Limitations: A Winter's Tale

“Injustice can be eliminated, but human conflicts and natural limitations cannot be removed. The conflicts of social life and the limitations of nature cannot be controlled or transcended. They can, however, be endured and survived. It is possible for there to be a dance with life, a creative response to its intrinsic limits and challenges ...” [Sharon Welch, PhD; A Feminist Ethic of Risk]

My Grandmother G turned 90 a few weeks ago, and we celebrated with a family dinner one evening and a Sunday morning reception at her church where she has been a founding member of since 1962. My grandmother glowed as the members of the church congregation sang, "Happy Birthday!" She looked younger that morning sitting her wheelchair - a permanent limitation of age and injury over the past few years. Her silver hair looked so pretty with it curls and her skin seemed smoother with less wrinkles in her relaxed joy of having her family and friends with her to celebrate.

Her minister talked about limitations and how we need to trust God when we are shown our limitations. Some limitations come with age; some are self-inflicted; and some are beyond one's control. Sometimes things happen that we don't anticipate, and it is at these times that we have to trust that God is with us. The minister talked about her own struggle with accepting lupus at age 28. It changed her whole life and kept her from having children. We all face or battle our limitations in different ways, but she wanted to remind us that we are not alone in our limitations. God is still there with us. It does not always feel this way, but when I start to protest about feeling my faith, I am reminded of what a youth group leader once told me when I was a teenager. She provided the simple metaphor of viewing faith like a train. We can trust faith as the engine of the train knowing that our feelings are just the caboose. The train can still run without a caboose but the train needs the engine: the faith. We are reminded to trust the truth of our faith regardless of how hard it is to believe during difficult times. This image of the train has stayed with me for over 27 years, and I remind myself of this metaphor during times when I feel my human limitations and do not necessarily understand what I am supposed to learn from them. I know that regardless of the difficulties that sometimes come our way that I need to trust in the greater good found through my faith in God. I am not one who has publicly written about my faith, but it I am finding the topic to be an important opportunity for personal growth in what I am calling “my winter of limitations and learning to trust God more.” I continued to ask the question: How does one see limitations as an opportunity for growth and not as a wall to well-being?

This winter I have been struggling against the limitations of my autoimmune hypothyroidism and the resulting weight gain as well as my left eye’s cornea dystrophy which has stabilized with only a small spot of blurriness in my vision. If I shut my left eye, I can see clearly... so I tell myself that maybe I need to approach all my limitations in that way – just shut one eye, I say in jest, and look at the situation differently. I have also been struggling with finding balance between work and home – all working mothers’ dilemma. I find myself asking, “How do I publish enough to earn tenure when I am also directing a program of over 130 students on my own?” While, I've been able to hire some part-time consultants and instructors, it does not always feel like enough help because part-time help usually means they can not help but have other distractions to make ends meet. My husband reassures me that if anybody can get tenure under these conditions, I can. I've always had the drive to succeed regardless of the limitations. I have been struggling with my feelings of loss as a dear mentor of mine experiences cancer. I do not necessarily understand why he must face this limitation; a limitation that many face each day. He is sharing his hopes and fears with friends through his own blog and we are all learning from his journey.

This winter I have been fighting against limitations instead of necessarily accepting them and learning from what they are here to teach me. I keep hoping that I will figure out how not to feel so limited. I keep wishing that I'll awake up one day and won't be wearing my middle-aged body (ha, ha); and I won't feel so tired, a deeper emotion of this winter. One evening as I was struggling with my sense of limitations, my son, D, came up to my bedroom where I sat on the edge of my bed crying about unfairness. I had sought out a quiet place in the house where I would not disturb D as he played with his trucks. I did not want to alarm him by my sadness, but he still somehow heard me with those overly sensitive ears of his and he appeared at my side.

D patted my back and said, “Mom, are you stressed about work? Don’t worry. It will be okay. Just remember to breathe and take one day at a time.”

Take one day at a time.
How many times has he heard me say that? I smiled at his encouragement. D does not view his autism as a limitation because he does not know any different. He is who he is, and he has never known any other way. He makes the most of each day, and carries a naïve sense of joy and youthful innocence with him. (I was actually "stressing" about him and a situation that I find extremely unfair right now in what I am feeling is a black-and-white, one-size-fits- all system; but I can’t blog about until it is settled.) When I peel away the fear, pain, and sadness from the notion of being limited, I have to say that I have been shown how much D's family, friends, and neighbors love, support, and believe in him. As Helen Keller reminds us, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

Blessings to all. May we all find the open doors in our lives.