Find your blessings

Is it just ME, or do you, too, try to find the up side of a situation and marvel at others who do it so generously?

I read a story this morning.  It told of a women recovering from 55 surgeries repairing the facial disfigurement inflicted upon her by her husband when he discovered her involvement with another man.

He beat her with a bat and doused her face with lye.  It ate through her flesh, into the muscles, the tendons, the bones.  The victim, herself a transplant nurse, must have known the journey she would be on to recovery; yet, she embarked upon it.

The sudden death of another woman made possible a full face transplant.

The daughter of the deceased donor had the opportunity to meet her mom’s beneficiary, who now looks like her mom.  In that experience, the daughter found the joy of being able to touch her mother’s face again, to feel her skin, to see her freckles.

The strength of the three woman in this story amaze me.  I imagined the donor must have expressed her willingness to donate organs, even her face, if and when, in her passing, the opportunity presented itself. 

   

The daughter had to bear the thought of what would be done to her mom’s remains in order for the transplant to be possible.

The victim/recipient had to bear the pain and suffering of the ordeal itself, the dozens of operations that followed, the emotional and psychological trauma, which may present the biggest challenge, and finding a way to move forward in her life, now blind.

I wonder as I have just written those words, if her blindness is God’s way of protecting her from what could be a lifetime of strangers’ stares because of her disfigurement, perhaps her inability to see herself.  Perhaps!

We live in cynical times.  A news broadcast cannot end without hearing of atrocities around the world or around the corner; sadly, they are everywhere.  The blessing is that strong, very strong women, like the three mentioned here, remind us of what is possible – good and bad  - and that how we deal with every moment is what gets us to the next and that the roles we are capable of playing in and for each other is often left to chance, to opportunity, to circumstance.

So, IS it just me, or do you, too wonder if you would have had the strength of any one of these women?

Count your blessings,

they are there.