Mature Healing

     Nancy Mairs is an author, a Catholic, an individual with a wheelchair, who is affected by multiple sclerosis.  I was drawn to her writing when I had a voracious appetite to understand my own disabilities--cerebral palsy, and epilepsy.  There is a spirituality of the human body, which is central to how I live the spirituality of The Body of Christ.  It is amazing, it is not a mechanical ritual, nor an esoteric body of knowledge to be studied.
   I gravitate toward Nancy Mairs' writing from a new dimension.  Intellectually, I know she may not telegraph to me--warn me--of the pitfalls I may face, or how to navigate a new chapter in my life--living with the use of a wheelchair.  Yet, the anxious child in me is staying up late to cram for her final exam in living with a wheelchair.  What leads me to think that I will be protected from making mistakes using my wheelchair?  After making mistakes at work, a friend reminded me, "You are not PERFECT Patty, you are human!"
     Yet, news that I should receive my wheelchair within a week or so has accelerated my anticipation.  It is the night before Christmas, and I am waiting for my presents to arrive--I am waiting to open my present.  What is it that Nancy Mairs can tell me that will satisfy me?  I am not married, nor am I a mother, or an individual with multiple sclerosis.  I do not use the word "cripple" to describe the fact that I have cerebral palsy, and epilepsy.  Although, I do understand the feelings that might lead me to change my ways.  Yet, I am not to that point yet.  I do not aspire to using that word in reference to myself.  Nancy Mairs has opened me to the need to be more receptive to the words that I use in describing my cerebral palsy, and epilepsy, and now, my osteoarthitis.  Through her openness, Nancy has encouraged me to be more reflective about such adjectives.
     The return of my voracious appetite for Nancy Mairs, and similar writers, is a sign that I am healing.  My right ankle might be on her last leg, although she has been relieved of her painful bone spurs.  Yet, I am healing.  I am not healing toward a past version of myself--a version with more physical flexibility.  No, that is a false sense of healing.  Mature healing is not movement toward a perfect, god-like way of living.  No.  I have not been granted supernatural--infallible--powers that elevate me from daily struggles.  No.  Mature healing, if I choose to embrace it, calls me to seek accommodation to what I may no longer do.
     During a home evaluation, in which I tried out a wheelchair to see if it would work in my own home, I told the medical vendor that I had three questions to which I needed answers.  When he tried to evade my questions, I made myself quite clear.  First, I needed to know, "what can I do today with this wheelchair?"  Secondly, "with practice, what will I be able to do with this wheelchair?"  Third, "what will I not be able to do--what will I need to ask help in accomplishing when using my wheelchair?"  He was afraid of his answers to my questions.  I was forthright.  "I may not like your answers, but, I need to ask the questions--I need answers, so that I may live as fully as is possible."
     I am anxious.  I want to get started in my quest for answers.  As much as I may want the vendor, or someone else to answer my questions, no one may answer the questions for me.  I have forgotten the willful child, who unwittingly outfoxed the physical therapists.  When given tasks designed to get me to use my left and my right hands, I found a way to accomplish the tasks without using my right hand, which was affected by cerebral palsy.  I was too young to have plotted such rebellion.  I was just willful.  Much has changed, but, I think that willful soul is still resident in me, below my ankle foot orthotic, perhaps?