Category: perspective (Page 2 of 10)

The Abscess of Fear

I disappeared from the ongoings of society in November while I sat bedside to my husband as he fought off an infection. He went from some sort of bronchitis, to pneumonia, to coughing up blood in the ER with an abscess in his lung.  Now that normalcy has somewhat returned and I’m gazing at the wasteland of social media, I fear that our society is quite likely to be facing a similar scenario if we don’t stop and take a deep breath.

Literally, a deep breath could change things. My nurse-friend told me most pneumonias develop because people stop breathing deep. A deep breath makes them cough, and they don’t like to cough, so they stay shallow. When breath doesn’t move things around in the lungs, then infection festers.

For JJ in particular, this infection made him sick. He started to get better.  He finished the antibiotics, but the infection, the pneumonia, wasn’t completely gone. The best I can understand – because I deal with the philosophical, not the biological – the cells in JJ’s lungs got scared. They saw the infection, something that is not supposed to be there. So these little white blood cells multiplied and joined forces. The drew together tightly, and then formed the abscess. These cells thought it was protecting the body by surrounding infected cells.

But guess what happened. Inside this cluster a new infection began to develop, this one resistant to the antibiotics. It didn’t even need oxygen, so it didn’t die as the white blood cells believed it would – it thrived. It grew to the size of my 5-year-old daughter’s fist.

The doctors were pretty stumped as to the cause of this abscess. Sometimes a foreign body could cause it, but the bronchoscopy showed nothing but “bread and butter pneumonia”, something a normal 35-year-old man ought to be able to fight off, with the help of antibiotics.

So what went wrong?

To personify it, I think fear made the news in his lungs one day. Those healthy little cells saw that things weren’t as they ought to be and freaked out. Instead of trusting in the good work of tried-and-true medicine, JJ’s body inadvertently went into crisis mode.  Batten down the hatches! Seal all the borders! Nothing in or out! His body turned its own cells against itself.

The pneumonia wasn’t the heaviest threat – another round of basic antibiotics would have finished it.  The problem was the growing infection inside the abscess.

If JJ would have taken deep breaths and opened his airways, his bronchitis probably wouldn’t form a pneumonia. And if his white blood cells would not have closed up, his abscess probably wouldn’t have formed. In essence, JJ’s dis-ease came from closing, shallowing and tightening. The remedy was opening, deepening, breathing.

Fear won’t heal us. Not in our bodies, not in our society.

Instead, let’s take a deep breath. Even when it makes us cough. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Let your breath move around on the insides. Let it keep things moving instead of stagnant; let yourself be full instead of shallow.

On Being Helpful

It’s my fault, really. I bought the children’s probiotics in the shapes of “fun animals.” Thus we need to pick through them every morning for matching giraffes. Every single child must do this. Rue the day that one of them doesn’t get to rifle through for their own vitamins.

Like today. Rue.

The oldest was trying to be helpful, dispersing the “fishies” (because the first time I purchased children’s probiotics, they were in the shape of fish. Now we’re eating jungle animals, but we still seem to have “fishies.”) but Miss M wanted to get her own. She refused the fishies in front of her. No! Never! I shall not! She insisted. 

During the pursuant intervention, I realized a few things about both the situation and the children.

  1. I set a precedent with a one-person-dispersing standard and the oldest was simply trying to follow the rules. He is a rule follower, like his mother, and in his mind, anyone bucking that system needs called out.  Resolved: Asinine rules for the sake of one person’s (read: MY) convenience clearly aren’t helpful.
  2. The oldest wanted to be helpful. That was his true heart. Allow me to do this for you, sweet sister. It is helpful for everyone if I just take control of this. 
  3. The sister didn’t want his help. This help, in fact, was a tad insulting. She was perfectly capable of getting her own damn vitamins, even the two-year-old can do that, thank you very much.

While his heart was pure, eldest child inadvertently sent a message to his junior: you cannot do this. You need my help. I am the capable, wise, giver-of-the-things. His helpfulness overruled her humanness. The helping became the priority, not the person whom he wanted to serve. In that moment, his actions, done in the name of help, actually hurt her sense of self and well-being.

I recently read The Active Life by Parker Palmer. Though not the premise of the book, he mentioned in passing how the best way we can help a person is to simply ask. Ask how we can help, if we can help. You preserve a certain sense of dignity  and worth of a person when you ask permission to serve.

So, this became the morning’s lesson: the oldest is to simply ask. May I get you your fishies this morning? Would that be helpful? This gives her the chance to respond and receive gracefully, or politely decline. To her, we began to instill that receiving help is not an indicator of your own worth or abilities, but sometimes someone’s good and pure heart. Some famous writer, (I’d like to attribute it to Brennan Manning, but he’s not alive to defend himself in case others disagree, so please add salt) wrote that if we cannot receive from our fellow man, how will we ever have the humility to receive from God? In our culture, it’s not common to see a graceful reception of unsolicited help. We hardly solicit it, even when it’s most needed.

All this thought on asking took me to God, as is my habit. God so rarely forces his help upon us. I believe he sees us each as capable human beings, letting us daily get our own fishies. Perhaps he would love to help us, if we were quiet enough to hear him ask, Can I do this for you?

Jesus said more than once, “you do not have because you do not ask.” I think this falls into the category of gracefully receiving help. Our willingness to let others do on our behalf. We’re such a bootstrappy culture, fixated on our own drive and self-preservation that often the idea of allowing others to intervene on our behalf provokes anxiety or even shame. We feel perceived as not good enough or capable.  The truth of the matter is, it doesn’t matter.

Whether we can or cannot, help is usually coming from a good heart. Yet that good heart must not force its goodness on others.

May we be willing to receive the gracious love of others as they try to be helpful. May we not perceive it as an indicator of our own worth or ability. And may we help lovingly, graciously, and honorably – by first asking instead of insisting.

The Woodcarver

I’ve been reading a lot of Parker Palmer (A Hidden Wholeness, The Active Life) and in both of his works, this poem shows up. I love the reflection it takes me on in my own approach to my life – my work, my mothering, even keeping a house.

I hope you enjoy.


 

Chuang Tzu: “Poem of the Woodcarver”

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand
Of precious wood. When it was finished,
All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be
The work of spirits.
The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:
“What is your secret?”

Khing replied: “I am only a workman:
I have no secret. There is only this:
When I began to think about the work you commanded
I guarded my spirit, did not expend it
On trifles, that were not to the point.
I fasted in order to set
My heart at rest.
After three days fasting,
I had forgotten gain and success.
After five days
I had forgotten praise or criticism.
After seven days
I had forgotten my body
With all its limbs.

“By this time all thought of your Highness
And of the court had faded away.
All that might distract me from the work
Had vanished.
I was collected in the single thought
Of the bell stand.

“Then I went to the forest
To see the trees in their own natural state.
When the right tree appeared before my eyes,
The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.
All I had to do was to put forth my hand
and begin.

“If I had not met this particular tree
There would have been
No bell stand at all.

“What happened?
My own collected thought
Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;
From this live encounter came the work
Which you ascribe to the spirits.”

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