Seeing with your Heart & Finding Gratitude

Five days of my precious holidays were spent at Stanford Hospital.  That wasn’t the plan!  I was scheduled for a routine heart ablation procedure and was to go home the same day or the next morning.  I ended up missing a very important wedding and all the festivities, but…I am grateful to be alive.

What has been become evident to me is that gratitude is a great healer.  I was having the “pity-party of the century” in the hospital as my heart raced higher and higher for longer and longer.  Once I started “counting my blessings” the cardiologists finally found a drug that started to work.

These are the things that I was grateful for:

• A powerful team of friends that were praying for me
• My large family that texted me so much that I didn’t have time to worry
• Being in one of the cutting-edge hospitals in the country
• My brand new hospital room that resembled the Ritz-Carlton – complete with a view.
• The delicious hospital food with a vegan menu
• My nurses who became my friends
• Having a sister who is the greatest most knowledgeable nurse on the planet
• My brother and his wife who drove hours to visit me
• Having medicare and a great supplemental to pay the hefty bill
• Doctors that didn’t give up
• The awesome Christmas carolers that filled  the hospital corridors with song and joy
• A double rainbow outside my hospital room window
• Watching Eat Pray Love from my hospital bed on my own big-screen TV
•  Being home in time for Christmas
•  Requiring only one week of recovery time
• Having a partner that barely left my side

Hospital stays and this time of the year naturally call for reflection.  This year has been filled with traumatic losses for me, but I am focusing on all the good and all the love as I enter a brand new year.   In the hospital I learned how to look at life with my heart and not my eyes.  I wanted to feel what I saw, not just look at it.  And I started to feel my heart healing.

I want to share my personal true story about two hearts.  If you have been following my blogs, you will know who Craig is.  If not, click on this link, Fisics for First Graders, and you can find out.

When Craig was alive in June of 2017, as part of his job, he attended a trade show I was participating in as a vendor with my healthy vegan Arbonne products.   One of the associates from the American Heart Association was distributing tiny red ceramic hearts to the other participants and I received one.  I was going to give it to Craig, but noticed there was a chip out of it.   I took it home and put it in my jewelry box as a memento of my fun and successful day.

A few months later, after Craig died, I was unpacking.  From a box, I picked out the book that I was currently reading, which was written by a friend’s husband.  The wonderful book was titled, The Enlightenment Code.  When I grabbed the book, I noticed there was a bump or lump inside the book that had not been there when I was last reading it or when I had put it in the box.  Between pages thirty-two and thirty-three, was a perfect, unblemished, small red ceramic heart, wedged between the pages.  Even though I was absolutely certain the book had been perfectly flat, with nothing inside it when I packed it; I immediately contacted my friend.  I asked if she or her husband or anybody could have possibly placed a small red ceramic glazed heart inside her husband’s book?  She unequivocally said, no; but commented she did think it was a nice idea.

 When I found the new heart, I quickly retrieved the one from my jewelry box and set them side by side.   They were identical in every way, minus the small chip in the original.

 When Craig was alive, he repeatedly told me to follow my heart.  From the other side he told me that I would have some health issues.  I believe he provided me with this “unbroken undamaged” heart  so that I would know that my heart would heal.

I am wishing you a heart-felt Happy New Year!