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By Root 526 0

the music that bombed. The good songs make the former times seem great, as if all the music was outstanding. In reality, there was bad music thirty years ago or fifty years ago—in fact, a lot of bad music. The same is true with experiences. We tend to forget the negative and go back to recapture pleasant events. The reality is, we have selectively remembered—and just as selectively forgotten.

Once that idea got through to me, I decided I couldn’t recapture the past. No matter how much I tried to idealize it, that part of my life was over and I would never be healthy or strong again. The only thing for me to do was to discover a new normal.

Yes, I said to myself, there are things I will never be able to do again. I don’t like that and may even hate it, but that doesn’t change the way things are. The sooner I make peace with that fact and accept the way things are, the sooner I’ll be able to live in peace and enjoy my new normalcy.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

In early 2000, I took a group of college kids on a ski trip from Houston to Colorado. Skiing is one of the things I’d always loved doing. Unable to participate, I sat in a clubhouse at the bottom of the hill, gazed out the window, and watched them glide down. Sadness came over me, and I thought, I made a big mistake. I should never have come here. As happy as I was for them, I mourned over my inability ever to ski again.

Then I thought for the thousandth time of other things I would never do again. When I was a senior pastor, most of the adults greeted me at the door following each morning service.

“Enjoyed your sermon,” they’d said. “Great service.”

Kids, however, behaved differently. They’d race up with a picture they’d colored for me. Before my accident, I loved the kids flocking around me; I’d kneel down and talk with them. After my recovery, I couldn’t squat down and stare at their smiling faces the way I used to before as I said, “Thank you very much. I really like this picture. This is very nice.”

After my accident, the best I could do was lean forward and talk to them. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like a big thing, but it is for me. I’ll never squat again; I’ll never be able to kneel so that I can be at a child’s level again, because my legs won’t give me the ability to do that.

Here’s another example: When I go to a drive-through fast-food restaurant, I can’t reach for the change with my left arm. The best I can do is reach out across my body with my right arm. It must look strange, and I get a few odd looks, but it’s the best I can do.

While neither of these examples is particularly dramatic, they are nonetheless reminders that sometimes things we take for granted every day can be taken from us permanently and suddenly, and we’re changed forever.

During my long hospitalization, somebody gave me a magazine article about a young man who lost his sight. He went through an incredibly bitter, depressive time. He wrote that he got so demoralized that a friend who cared enough about him to tell him the truth said, “You just need to get past this.”

I paused from reading and thought, Yes, that sounds like the way I was after my accident. The article went on, however, to tell the practical instructions the blind man’s friend gave him: “I want you to make a list of all the stuff you can still do.”

“Now what kind of a list would that be?” the angry blind man asked.

“Just do it for me. You can’t write it, obviously, but you can get a tape recorder and dictate it. Just make a list of all the things you can still do. And I’m talking about simple things like ‘I can still smell flowers.’ Make the list as extensive as you can. When you’re finished, I want to hear that list.”

The blind man finally agreed and made the list. I don’t know how much time passed, but when the friend returned, the blind man was smiling and peaceful.

“You seem like you’re in a much better frame of mind than the last time I saw you,” the friend said.

“I am. I really am, and that’s because I’ve been working on my list.”

“How many things are on your list?”

“About a thousand so far.