Growing Pains

I have been experiencing some growing pains lately. Although I have been done growing physically for about 30 years, I continue to grow emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually.  So, the growing pains that I have been experience have nothing to do with my physical tabernacle. In fact over the last year my physically tabernacle has been getting smaller , having actually lost some "CHEMO" weight that has been hanging on to me since 2001.

Today I was thinking of how much I have grown in the last ten years.  Cancer really changed my life - how I live, how I think and what is important.  Now, lest you think that all of the growing was easy and came naturally, it did not.  As I look at my life I see that when I grew the most during some of the most difficult times of my life.  Right now I am having growing pains again, my arms are being stretched from Thailand to the Pacific Northwest!  How do I give Austin a hug via SKYPE?  How do I smell that Austin smell, you know the good baby smell not the "what did you do Austin?"  smell, across the great waters of the Pacific Ocean?  Last I checked  skype is not a "smellyavision".  When I saw Austin last Friday night I couldn't believe how much he had grown in a week!  What will a year bring?  Growing pains are being felt and I am trying to work through them.

I do not believe in evolution like Mr. Darwin - but I have come to believe in the some of the "fittest survive" or another way Darwin said it was "better adapted for immediate, local environment"!  I have to say that in the last 10 months living in Asia I have learned to adapt to my local environment...so much so that today when I picked up the "Walker Boys", John's friends from Hong Kong, I was transported back to Asia for a second, while I was driving.  I turned on to a street and began driving on the left side of the road!  What a Hong Kong moment that was - I realized that I had adapted to my Asian environment just by looking and seeing those young men again!  Thankfully no cars were driving on that downtown SLC street - it was after all Sunday morning and things were a little quiet!  Growing pains could have been a real PAIN!

I would be telling a white lie if I said that I have never really felt any physical pains from all this growing.  Not to long ago I said goodbye to a friend, and my head and heart ached for days.  It amazes me how emotional and mental pains can cause very real physical pain.  I learned this the hard way.

I would also be telling a lie if I let you think for one minute that growing older doesn't cause any pain, it does both physical and emotional.  Physically my body can't do what I want it to do which then brings on the emotional pain of realizing that I am not 25 any longer -but pushing double that!  Mentally I feel like I am in my twenties while physically I am going to be FIFTY!  Talk about some growing pains!

 

I would like to close with a quote from Mary Tyler Moore,

"Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.”

So I am going to do some more growing and I know it will involve some pain but I am determined to "practice being brave" by taking chances and learning from my mistakes and by realizing that growing pains are helping me be the very best ME!!