In this crazy world I am caught up in of doctors and testing, of rare diseases and unanswered questions, of radical and rapid life changes, of the unknown and unknowable it is often the little things that catch me with my defenses down and pierce my heart. I am battle weary but armed and prepared for the daily foes of magnitude, I am not prepared for the simple things that slip past my guard and bring me to my knees. The past few days have brought several little things that evaded my armor and struck at my heart and soul in ways I was not prepared for and never imagined. When I reached into a box and pulled out my hiking boots, with small rocks and packed dirt still wedged into the tread, my defenses were unprepared. Almost exactly a year ago I was delighting in the fact that my body was doing things I had never dreamed possible, that I could find such freedom in movement and explore the world around me away from the overcrowded community on the fringe of the city. I was pushing boundaries, taking time to see my surroundings in an entirely new way, appreciating my freedom, bathing in the peace I found in the middle of God's creation. I spent every weekend that I could in the local state and national parks, and I felt most at peace and most free during those times. As my fingers traced the heavy treads on the bottom of the boots tears poured down my cheeks. I am still mourning for what I lost, and the grief came flooding in waves like a tsunami. I was angry, I was bitter, but most of all I was anguished. It was about so much more than the boots that I clutched like a life line. In the same way that it was about more than the year long access card to the national park that I used just once, last September, before becoming sick or the T-shirt from the summer of 2008 when I was able to not just teach amazing kids at The Pittsburgh Project but do things like go up and down the 40 stairs to my room without hesitation or the valentine from one of my preschool students. It was about the very raw and very vivid grief that lurks just below the surface, a tangle of emotions that I am sorting out but if I tug on the wrong one everything comes tumbling down into a heap, a grief that wears many masks. Sometimes it wears the face of sadness and dispair, other times it wears the face of bitterness or anger, and still other times it wears the face of detachment and withdrawl. Yet it is always the same truth beneath the disguises, and it is a process of letting go and accepting that is so difficult. There are good days and bad days, good minutes and bad minutes. In so many very real ways, my life that I knew has died and I am mourning for that death. Yet I am also so thankful for all that I do have, and I continue to fight and face the battles that rage within and over my body. Just when I think I may be getting closer to really accepting all of this and moving on, a little thing sneaks beneath my defensees and the emotional wounds open wide again. I know it will take time and faith and God and grace and mercy and hope and faith and time, and that for once in my life I am absolutely perfectly normal in regards to something. Sometimes, as I stand guard against the dragons and the giants, the monsters and the boa constrictors, I wish there were not quite so many little things.