A filter...

In her book Living With the End in Mind, Erin Tierney Kramp explained that before she was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, she and her husband Doug "generally felt caught up in the whirlwind" of their lives. After diagnosis their various responsibilities did not disappear but they "had a new filtering mechanism for deciding what to take on each day." By acknowledging death and living with "the end in mind," Erin felt they had grown closer as a couple and became better parents. "We wish everyone could get the perspective of having a life-threatening diseases without having to suffer from the disease itself," she wrote.

Despite the mourning and the loss, I am experiencing a paradigm shift that feels important and healthy. It has a lot to do with the filtering system Erin explained. How I view the world, my life, and everything around me is affected by this disease and my current state. It goes back to the Spoon Theory I explained in an earlier post. Once I faced a limited amount of spoons--time, energy, resources--I had to focus. I had to slow down. I had to prioritize. I had to accept help. It is then, I realized, that I was watching the whirlwind, for once, standing a far distance from the mighty winds. And now I realize that some of that stuff blowing about, really didn't matter.

Now I have a filter. A gift, really.