Day Five: Healing Arms

Jay Berghuis
Sep 9, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Sep 13, 2024

I just wrapped my ‘healing-prayer-shawl’ around me.

A multi-color variegated swath of warmth that Will, my dear pastor-and-soul-brother brought into the hospital. He offered it as a symbol to envelop me with love and healing, to remind myself of all the arms and prayers of my extended community locally here at All Souls Boulder and around the globe. The physical presence of you dear ones reading this, with whom I have known community, sharing lives, supporting and soul-guiding in hundreds of retreats and personal interactions over the years. I have no idea how it works, but prayerful energy is the cosmic connection that holds us all together.

I feel you, my friends.

The medical team has told me I’m ready to go home.

I know I’m not ready to face the 15 metal stairs that descend into our apartment. I can barely hop on my walker to the loo. I take my first selfie to check on my black eye. Hmm. Lookin’ better but….still frightful. I’m usually one that loves a challenge, so I insist, I have no survival skills from a wheelchair. I have two broken legs. “Is the hospital’s primary goal to get you well enough to go home?” I ask the attending physician. “It may seem like a kindness,” I tell him, "but I urgently need rehab and more time to be cared for by professionals."

It’s hard to ask for help. It’s even harder when everyone thinks you’re stronger and more capable than you know you are. To admit one can’t do it alone when you’re my age, makes me feel I have one foot in the grave.

So I wrap my prayer scarf around me and the family gathers my stuff as I get transported to a short-term and long-term care facility a few miles from home. Their smiling faces sure make me look better – don’t they?!

It was painful to be rolled through the facility halls lined with helpless people, truly aged and disfigured, incapacitated, heads lolling and drooling. My worst nightmare, and for my family too. We all admitted it was a tough start to the next week in rehabilitation, even though it felt like the right decision.

We’ve been processing our reactions. How my shocking experience ricocheted through each of my kids and, especially, Uli. Secondary trauma is so often hidden in strong bodies and minds. Each of us admits that we have work to do around this. I’m profoundly grateful for family and even more aware of how rare it is for a whole family to team up and face a challenge like this head-on and together.

How about you?

How have you been affected by another’s acute pain and suffering?

How have you found a way to soldier on without reaching out for arms to hold you?

Who is there for you?