Beam love

An acquaintance of mine who has MS almost didn’t go to be with her daughter’s family on Thanksgiving Day. She thought she might ruin it for them. Happily, her Personal Care Assistant talked her into going.
I know this line of thinking! I remember days past, when I could contribute to the cooking, help set up and clean up, wipe the children’s noses and serve pie. Now, I watch the activity around me and feel useless. My illness has progressed to the point where I am quadriplegic and all those lovely verbs in the first sentence are beyond me. It’s aggravating.

Here is a verb that will never be beyond me: loving.

Those people who are cooking and cleaning and wiping and serving are also loving, so it’s still easy to sit there feeling sorry for myself. The problem is: it doesn’t make me – or the people around me – feel happier. Au contraire (yay – my assistive software knows how to spell that)!
These days, the question I find most useful is: who do I want to be?

In this moment, in this body, under these circumstances, who do I want to be?

Do I want to be the sick relative who stays home inviting people to worry? Do I want to be the one who shows up and watches people with sad eyes?
NO! I want to be the one who sits there and beams light and love so strongly that people in the next county look over and wonder what the glow is!

(Honestly, I was the one whose poor wheelchair driving almost swept the tablecloth – and all the dishes piled on it – onto the floor, but we won’t go into that right now.)
Cooking and cleaning and similar are much flashier and more obvious then beaming. They are actions with a clear beginning and end. They are, in many ways, simpler.
Those of us who live with chronic illness are ready for more advanced coursework: we get to love.
What if, in fact, our whole purpose for being is to remind people that it’s not about what you do so much as it is about who you are?

Let’s be people who beam light and love.

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