Finding Our Place...

It was Friday, and my surgery had been four days before. I lay in bed, soaked in pain drugs, and my surgeon walked in.

We debated about whether I would go to a rehab center or go home that day. I was doing pretty well (because remember, I was a ballerina and a skiier) and I wanted to be home. Time was ticking by, my sons were leaving for college soon.

My surgeon looked closely at me, not speaking, just watching for a moment. I was broken, disheveled, weak and he knew it. Oh so well, my brave doctor knew my path ahead.

And he asked...Julie, do you have a place where you can sit outside at your home?

Yes, I answered.

He went on...then go home, find that place outside, and listen to the birds.

The week had been unimaginable, scary, mind bending and blowing...and he wanted me to take my scarred and battered body to the birds. I didn't need to do something, prove anything or be more, take some big action...I just needed to get myself outside and be there.

There had been tears in my eyes, but when he said this simple thing...a cloud of happy came floating into that room where such serious and scary things had happened.

So I told my surgeon...

...yes, yes I will listen to the birds.

As I sat by this big, great lake a few days ago, I remembered my doctor's words. Sea gulls dipped and soared, my breathing slowed, matching the waves after awhile...in and out, in and out.

And then the poet Mary Oliver's words came too..."You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting...the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes...whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination."

So if your heart is spinning, filled with trouble, confused and bereft, the world seems mad and you madder...my advice: put on your shoes, go outside and look to the skies.