The Cripple

I was feeling overwhelmed with all that I’ve been doing and all that’s left to do and I took myself to the temple to get some strength (it’s my spiritual gym). As I drove there, I was actually thinking that maybe I should drop something…which is totally unlike me to even consider, but I really just didn’t think I could keep up with everything I’d taken on.

It was nice there and when I entered, I actually felt a weight “lifted” from me and I felt so much better. All the self-deprecating thoughts were gone and my mind was blank. It was a great feeling…which is weird…I heard somewhere (I think it was President Eyring…?) say that when we die, we’ll be surprised how many thoughts weren’t our own. I apply this to good thoughts and bad thoughts.

Anyway, with my blank mind, I was changing in the dressing room – the big one for wheelchairs so we can shift around and stuff. All the other dressing rooms are tiny. I wore boots and couldn’t zip them up so I moved out into the aisle to find someone passing by to zip them for me.

The next girl who came walking by was very willing and we got them all zipped up. She was about my age. She walked with a tall walking stick and I asked her about it and she looked down at me and said, “Oh, I’m a cripple.”

My blank face must have said what I was thinking and she elaborated for me. “You know,” she said, “a maim. Maimed. Crippled. Halted. Whatever you want to call it.”

She continued to tell me how difficult it is being her and having to keep up with doctors and medications. She kept telling me how difficult it was to be her. She said it over and over.

I asked her several questions about marriage, hobbies, activities and stuff and they all ended with the same negative answer: she can’t because she’s a “cripple.”

It was quite the weird exchange and I left feeling very sad for her. As I rolled through the hallways toward the exit, I wondered what I was supposed to learn from this.

I remembered a quote I’d heard on the plane ride home from FL this past Monday: I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.

I changed the quote to teach me what I needed to learn: I cried because I had no strength until I met a woman who had nothing to be strong for.

And the strength I came to find found me.

Good thing I’m not a cripple. I don’t think I could handle it.