THE LIGHT CYCLE

     It's an amazing thing to not be out and moving through the day, but to sit still, and watch the day move around me. That's how it is from a hospital room. I am aware of the circle of the sun, almost like a hug, rising on one side of the building and curling around all day to settle and sink right outside our window, returning the room to darkness, and the night. The sound of the iv machine rising and falling, fluttering and ticking, then rising and falling again; Gruff's breathing and quietness, then his restless movement, uncomfortable, itchy feeling, then quiet again... It's all cyclical, soothing almost, in a sad sort of way.
     I'll be glad to get out of here and burst back into action again, but it's ok to be here too. I resisted it at first, but I have surrendered. And even in the uncertainty, in the pain and the fear, there is healing happening. I have always thought of hospitals as places of sickness, but they are just as much places of wellness, of the restoration of bodies to whole. The patients cycle as much as the sun and the iv machine, rising and falling; rising and falling; cycling and cycling, swirling and receding ever closer and closer to greater healing or the ultimate peace that always happens in the end.

I surrender to the stops and starts and stillness of the slow healing process, whether in myself or others, and do not struggle and push, trying to force something that can only be restored by the passage of time.