some thoughts on Discovery from JDH

So many gifts.

One of an array of unexpected realities of my experience of the last several weeks.

Gift would not have been a word I’d have expected to be essential to all of this if you’d asked me to conjecture beforehand. And yet it’s been a primary motif. And in all shapes and sizes.

Small, mundane, trivial (what up unbruised, ripe bananas with breakfast at Mercy Hospital every morning during rehab) to life-saving, future-altering surgery at the hands of a deeply skilled and humanly accessible neurosurgeon in Dr. Bastos. And everything in between. Gift upon gift. I’m grateful.

And I’m learning. So much. Another gift!

I’d like to share occasionally, some of these gifts I’m receiving, some of my experiences. I don’t know with what regularity, or for how long…more questions and unknowns exist currently than certainty. But here’s to starting! 

And I also want to acknowledge up front that what I share is my experience of all that’s happening here, not meant to be universally axiomatic. I hope it’s helpful in any of a variety of ways, but it’s also just my musings…no expectations conveyed from my sharing to your reception.

So my thoughts overnight have been circled on the gift of discovery. Discovery cracks a doorway to possibility. An opportunity of exploration, of learning. Discovery doesn’t hold intrinsic moral value…how discovery is engaged and leveraged determines the tilt and impact of its outcomes, for better or worse. If you’d asked me ahead of time, I wouldn’t have expected the waterfall of grace I’m experiencing.

But discovery has happened and is happening for me right now, so I want to lean in and see what there is. I’m finding it to be many things all at once. It is eye-widening and breath-taking. I am weepy and easily tired. Sorrow is real. And I feel I am brimming with life and wonder and possibility.

Since the surgery, a central gift has been re-discovery. Waking up. Getting to see my Joy. Getting to hold my girls. Getting to come back home. Learning to do physical and cognitive things again (like moving my left leg or typing these paragraphs). Getting to reflect on guiding principles (like Faith and community, and mystery and gratitude). And more and more and more.

Experiencing sensations for the first time, we often grasp the goodness (like first love, or a baby, or a new skill learned) but over time the novelty wears thin and we lose the wonder of the discovered moment. 

I hope for you today a moment of discovery or rediscovery, of fresh eyes to the wonder of something new. We are surrounded by gifts.

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PS - after writing this overnight, I shared it with Joy this morning and she was reminded of a passage from Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals and I found it to beautifully summative and so I've attached that as well..."the breathtaking empty space of an open door."