My Father’s Story
I wanted to share a story with you, about my father. My father had Colitis for many years. He did not take medicine or really even go to the doctor for it. I am the youngest of 10 kids and my mother really never worked outside the home. I guess we were her work and trust me, she worked. Both of my parents were hard working people and I thank them every day for teaching me how to be a hard worker too.
My father thought his illness was his cross to bear. I remember one day out in the garden I was “sentenced” to weeding since I barely passed fourth grade. It was a day that made a big impression me for a few reasons and one thing I remember was him telling me, “if I die, you look up and smile because you know I will be in a better place”. When I say that my father was a sick man I could tell you stories about how sick he was, and he went to work every day. I worked at the same factory with him and I would go in early to see him and run his machine so he could go to the bathroom. He would go 20 times a day, if not more. He would carry extra underwear and pants in his car. The sad part was he would use them.
I remember one day I asked my father if he wanted to learn meditation to help with his Colitis. He looked at me and said, “I don’t believe in that”. I looked at him and told him, “I did not ask you to believe in anything, I asked you if you wanted to learn meditation?” He was in his mid-seventies by then and just looked at me confused and I dropped the subject. I felt bad that day because I think I could have really helped him with his illness. I believe that we can get so ingrained in our stories that we cannot look past them and the older we get, the harder it is to make it out of them. After that day we never really talked about his illness again. Looking back I think he was so use to being sick that in a weird way he would has missed it if he wasn’t. It was his way of life.
My father and my mother are both gone now and I will always say, I have so much respect for them. They were hard working church people that did the best that they could do for each other and us and I miss them both, but I do look up and smile because I know both of them are in a better place.
I believe people get accustomed to being sick and the longer they are sick, the harder it is to break free of the story of being sick. I had my illness for five years before I did something about and decided to choose something different. When I got control of my mind through meditation and started understanding how it worked, I created a new story, a new life and all my body had to do was follow my mind.
Meditation is a tool to bring the mind in line with what you want to create. Some people might read this blog and think I am a nut case. Every night I consider how I can more clearly help people understand that your mind is not a foreign land. The mind is the tool you use to create your life. You get up in the morning and you start creating your day right from the get go. I guess I am saying don’t let life live you. You need to live life. In seeing my father’s life at a distance I see he did the best he could, he kept moving even though he was sick until the end. He survived. I believe there is more to life than just surviving. I was able to become aware and go the next step to change the focus of my life from sickness to life itself. I stopped creating sickness in my life, so now it is gone and I have created life. And you can too.
I Healed my Crohn's Colitis 