Life Class

When I came home from church today, I turned on the TV for some background noise.  The channel was still on the Opray Winfrey Network, leftover from the re-run Dr. Phil shows that air from 6:00 to 9:00 AM every day.  I was watching that before I left for church.

Since it is Sunday, Oprah airs a shows she calls Life Class and it frequently shows snippets of past shows where she talks about things learned from her various guests.  Most of the time, I don't watch it because it gets a bit didactic, but I was distracted today and didn't change the channel.  I was listening in the background.  One snippet was about a guest who had gone out for her usual early morning walk with her girlfriend, and while she was gone, her ex-husband entered the home and killed all four of her children--one of them also his--then killed himself.  She sat there on the Oprah show, the picture of total grief...no tears, just total devastation...and when Oprah asked her how she got through her days, she responded that her peace came from the decision that, when she could no longer stand the pain any more, she would do away with herself.  She simply hadn't come to that day yet (largely because her family/friends would not allow her to be alone).  The "life class" lessons were obvious.  Oprah talked about how awful things happen and we sometimes have to reinvent our lives..blah, blah...

And it occurred to me that I had never endured anything that terrible, but I certainly had empathy for that poor woman because I understood at the very marrow of my being how she must have felt.  I have always said if anything happened to my daughter or my grandchildren that people could visit me in the looney bin.  Seriously!  Then Oprah was saying things about having to invent new ways to get through the world.  I realized in that moment that I have been doing that all my life!

Reader's Digest once published a list of high-stress life events that can create illness in the person experiencing them.  Among them was: death in the family, job loss/job change, home move, divorce, catastrophic illness, etc.  I got to looking at that list years ago and realized that I had experienced all of those, one per year for six or seven years in a row.  Then there was a break for a few years, and they started all over again. 

The worst wrench of my life happened three years ago this month.  It changed everything.  It challenged everything I thought was right and true and good.  And through it all, I either had to find a way to survive or give it all up.  Like the woman on Oprah, I was willing to die just to be rid of the emotional pain.  I didn't have the courage to do it myself...just wished that God would take me.  He didn't!  Slowly, slowly, I figured out that I had to find a new way to get through the world...or just shrivel up.  I'm sure it didn't do anything to help my health, .  My cardiologist wanted to put me on Happy Pills when I sat in his office and wept uncontrollably when he asked what was going on in my life, but I resisted.  Chemicals don't take away reality.        

Still and all, in this moment, I'm pretty proud of the fact that I am still standing.  I haven't had a tough life in the sense that I was beaten, abused, or poverty-stricken, but the potential has always been there for all of that.  There were times when I was probably stupid to stick around due to that potential, but I did, and I survived.  Some of what I've endured might have brought lesser women to their knees.  A couple of those events were life-threatening.  I got lucky. 

I believe that every person who lives long enough will endure these bad things, so I don't feel special in that department.  I just think that we all must walk carefully through life because we never know when it will all be over.  The biggest tragedy is that it would all be for naught.  Thought for today:  stop whining about what you want and don't have, and start praising God for what you do have.  I'm working on that!