Healing

A Thank-You Note, by Michael Ryan
For John Skoyles

My daughter made drawings with the pens you sent,
line drawings that suggest the things they represent,
different from any drawings she — at ten — had done,
closer to real art, implying what the mind fills in.
For her mother she made a flower fragile on its stem;
for me, a lion, calm, contained, but not a handsome one.
She drew a lion for me once before, on a get-well card,
and wrote I must be brave even when it’s hard.

Such love is healing — as you know, my friend,
especially when it comes unbidden from our children
despite the flaws they see so vividly in us.
Who can love you as your child does?
Your son so ill, the brutal chemo, his looming loss
owning you now — yet you would be this generous
to think of my child. With the pens you sent
she has made I hope a healing instrument.

I don’t know about you
but that poem or prose or whatever it is
from John Skoyles
grabs my heart and squeezes it.

It is triple-layered.

First there is mention of a child’s drawing
enfolded in a thank-you card
and sent in gratitude for pens
given to the narrator’s child.
Perhaps, although it’s not clear,
the present was given at a time
when the father’s child was sick
but either way
the father was clearly touched by the gift
and the small art it produced.

Then there is the Father tenderly noting
how healing even small signs of a child’s love can be.
Such love is healing, he writes, — as you know, my friend,
especially when it comes unbidden from our children
despite the flaws they see so vividly in us.

Who among us hasn’t been healed, even just a little,
by the flower of love handed to us by a child?

Finally, we discover as the reader,
that the one sending the pens
to the father’s sick child
is none other than another father
of another sick child
suffering through chemotherapy.

It is a triple-layer cake of exquisite small loves
frosted with poignancy of gratitude
where we might only expect sorrow.

What heals us?
I don’t mean what cures us rather, what heals us?

Healing is that thing,
whatever it is,
that allows us to live fully
whether or not we are enduring pain,
struggle, woundedness, or grief.
Healing is that thing,
whatever it is,
that may not take away the wound
or the illness
or the hurt
but it allows us to love
with a fullness of heart
and live with a fullness of hope.

Healing is that thing,
whatever it is,
that imbues us with a rich, thick topsoil of gratitude
that hosts and permeates hopefulness
no matter how severe the season we are living through.

 

Once upon a time
in a church far far away
there was a man who encountered healing
when he least expected it.

The man and his wife came to church for a funeral
and then stayed, discovering
something in that church
they couldn’t name but that they wanted,
maybe even needed.

The man had only just retired
from being an executive of a successful
international corporation
he had a great deal to do with growing
from a small local company.
He could have done anything
and gone anywhere
because he had all the trappings of such success.
But he was a hard charging type Triple A personality
and neither relaxation nor quiet hobbies were in his DNA.

Memory is an enemy here
so I may not get the details quite right
but I believe it was during his first summer of retirement
that he discovered a skin blemish
that turned out to be a melanoma.
They treated it as the dangerous cancer it is
and discovered it had penetrated his chest
and was now enmeshed in his internal organs.

The man got excellent treatment
from top-notch medical organizations.
He also received laying on of hands in healing,
which is something that church offered every Sunday
for people that wanted it
as they returned from receiving Communion.

Church had not exactly been this man’s cup of tea
but being anointed by a couple of pray-ers
in a public setting was definitely an act outside
his modus operandi.

The top-notch medical folks
had not been able to solve his problem
but he quietly let his wife know
that he had been healed at Church.
Indeed, to his primary physician’s surprise
he was in remission.

A year later,
maybe more maybe less,
a packed church of standing room only
gave thanks for his life at a spectacular funeral
I think he would have liked very much.

During the year and half or two years I knew him
I met at least half a dozen corporate executives,
mostly non-church-goers,
that wondered out loud to me
about the man having become so active in my church
and so enthusiastic about church itself.
It was not displayed with the religiosity
of a new convert either, rather,
more like a quieter, profound inner transformation
that shows itself on the outside
in small and subtle differences.
But the man wasn’t shy about his enthusiasm either.

To many people,
those with their eye on the wrong prize,
the fact that the man’s cancer came back
with a vengeance and killed him
would be proof there had been no healing after all.

I am pretty sure he did not feel that way,
though in our many conversations about life and death
we didn’t address it directly.
But after what he described as his healing,
there was a newness inside
and it seemed to change how he received life
and how he took it in and held it.
It changed him from the inside out,
enough so that those who had known him long
and known him well,
recognized a difference
and wondered out loud about where it came from.

When we confuse healing with curing
we lose opportunities for healing.
When we insist on only fixing what hurts us
or being protected from what endangers us
we often miss the presence of something
that can and will transform us from the inside out.
When we get stuck in the pursuit
and preservation of life at all costs
the cure,
the fix,
the remedy
all become the goal and we lose track of everything else.

It is true in more than life and death scenarios as well.

No one makes it out of childhood
without a deep wound or two…or five.
Many of us try to bury those wounds because,
well, because they hurt.
But wounds that are ignored
have a way of worming their way up
through whatever has covered them over
and eating holes in our garden.
Wounds that are buried do not get healed; they fester.

Having the courage to address our wounds,
and learn from them
also creates the opportunity for healing –
not making them disappear as if we were never injured,
but turning them into a source of strength and wisdom
in addition to hurt.
However, that will not happen
if we just try to exorcise them
and make them disappear.

I knew a woman who had to work with a man
she could not stand.
She cringed in meetings with him
because the man was an absolute control freak
that didn’t listen to other people –
talked over them,
and insisted on his own way
even when the consensus appeared to be drifting away
from his point of view.
Generally the man did what he wanted
regardless of what the group had decided upon.

Her rift with the man
was creating problems in the work place,
and the productivity of their team
was being diminished by her increasing animosity
that was rarely disguised.

More than once,
the woman addressed the situation with her counselor
who she was seeing in the aftermath of a divorce.
Then one day she had one of those “Ah ha!” moments
in the midst of talking about that man with her therapist.
She realized that the very things
she disliked so fiercely in her colleague
were the things she didn’t like about herself.

He was a mirror
and the scorn and judgment
she heaped upon herself for being controlling,
for being so anxious she thought about what she would say next instead of listening,
getting filled up with defensive anger
rather than allowing feedback to sink in,
were all things she hated in herself
and that she knew had contributed to her divorce.

She realized that the way forward
was not in getting rid of the co-worker somehow,
which has been her hope and fantasy,
or even in changing him.
The way forward was obviously
learning how to practice some different strategies herself.

Healing, not curing.
Whether a physical malady
that can lead us into unique wisdom
because it resides in our vulnerability and fears;
or an emotional and spiritual wound
that holds whispers and insights
leading toward transformation,
it is our openness to healing
that makes the difference.

Openness is like flexibility,
learned and practiced
rather than innate and only given to some.
Some of us are more flexible than others,
but all of us can increase our flexibility
by stretching
and exercise
and intentional effort.
Openness is the same way.

Some of us may be more naturally open
to life and learning and risk-taking than others,
but all of us can engage in practices
that stretch and strengthen our ability to be open.

Courting change is one of those ways.
Practicing change, is actually a very good therapy.

My dad was 93 when he died
and had never even used an ATM card
even though they had been around for a generation.
My mother-in-law is approaching 90
and emails her grandchildren near and far.

My dad, who I loved dearly,
did not practice change
and in fact became less and less flexible
physically and in every other way,
while my mother-in-law
has pushed and been pushed against the limits of life
and been rewarded by falling in love in her eighties
and receiving a whole new life
that would otherwise have eluded her.

Change is NOT something that just happens to us,
we can actually practice it
because it will help us become more open.
Our temptation is usually just the opposite:
we prefer to preserve what we know
and circle the wagons to protect it.

But as is so often true in life,
our instinct is just the opposite of what we need to do
if healing and transformation
have a hope of being conceived.

Walking into our fear
is another practice that fosters openness.
Again, fear generally evokes an instinct to escape or fight.
But if we can walk into our fear,
even just a little step at a time –
maybe even just sticking a toe in –
and listen to our fear
then we will gain significant flexibility and openness
in addition to a good bit of wisdom.

Healing is no accident.
It is a reward for openness –
not as in reward and punishment
being administered from on high,
but a simple cause and effect.

The more open we are
the more healing we will encounter.
They are an intimate couple
and we can do things to practice openness
and so increase our opportunities for healing.

This is just one more way
that spirituality is a practice
that takes place in the mud of ordinary, every day life
rather than some spooky supernatural thing.
Except that it is supernatural
in that God has created the universe, and us, this way.

Practice change.
Become more open.
Experience healing.