My mother used to recount little incidents from my childhood. She told me that when I was 2 ½, she went to the hospital to give birth to my brother. I stayed with my aunt and uncle (my mother’s brother and his wife). In those days, routine hospital stays after giving birth were 5 days long. Children were considered too germ-ridden to set foot in hospitals unless they were the patients. My father visited me and took me to the hospital parking lot so my mother could wave to me from her hospital window. Back then, you could actually open windows. I was inconsolable much of the time and asked for her constantly as I was too young to understand why I had been abandoned. Homecoming day finally arrived and instead of joyful hugs and kisses from me as my mother had anticipated, I turned my grumpy little back on her and refused to even look her in the eye. She was spurned by a two year old. Spurn: Latin derivation = spernere = to despise. A contemptuous rejection. Balk at, deselect, disapprove, negative, nix, pass, pass up, refuse, reject, reprobate, repudiate, decline, throw out, throw over, turn down, dis. I was only 2 but I turned my back on the one I loved the most when I felt that I had been abandoned.
Turn the calendar ahead 31
years. I’m the married mother of 2 young
children and I’m dealing with a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. My church is praying for me. I’m praying for me and feeling very sorry for
myself. And smoking many more cigarettes
a day than ever. We’re talking a pack
and a half a day habit. Now, I had been
praying about my addiction to nicotine for months before I got sick. But that went out the window when my immune
system broke down and my eyes started crossing, my arms and face went numb and
I was in terrible pain. I had much
bigger problems to worry about than my bad habit – I’d received the diagnosis
of Multiple Sclerosis. But when my
healing took place, it was the cigarettes that went. And virtually overnight and when I was least
expecting it. I had absolutely no
craving ever again. I kind of shook my
head in wonder. I was happy that I didn’t
crave tobacco anymore and grateful to God for the healing but “What about the
MS?”, I thought. “What about that?”
And then, gradually, I started feeling
better. The fog from the awful fatigue
and dizziness lifted and I for a while I thought the MS was gone for good. Of course, it wasn’t. And throughout the next 10 years or so I had
some real challenges from the disease.
For a time I lost so much of my vision that my doctor thought I might
have a brain tumor pressing on my optic nerves.
Multiple Sclerosis has at one time or another affected every bodily
function you can name, including my ability to hear and think. But then, eventually, the attacks came less
frequently. I still felt the effects of the disease but I was able to function
well enough to work. I asked two
different neurologists if smoking had any effect on MS. Both of them answered the same way. That there was no proof that smoking cigarettes
had any effect on the disease at all. Of
course, recent research has proven a direct link between smoking and worsening
of the symptoms of MS. And there’s even
speculation that smoking may be more than a contributory factor and that
smoking may actually trigger the disease in individuals pre-disposed
genetically to MS.
Life was enough of a
challenge for me when my husband at the time was diagnosed with terminal
cancer. Although the situation was
hopeless, chemotherapy and all that goes with it started immediately. Within months I felt overwhelmed. That’s when death came to live in our
house. It ate dinner with us, took up a
lot of space on the couch and slept in the house at night, even when I couldn’t. Death was in the shower, in my car on my ride
to work. It waited for me at the front
door at the end of the day. I had not
stopped believing in God. I believed
He’d let me down. Me. The faithful
daughter, the Sunday school teacher, choir singer, meeting attender! I felt that I’d been abandoned and our lives
had been left in the hands of oncologists, infusion centers, M.R.I. technicians
and therapists. I couldn’t pray and I didn’t
worship. I got mad and turned away from
my God in the same childish way I’d rejected my mother.
Then one sunny September day,
we decided to get out of the house. I
knew it was going to be a long, cold winter and it was too nice to stay at
home. Our destination was North
Stonington in the hope that the Green Corn Festival would be like the pow-wow’s
we’d taken the kids to when there were young.
But it was crowded, there were lines for food and nowhere to sit except
bleachers which neither of us could climb.
We left there and headed to Stonington village to a little tavern we
remembered called Noah’s for some lunch.
Apparently Noah’s has become a “destination spot” for tourists and we
were told there would be a 30 minute wait.
To try to salvage the day, we decided to go to the beach and got back on
the road toward Misquamicut.
A strong storm had recently
torn the deck awning away at Paddy’s so we’d have to sit in the sun. That was fine with us and we ordered our burgers
and beer. We were not at our original destination or
even our second choice but I was content. We had left death at home with the
dog for the day. The weather was
pleasant and warm and the sun sparkled brightly on the ocean.
As I enjoyed the view I
started noticing a few Monarch butterflies flying down the beach, heading south
along the water’s edge. Then a few more,
then several, followed by hundreds, maybe more.
A trickle, grew to a river of beautiful, orange and black Monarch
butterflies, flying along together about twenty feet off the ground, a little
above my eye level as I sat on the deck.
After a while I stopped trying to count them and simply enjoyed watching
their procession, astonished that most of the other diners around me barely looked
up from their lunch.
I’d heard that monarch
butterflies migrated to Mexico for the winter.
In my ignorance, I remember thinking, “So? Birds migrate, too. It’s instinct.” But what struck me the most, as I watched
these little creatures, was that they were not flying with intention. They were flying almost sideways, as if they
were being swept along by an unseen hand.
I’d always loved watching butterflies in my garden as they flitted from
flower to flower sipping nectar. I was
so curious about them that I’d even followed a Yellow Swallowtail at sunset,
trying to discover where she would sleep for the night. I watched in amazement as she tucked herself
into a blue spruce and gently folded back her wings to roost, completely still. But these Monarchs didn’t actually appear to
be flying, rather it looked like they were being swept along as if riding on an
unseen current. It looked like they were
riding a river of wind that I couldn’t see or feel. And I couldn’t understand why, if they were
going to Mexico, they were traveling along a beach, heading south as if to
Florida. I reasoned that if I (with the
limitation of my human reasoning) were going to fly to Mexico, I’d get on a
plane and head in a south westerly direction, but definitely west. I wouldn’t fly south, down the east coast.
My curiosity piqued, I looked
up their flight path on the internet and their coastal migration made
sense. The Monarchs in our part of the
continent fly along the coast and then cross over as small a body of water
possible to get to their final destination, a 60 square mile area in the
Mexican highlands. And as they travel
the coast, they can stop in puddles for sips of salty water along the way. I learned that the butterflies I saw in Rhode
Island had never been in Mexico. Scientists know that many of the butterflies
survive the entire 3,500 mile trip as they have found butterflies in Mexico
that had been tagged in Minnesota.
Whatever calls to the
Monarchs on a particular day and gets them to start their journey is still not
known. But I know that I felt my heart re-open to God that day. I felt that I’d been watching His loving hand
call and guide those butterflies. It didn’t appear to be instinct or
free-will. They were on a journey to a
place they’d never been. They didn’t
know why they were going or what perils they’d encounter along the way. I hadn’t chosen the journey I was on. I didn’t know where my life was going and I
had been angry at God because I’d felt abandoned. That day, I turned back to Him, began to
worship again. I returned to church, I
sang in the choir. I won’t say that terrible
and frightening things didn’t happen along that journey. But also amazing and wonderful things that were
beyond anything I could have imagined. I met and married my husband, Leo and became
step-mother to the third child I’d always wanted. My children have married and
we’re blessed with 6 grandchildren. Because
I trusted God to guide my way, just as he led those butterflies home.
