You Simply Shine

It’s 3:30 in the morning, hours into tossing and turning. Comfort and sleep elude and evade. Pillows support me from all sides as I try my right side again. I’m surprised to find my left arm is perfectly supported.

My OT session with Trish just hours ago having its lasting effect. After spending twenty minutes working the muscles and tendons and nerves, she tenderly placed it perfectly supported under the fleece blanket I bring every week.

For 20 years since it was paralyzed, my arm had never felt like this. Every moment before, it’s felt like it was going to fall. I’ve never been free to just move. I must first think about how that movement will affect my left arm. Will it yank out of socket? Will it scream and writhe in anger? In that moment under that blanket, it integrated back into my body, completely supported. I could let go, breathe.

But now in bed, my right arm screams, and I search for a way to comfort and support her. She has done so much, taken all the load. What pillow combination does she need? But then I see a body clinging to her. Before I can make out the shape, I’m transported to a road. It’s a dirt road, more of a trail really, light dancing through the trees, sounds of birds and leaves and insects.

Two people walk hand in hand. But they don’t look like people at all. It seems more like butterflies who’ve long ago lost their wings. It’s been so long that they’ve forgotten they even had wings, so they walk.

Without warning, one falls to the ground. She is dead, but her companion cannot bear the truth and heaps the body onto herself. She must continue. Walking.

Soon the body rots, melting into her own. She forgets that she’s even carrying her friend. The weight of it transforms into unknown pain that radiates down her entire right side. She bares under this pain. She must continue. Walking.

Ah, I see.

That moment 20 years ago paralyzed not just my arm, but my heart. In that same moment, my mother died, and I picked her up. Without a thought, I heaped her body onto my own. What else could I do? What other choice did I have? That connection was critical to my existence. 

So how? Please Jesus, tell me how to let go.

Then I see the entire process a body goes through to eventually turn to dust when the dust begins to fall off my body and with it the pain.

Fear. Deep in my chest. Unbearable Fear. Cringing curl up in a ball Fear.

No, no. Wait. I’m not ready to let go. I need my mommy. Will she leave me if I let go? I am willing to endure the pain to have her, to feel her, to connect to her.

What or Who do you carry? What do you need to feel safe enough to let go?

The next morning, I talk about it. A dear friend listens and loves and we see. Death is not goodbye, but a transition. I can never lose my mother. Connection that vital cannot be broken.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

To yoke, to connect is easy. All it takes is Love. Unashamed. Unwavering. Unabashed. Run across the room fall into each other Love. The complete and full gift of the Light inside. We are light in this world, meant to shine. Her body is dust, but she is light. Even in death, she is never further then a thought. Her dust falls away allowing Light to shine through me.

The burden of light is weightless for it has nothing to do doing or trying. It is about being.

You simply shine.