BANDAIDS TO WHAT HURTS

What is it about loving someone you don't know?  Someone you just met?  Someone who lost a limb or two or three for you?  What is it when they want to be hugged and just have someone touch them, and just hold them for a few minutes and tell them that they matter and that what they did for this country made a difference....and that you care and appreciate the sacrifices they made. What is it?

This has been the most emotion packed day I can remember in a very, very long time. In fact so much so that the route I normally take home was lost to me.  I just drove and drove and never had a clue where I was going...only thinking, remembering, digesting, and above all grateful for the opportunity to do what I do!

Far too long I have been doing, and doing and doing and spinning my wheels getting no where.  But now I am where I am supposed to be.

Therapy dogs help heal at VA hospital. If you don't believe it watch this video of two dogs whose mission it is to help our warriors heal!

http://www.ksat.com/news/Therapy-dogs-help-heal-at-VA-hospital/-/478452/17336030/-/amebfiz/-/index.html

 

Everyone has an animal story that brings them to tears.  But this day, and every day with Kelsie, I am brought to tears as she performs miracles with the severely injured warriors. It is here that you see the rough edges of life.  It is here that you witness great pain, great courage, and great suffering, and also great miracles.  Sometimes these warriors open their hearts so wide, I find I just slip inside without knowing my feet had left the earth. 

 

Words are meaningless in moments like these. There are moments that erase everything bad and open a door into a place of hope and healing.

 

As Kelsie and I work with the wounded warriors, I am reminded of Eleanor Roosevelt's quote as she spoke to her husband, "They will never see past your legs until you do." This is what Kelsie and I provide.  We see past their injuries into the real person. We allow them to be real.

 

I recall a warrior with no legs telling me, when I asked how he was doing, he said, "Every morning when I can get up and put my feet on the floor and stand up, anything after that is just gravy."  He waited for my response and then started laughing!  Life is what you make it.  Always has been.  Always will be.

"Perhaps strength doesn't reside in having never been broken, but in the courage required to grow strong in the broken places." Unknown

 

So today I follow the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi,

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."

There is so much I want to tell you about my day, but the words are temporarily drowned by tears.  But soon.

So from Tears and Laughter and Gene Hill,

 

"He is loyalty itself.  He has taught me the meaning of devotion.  With him I know a secret comfort and a private peace.  He has brought me understanding where before I was ignorant.  His head on my knee can heal my human hurts."