JOY IN THE JOURNEY

Dear Friends, Family & Readers – Today, I am sharing something a little more personal. Happy New Year!

My journey to silence on a winding road of hope.

I write this today because 2017 was brutal – in our world, in our nation and on my heart.
But my message isn’t about that, and while things may feel like they are crumbling or falling apart if you will, it’s not. As we ring in 2018, I want to emphasize what 2017 taught me: HOPE.

Yesterday, I sat in a piano shop with my husband while he was picking out my Christmas present to him, a new piano. He test drove a couple, but wasn’t satisfied. I sat there anxiously just wanting him to quickly make a decision. When he got done and didn’t pick one, I felt angry, disappointed and let down. He said we are “making an investment, and there is no need to hurry.” I on the other hand, felt quite different. The sales guy, a.k.a. the Piano Dude, sensing my intensity, asked us a few more questions, and finally I said, “We just need a piano, so I can hear him play as long as I can.” There it was, the truth. The sad truth.

I am going deaf.

As I type these words, my heart sinks and my eyes fill up with tears – not because I have a medical condition that will eventually cause me to go completely deaf. Not because I am missing life one sound at a time.

I am grieving.

Grieving the loss of laughter in a room full of family and friends – I can see their smiles, their reactions, emotions and their physical laughter, but the sounds are faint, muted or sometimes non-existent.

Grieving the loss of the sound my husband’s soft kisses on my neck. Grieving the sounds of my kids coming into my room and knowing what they’re saying to me.

Grieving “silly” little things too like what is sounds like when I itch my face it, the toilet flushing {who would have thought one would miss that}, the timer on the oven, the blinker in my car, a knock at the door and all the little things we take for granted, like rain on the windshield or my spouse tossing and turning or snoring in the night. Over the last six months, these things have diminished, along with some of my joy.

I am always exhausted.

Exhausted trying to listen, read lips, watch facial expressions, observe all the people in a room trying to capture every little thing that’s going on, not wanting to miss a thing and hoping to possibly piece together a portion of any conversation. Exhausted having to give 110% to something that used to come so natural.

Exhausted always wondering if someone thinks I’m being snotty when I don’t turn to them when they call my name or are talking at me from a direction I can’t see.

Exhausted at not knowing how much time I have left.

I began to disengage at home, in the blogging world, with my friends at church and those around me. It was easier for me to sit in silence at home during the day working on my blog because it didn’t require all of me like everything else did in my life. Because it was always there, silently waiting for me to bring it life. It waited, allowed me to do it on my own time, no conversation waiting for a reply or asking it to repeat itself. My blog, allowed me to be me, the non-exhausted, non-grieving me.

I silently kept it to myself until I finally broke. It all built up to one night as I laid in bed with my hubby. We kissed and I cried. I couldn’t hear our kissing. I cried and he held me. I told him, “I can’t hear” and he said, “I know.” He allowed me to come to terms with it, even though he knew long before I said anything.

We saw a couple of doctors and became hopeful there was a solution. And then my dreams were crushed.

Devastated, I broke down to a close group of friends. Slowly, in my own time, talking to them at a blogging retreat. The circle of love around me gave me strength.

Then one morning, my view was forever changed.

Lisa, my sweet friend, and I went on a walk. We talked for a few miles during a gorgeous sunrise in the mountains of Breckenridge. We talked about my hearing, our struggles and funny stories of our kids and spouses. While I don’t remember every detail of our conversation, this I will always remember one thing. While I told Lisa that I just didn’t have any hope, and that I was just working on accepting where I am at, she looked at me and conveyed a dear story of her mom battling cancer. When her mom was told that she didn’t have much time, her mom never gave up hope. Lisa asked her mom how she could feel this way. Her wise, loving and gracious mother’s thought was “You might as well assume a hopeful outcome because then you can enjoy that hope,” you can feel the joy in the journey. I cried. I think we both cried. Betty’s words forever changed me.

While I have completely accepted that it is okay for me to grieve my loss of hearing, that doesn’t by any means give me the right to lose hope, lose my joy, lose inner peace or my overall happiness.

2017 will not take away my hope. In fact, it invigorated it.

With all of the unrest in our nation and our world, and with some of us experiencing some of that or worse in our homes or within ourselves, we cannot – we must not give up hope.

When I decided to be hopeful, I found joy. I saw blessings I didn’t see before. I felt happiness in new ways, in new experiences and in things that before went unnoticed.

My journey to silence became one that brought new appreciation and respect for my body, my life and all those things around me.

With my kids, I pay attention more. I listen more. I am more engaged, more appreciative and acutely more aware of the sounds I am still granted to hear.

I sing more. I cry more. I rejoice more in the little pleasures of life.

I am more grateful for my husband, my kids, my family and sweet friends.

Recently, my family started to learn sign-language. And I started to think about us – you, me and all of us in this world together at this time. It became clear to me, we need to learn to communicate in other ways like my family is learning to talk – not only with the words from our mouths, but also by the expressions of our faces, signs with our hands, and kindness in our actions. Our world needs to learn sign, figuratively speaking. We need to expand the ways that allow ourselves to be understood more clearly and more importantly, which allow us to understand more.

Our world needs to learn new ways to communicate. New ways to show love. New ways to experience and express hope. Our world needs to be filled with more joy. This Christmas, I shared this quote by Hamilton Wright Mable: “Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.”

What if we lived in that season and engaged in the conspiracy of love constantly and consistently in our lives? Would we feel more hope? Would it result in more joy in our journey? Unequivocally yes.

Engaging in love has brought me hope. Hope that we will find a way to allow me to hear my kids, and their kids, and my husband’s kisses and sweet words. A way to hear my favorite music, my sister’s voice on the phone filling me in our her day and my niece and nephew’s adventures, my girlfriends’ giggles at midnight, my mom and dad’s undying encouragement and hearing how much I am loved by all of the things around me.

Love will unite us.

Hope will bring us joy in this life. Joy in our imperfect journey – where people make mistakes, where illness can take a life, where sorrow can seem unending; hope is what we need. When we have hope, we find joy. When we find joy, we find peace.

XOXO San

My family.

The love of my life.