Magnified A Million Times

There are a million things right with my wife but there's also something wrong with her, medically speaking, and I don't know what it is. I had to rush her to the ER last Monday because she was having trouble breathing. They ran a battery of tests on her, but no definite prognosis came out of it, so I took her to see an expert Pulmonologist on Friday. He wasn't sure what was wrong, so he scheduled additional blood tests for this morning. All I know for sure is that these doctor visits bring back a flood of bad memories...

Twelve years ago my wife had trouble breathing, over and over again, and eventually one of her lungs collapsed. She was operated on multiple times over a period of three years before they were finally able to rebuild one of her lungs properly. So those were definitely dark times for us. I hated staying at the hospital for weeks on end, worrying every moment that she might stop breathing again. But I refused to leave her side. One good thing that came about during that difficult period of time was coming up with the idea to write Monday Messages.

The idea of writing inspirational messages came to me because I realized that whenever I worried about my wife's health and focused on what was wrong... it became magnified. The more I worried about her fear and her pain, the more my fear and pain increased. But I discovered that if I focused on the good times, on the things that were going right, those thoughts took center stage and my troubles drifted into the background. Writing inspirational messages really helped me to focus on good things and take my mind off my worries. One night I remember waking up from a really bad nightmare on this tiny metal cot at the foot of her hospital bed. I was shaking when I stood up and as I leaned over her to make sure she was breathing, she had all these tubes and IV's attached, so the scene itself was a nightmare. But as I gazed at her sweet little sleeping face, I gently took hold of her hand and forced my mind to think of the great times we had on our honeymoon in Hawaii. I stood there with my eyes closed, squeezing her hand as I remembered the beautiful sunshine, brilliant blue skies and warm water rushing over us. I guessed I squeezed a little too hard because she woke up and asked me why I was smiling. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I do remember her smiling back at me...and for the first time in weeks, I relaxed.

It's human nature to worry, especially about our loved ones. But if we remember that we get to choose what we focus on... and that whatever we focus on gets magnified... then we can choose to magnify the good instead of the bad. That will not only help us enjoy life more, I'm sure it will help our loved ones as well. In my case, since there are a million things right with my wife, I think I will focus on all those things... and that should keep me way too busy to worry about what's wrong!

Your life is your garden.
Your thoughts are the seeds.
If your life isn't awesome,
It’s cause you're watering the weeds. 

~ Anonymous