have nothing to offer but their words right now:
says: “There’s some rule of the universe that says we humans are only capable of carrying so many burdens at a time. We must let go of one thing for the other thing to thrive.”and
If you have any names you think deserve Good Enough shout outs send them my way. Why not leave a comment and send me down a new learning road…and join me for the drive?
"just keep at it because your just rewards will eventually be worth it....."
The one who carries the annoiting bears much, sometimes with unanswerable questions. Nonetheless we have an Anointer, an Advocate who have dominion over the systems God of heaven and earth and He rides upon the clouds which when we kind of understand it we just be still .... are humble in His. Presence. That to me is the mustard seed faith. Just understand one small bit is good enough. So Natalie just keep at it as worshiper uou are clothed perfectly as daily angels sing Holy, Holy Holy and the Elders throw their crowns down and God moves....So wait miracles on its way🙏