Lisa Miller: Fantastic Grace

 “Shit happens.  I realized then that we always have the choice to either let it remain on the dung heap, or allow it to transform.”

I’m still celebrating International Women’s Day, but I’m calling it Fantastic InterGenerational Women in my Life Month. 

I feel so lucky to know some really compassionate, hilarious, brave, nutty, wise, strong women, and they come in an array of decades.  I often wish I could gather all of them into one room so that they could know one another.  (Hmmmmmmmmmm!  What are all y’all doing on my birthday this summer?)

This March 2013, I want to celebrate one Fantastic in particular, but I’m not sure of how she’d feel about the personal publicity, so I’ll use The Fake Name Generator here and henceforth refer to my friend by her alias.

Delvonia Fansmetonopolis is a dedicated rehabilitation therapist.  In her 70’s she is beautiful and hip, and people feel they can tell her anything because she has such a welcoming way about her.  She laughs with you when you laugh, and cries with you when you cry.  Her heart is bigger than she is tall, and she truly wants healing for everyone—this is her mission.

While this mission may be true for most service professionals and healers, what’s unique about D is her dedication to her own personal healing.  In her seventh decade, she is truly a role model who LIVES the healing she recommends to everyone.  She’s not shy to confide that she is always learning, growing,  finding new inspiration—that her health depends on physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.  She teaches that here is no one magic pill, and having survived her own debilitating years of despair, D’s courage and commitment to a life of balance gently but surely precede her when she enters a room. 

It’s this vital energy that is a gift to anyone seeking his/her own courage and balance.  Because recovery is such a raw and painful process, the promise of healing carried in the aura of the facilitator means everything, even before a word is spoken, and certainly in the spaces between words. 

Nearly three weeks ago, my friend needed an unexpected surgery on her spine.  She was told that without it she would lose the ability to walk.  No picnic either way—she felt she had no choice. 

Though nervous, as anybody would be, D faced her surgery bravely and gets high marks for recovery to this point (though she was calling patients from her bed despite the fact that she barely had a voice in the days after surgery.) But it is something else entirely that inspires and moves me each time I talk to her. 

Simply, my friend D is FULL of grace, love, patience, and gratitude. 

How easy it would be to feel sorry for one’s self—the pain, the genetic misfortune, the inconvenience, the terror associated with this type of diagnosis.  But instead, she has chosen to move with the very flow of her life; she is present in the now and she is finding a way to smell the flowers (well, she’s not bending down but she’s enjoying them symbolically)!

I wouldn’t have guessed that each of my “consoling” post-surgery calls to her would leave ME inspired and reassured, but they have, each and every one.  D’s ability to see her situation as an opportunity for deeper healing is transforming her very situation.

I asked a mentor recently for her opinion about the randomness of heart-breaking events when shit just happens; does shit just sometimes happen, or is there meaning in everything that happens? 

She responded, “Shit happens, but it’s what you do with it, and how you respond to it.”  I realized then that we always have the choice to either let it remain on the dung heap, or allow it to transform.

I have a feeling that D’s willingness to accept what is, without blame, and to trust in her team of healers now, has created a vortex of profound healing around her.  At the center of this—because she feels she is exactly where she needs to be right now despite the randomness of this situation, her recovery process has been made smooth and comfortable.

What perfect karma for D from a lifetime of sincerity and excellence as a professional care-taker herself. What’s more, her healing spiral touches others—people feel inspired and uplifted around her, and, the icing for D has been that estranged relationships have been mended as people have shown up unexpectedly to offer support and mutual forgiveness. 

Talk about finding the gems in the dark—here they are—she created them without even realizing the good that could come from a life dedicated to integrity.

And now because you have just read this, the inspiration of D’s healing spiral is also touching you.  You do not have to endure an emergency surgery to realize how good it is to know your own present mission, to live in the flow of the present, and to be especially grateful for your present health!

In Oprah speak, “You get a gem, you get a gem, you get a gem!”  This is the definition of grace.

Thank you Delvonia for being in my life, for leading the way for all of us on so many levels, and for providing me the opportunity to finally use the Fake Name Generator.