The Art of Healing: From Panic to Peace

The Art of Healing: From Panic to Peace — Take a Deep Breath & Appreciate

Today was my first assessment since last October with my beloved personal trainer, Janine Hightower. All measurements indicate incredible health and fitness. As we were finishing up our session, my cell phone rang – it was my son calling. I felt that solar plexus clutch. Will there ever come a time when I see his number flash on my phone and I won’t go into panic mode? I ask God for help with this. He was fine; just wanted me to know he had gotten mail I sent to him and thanked me for the letter I wrote. He is busy, thriving, and taking as good care of himself as any 21 year old does. Time to let go and let God, take a deep breath and appreciate.

But the panic feeling remained. I felt lost and terribly out of sorts. I was trying to figure out what was going on. I prayed and decided I needed to channel the panic. I took out all the trash and recycling, fixed some lunch and realized that my brain had not yet wrapped itself around the fact that I ran the Boston Marathon. There is no more struggle. Sure there is challenging myself but I have always had to fight to overcome physical challenges – and went from intensive rehab to intensive training for a Marathon and now…take a deep breath and appreciate.

I began to feel a sense of peace overtake me when the phone rang again – it was a blinded veteran who had commissioned me to write a poem for the 40th Anniversary of the Blind Rehab Center at West Haven. I have shared how I was burned out at the end of my career, but I have not shared the utter joy I felt when I first went to work with the blinded veterans in 1988. I combined my social work skills with my PR and marketing skills and I was in heaven. My twins were well cared for at the day care center near my office. There were political issues that resulted in the position being taken away from me but it was all part of God’s plan. It is the total grace that I return to the Blind Center to share my gift of poetry and to celebrate a place that does so much to help restore the dignity and independence of our nation’s veterans who have lost their eyesight. Take a deep breath and appreciate…

So with patience and trust that all is well and in Divine Order I step forward in faith to take these next steps on life’s journey. I can celebrate a job well done with running the Marathon and raising $10,535 for Spaulding. I have a vision board and visualize my future. I take steps to reach these goals but most importantly, I know that God is my safety net and everything is unfolding just as it should. I can be impatient at times – and I can look at what has not yet happened rather than experience the exhilaration, joy and gratitude for all that HAS happened. With God, whatever challenges or struggles present themselves, they are but a blip on the radar screen of life or as Carrie Underwood says, that mountain you’ve been climbing is just a grain of sand….Take a deep breath and appreciate …

Mary McManus
www.newworldgreetings.com