Hi Jim:
Thank you for sharing your story with us.
I was moved deeply the first time I heard your story, but tonight I know why I felt too overwhelmed to respond to your post as I wanted to before, as in your writing as well, you have the ability to silence the noise of the world while inviting my heart to listen and to simply reflect. Silence is sometimes golden.
So much of you and your family's story resonates with me and touches me in every sense of the word - there must be more than two! :-) It is as if you have found the secret passageway from the virtual world to so easily reach safely my heart. It is open.
You express yourself so similarly to my high school Theatre Arts and English teacher when writing, it's uncanny. Yours is a familiar-to-me and captivating type of expression. Your brilliance is evident to me and it makes me feel happy to notice the resemblance between you and my teacher who remains one of my most favourite people. He changed direction later in life and is now a minister. A perfect profession for someone gifted in the art of oratory and healing both.
I am rambling, perhaps because I have so much inside of me I want to say to you and yet again words fail to say what my heart feels. Be patient, the words never escape me for long!:)
Your story is truly about care and the grace of those equipped to give and to receive it. The way you share your soul, your fears and your gratitude, your tenderness and desire for acceptance, your spark and your spirit, your attachment to life and to your loved ones shows real vulnerability as you are so achingly and humanly honest, which is rare.
I know it could not have been easy to describe for others in a snippet of your lives the magnitude of yours and your family’s situation, but your contribution to the conversation about the importance of caring and all that really means to a person is a mighty and worthy achievement!
How many people, hopefully many in care-giving roles, whether professionally or in some personal capacity, will see your video, take your incredible message to heart and will follow you to that special place of enlightenment which you so humbly occupy? Countless, I’m sure. Reforming attitudes begins within one good heart but once the cycle of change is in motion it creates a lovely life of its own. Thank you, Jim, for your seeds of experience that are growing a new garden of gentleness through understanding. What a lovely garden you and your family have planted – and I mean that in every sense of the word!:-)
I know I am walking in your shadow, learning about the beauty of life and the pain of loss as I pluck from your wisdom new blooms to repot in a garden of my own. I, like Tian, and everyone here in our community stand with you, and your wife and your children. You are all exceptional!
While I know you would give anything to be restored to an ordinary status we all kid ourselves with regularity is the natural state of our lives, your destiny is taking you, like it takes us all, on a journey of which no one completely comprehends. Here’s to the mystery of life and love – here’s to our being human and having the courage to live with our truths.
Thanks as well for your comments to me in your last post, Jim!:-)
Cath