“Resistance to unwanted circumstances has the power to keep those circumstances alive and well for a very long time.” –Pema Chodron

Acceptance. Acceptance is a hard one. At least for me it has been. I will gamble a guess and say that most of us grapple with it now and then. Maybe this is all a part of the healing process. I cannot be sure. I have read that finding acceptance is fundamental to finding happiness. To finding peace. To moving forward. I believe this to be true. All along I have known I need to allow acceptance into my heart and into my mind. All along I have worked to allow life to be as it is. It has been a torturous experience in many ways. The hanging on to how I wanted things to be.

It is not just the accident. I have had a hard time coming to terms with a lot of things in my life. In our life. The accident magnified our problems and our difficulties. More were added along the way. We wanted to focus only on healing. Sometimes life has other plans. It does not always do what we want it to do. Sometimes it really challenges us. In every way. There are so many things I would change. But I feel compelled to ask myself, if I did change things, would our lives be any easier? Better?

I believe acceptance is an important piece in the healing process. It comes in time, and we move into it when we are ready. It does not come because we want it to. We cannot force it into existence. We have to work through the mud and the muck to one day find it glistening before us. A precious gem. Found when we let go of the what ifs and the should haves. Allowing the world to exist just as it is. Not with bitterness and not with anger. Instead with a weary understanding that soon morphs into something different. It is no longer a sad moment. It is a liberation. A new sense of freedom. A transformation of self, into something akin to a butterfly. It is beauty. After all the discomfort comes ease. After all the clinging comes release. After all the sadness comes joy. I believe that it truly will be beautiful. A beautiful surrender.

When we arrived home, Chris needed to relax and to rest and heal. Unfortunately, there were some issues that had to be dealt with. Chris needed a painkiller prescription. The hospital Tylenol 3s were not cutting it. The bottle was almost empty. We were living in a new city, and did not have a family doctor. Hard to come by. We did not know it at the time, but a prescription for a major painkiller. Not easy to fill. My first task. Find a family doctor. With a lot of research and phone calls I was finally able to secure one. A new doctor about 15 minutes away.

We left the kids with my sister, grabbed their bathroom step-stool. Chris climbed painfully out of bed and hobbled to the truck. The kids bathroom stool. A precarious step up into the now too high truck. The 15 minute ride to the doctor. Excruciating. Chris was in so much pain. 3 days spent sitting in a motor home probably didn’t help. His newly mended, but not healed broken back, his chipped tailbone, his broken ribs, his puncture wound all plagued him as we drove. I sat beside him. My body tense as I drove.

So there we were. Off to the doctor. Acting like we were strong enough to keep it together. Brave and fearful. It was a crazy post-accident situation. We were so far out of our comfort zone. So very far. We parked as close as we could, but still a bit of a walk away. Chris uncomfortably, dangerously lowered his foot on to the wobbly step stool as I tried to steady it. Slowly, ever so slowly, we made our way to the doctor’s office.

What we must have looked like to the doctor as we told him our story. He was nice, but I could see that it sounded incredulous to him. Like too incredulous to be true. We did not have paperwork with us. A mistake. Easy things were hard at that time. Simple decisions. Complicated.

Chris had the messiest hair. If you know Chris, you will also know that he has BIG hair if not tamed. And that day it was not tamed. He looked tired and drained, with dark circles under his eyes, and a big messy head of hair. We had a certain desperation to us. We were jittery. Awkward. We were still coming to terms with this life. This foreign life. The only thing we had as proof. The scar on Chris’ back from his back surgery. Seems like it should be enough.

Through this experience we have come to learn this. Painkillers are dangerous. They are often killers themselves. They should be treated with utmost care, and this is what his doctor was doing. So I do understand his reaction to us. It did not make that day any easier, but I do understand. While he seemed sympathetic he did not fill a prescription for Chris that day. Thankfully, Chris had enough T3s to last a few more days. The paperwork from the hospital reached the doctor’s office quickly. Then the doctor was more than happy to fill any prescription Chris needed.

That day. Somehow now it makes me laugh a little when I think about it. It makes us laugh. In so many ways. Not funny. But when I picture the two of us I think we must have looked like quite the pair. I am proud of us. We did it. We made it through. We did not give up hope.

Another dangerous step back in and out of the truck and a slow walk back to the house. An exhausted and sore Chris eased himself onto his bed. He would have to get through the next couple of days without the pain care he needed. He did. Chris is strong. Very strong.

I will leave it there. At the beginning of the next leg of the journey. The hospital was like the plane trip to a new destination. We had arrived. We were in the arrival zone, waiting for our luggage. We had so much to learn. So much to learn and no choice in the matter. Happy to still be together. No idea what the new world had in store for us. We understand this world a little better now. It is not really foreign anymore. It is no longer new. That is not to say there has not been culture shock. It has not been easy to accept the land we happened into. We are here though. We are living it. Making the best of it. Who knows maybe one day we will thrive in it. Maybe we are already and we just do not know it yet. Perspective has yet to come.