How are you all doing with the Resolve to Love Challenge? Ready for your new assignment? Here it is:
Be thankful for the body you have right now, no matter what it looks like. You are pretty darn lucky to have it.
Almost two years ago to the day, my father had a stroke that partially paralyzed him. He was in a wheelchair for a very long time, struggling to regain his ability to walk through intense physical therapy. Over and over, he told me how much he longed to be able to get up and do his morning chores like he used to. It was such a simple desire: to be able to walk and perform daily chores with ease. But suddenly, that was no longer an option. He said that he had always taken that ability for granted and that he would never do so again.
Copyright: Five Seed
How many of us do the same thing? I think we all take our bodies for granted.
A recent experience confirmed to me that this is an important lesson to remember. I was at the fabric store, behind two women who were in the process of checking out. The older woman, probably in her late 60′s, started toward the candy shelf to grab a pack of Milk Duds. I noticed she had such a severe limp that she could barely walk. I wondered how she got around at all without a cane.
Her younger companion grabbed the candy and bought it for her, and the older woman suddenly started crying. She turned to me and told me that this friend of hers was a literal angel. And just as suddenly, her tearful gratitude turned angry and bitter as she told me that while living in Portland, not long ago, she had unwittingly driven herself into the path of a police chase. Her car was struck and her injuries were so bad that she lost both her legs (she showed me the prosthetic legs under her pants), her hip (which was replaced), and she nearly ripped off her wig to show me that her hair had never grown back after her surgeries. “Why did this happen to me?!” she wailed so loudly that the woman checking them out turned away to help other customers, obviously uncomfortable with this show of emotion.
I’m still wondering how I happened to stumble upon that woman, at that particular moment. Perhaps she needed to share her sorrow and had nowhere else to do it. Perhaps she needed some loving thoughts and the Universe pointed her in my direction. Perhaps it was to remind me how fleeting good health can be and that as long as I’m able to walk, bicycle, run and jump, I should be grateful.
So what does our weight matter? What does it matter if we don’t look the way we want to look? At least we can walk. This seems such a simple thing to do, yet those who cannot would trade with us in an instant, no matter how much we weigh.
This month, remember all the wonderful things your body can do, all the things it allows you to experience. Be grateful for all of it. The numbers on the scale, the way we look – that doesn’t ultimately matter at all.
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