Ripples from a monumental act of love now fill my world.  In the presence of profound kindness, every molecule of air vibrates low and heavy with God.  The walls of my home are still humming.  Here is the story.  It was not a rescue mission.  It was nothing less than a movement of the divine.

On March 5, in “Real Lovers Serve in Ecstasy,” I wrote about the difficulties I was facing as a single mother, including numerous crippling cycles of vomiting and diarrhea (six rounds in two months for my four year old alone, with no clue from the doctors).  Not only was I in danger of losing my job, but it brought my life to a standstill.  Keeping my house clean was impossible.  Finishing my degree was unthinkable.  Even eating became difficult.  I dropped to less than 115 lbs (at 5 foot 7).

My life felt apocalyptic.  I needed so much help, far more than anyone could be expected to give.  I reached out to family living far away, but they could not visit for months.  My only close companion in town, a true angel, was busy traveling and moving to a new home.  My regular babysitter moved to Tennessee.  I called numerous state agencies only to be told that the only option for single mother who is ill or caring for vomiting children was to go to an emergency room or call an ambulance.  I reached out to more than fifty old friends and acquaintances in town.  Two offered to watch my boys for an hour, and one offered to deliver a bag of groceries.  I was grateful, but how do you tell a giving soul that the rope they cast to you is far too short?  The frequent illness in my family created a hole so deep, nothing short of a miracle could pull us out.

The miracle happened.  In my post, I described a deep surrender.  In the dirty dishes, the muddy floors, and the soiled clothes, I saw the divine.  “Make yourself ready to do all he wants,” Rumi said.  I surveyed the mayhem and decided I would serve the divine in whatever form it took with whatever I had to give.  Before I could wash another dish, however, the divine was serving me!

A reader on the west coast, profoundly moved by my writing, contacted me that night and offered to help.  Five days later, he was on a plane.

A master chef and restaurant owner in California, he cooked gourmet meals three times a day for me and my children.  Blueberry pancakes (with special gluten free pancakes for me), salmon and scallops with pan-seared carrots and cauliflower, portobello risotto, vegetable stew with kale and kombu, berry parfait, and more.  I inhaled every meal like I had not eaten in months.

Within hours of stepping off the plane, he washed all of my dishes and cleaned my house well into the night.  Over the course of five days, he washed every load of laundry and kept the kitchen clean.  He cleaned out my car down to the melted gummy bears in the floorboard, scrubbed the mats, and brought it to the car wash.  He spent hours sorting through 200 cubic feet of heavy boxes and old furniture that were dumped in my playroom when my ex-husband left our old house to take a job in the Netherlands.  Before he stepped in, the mountain of stuff filled my playroom from wall to wall, floor to ceiling.  The scene was hopeless, but no longer.  With help from his dear friend back home, he found and hired a skilled woman to clean my house twice a week.  She bleached the walls, folded my clothes, donned knee pads and rid my kitchen of every last ant and cracker crumb.

Soon, my house was transformed from what looked like an abandoned warehouse in Arkansas to a hotel in Provence complete with folded towels and daffodils.  I did not recognize it.  I did not recognize my life or myself.  Everything felt… normal.  I had forgotten what that was like.  “I feel as though I stepped through an interdimensional portal,” I said and wandered around in tearful awe.

He wanted nothing in return.

You Don’t Deserve to Be Kicked When You Are Down

Suffering can evoke shame, which makes receiving help scary.  When this bodhisattva arrived, I could not hold myself upright.  The infections were exacerbating my fibromyalgia (or rheumatoid arthritis), and I am allergic to the only effective pain killers.  The body pain was so intense, it brought me to tears and robbed me of sleep.  In addition, I was experiencing chills and hot flashes, uncontrollable shaking, exhaustion, and severe back pain.  I recognized these as the precursors to another kidney infection.  Last summer, I developed a kidney infection, and securing treatment was like pulling teeth.  After going to the emergency room twice, they finally treated me with a round of Cipro.  My visitor happened to bring a supply of Cipro, of all things, which I began taking immediately, and my symptoms rapidly disappeared.

Within days, I was my old self again, strong and energized.  I had been feeling like an invalid, which filled me with shame, but as I watched this robust man develop the same exhaustion and illness that crippled me, running for sleep at 8 p.m. every night just like me, my confidence exploded.  I realized just how strong I really am.

During his visit, I began to remember one after another episode in my life when someone became enraged or abusive over my being sick.

When I was sixteen, I fell and sprained my ankle.  My friends carried me home to my front door.  Over the next several days, when I hobbled and winced, my parents became angry and threatened to cancel my birthday.  I took a large dose of Tylenol hoping it would ease the pain enough to walk normally, but my ankle was three times its normal size and green and purple and yellow.  A teacher at school demanded I see the school nurse.  To my great terror, the nurse insisted on calling my parents and highly recommended they take me to a doctor.  When I returned home, I was in big trouble.  My parents berated me for seeing the nurse, angry at the invasion of their privacy, and called me a “wimp.”  Eventually my ankle healed, but for many years it hurt to step down just so.

When I was seventeen, I developed bronchitis.  I crawled downstairs to the kitchen and tried to eat a peach, but my throat was too swollen and sore to finish it.  I threw the remainder of the peach into the trash compactor.  An hour later, my mother’s husband arrived home, found the peach in the trash, pulled it out, set it on the counter, and called me down to the kitchen.  He demanded that I eat it.  I refused, and he hit me.  I cursed at him, and he grabbed me by the hair, dragged me to the table, and tried to shove it down my throat.  After several more blows to the head, I threw the peach across the room, and he let me crawl back upstairs.  Two days later, I ran away from home and never went back.

When I was still married, there were numerous times when I was on the floor with the flu or a blood sugar problem (especially when I was pregnant), and my ex-husband stepped over me and yelled at me for not helping him with the housework.  On one occasion, I was on the kitchen floor with a severe flu trying to put a bagel in the toaster.  I asked him for help, and he said, “My emotional needs are more important than your flu!”  He stared down at me and yelled in anger, demanding that I get up and watch the children while he take a “mental health break” in the bedroom.  If I had not been so ill, I would have laughed heartily.  I explained that I was simply incapable, and he locked himself in the bedroom where he watched television for three hours.

On another occasion, when I offered to help him look for a job, he flew into a rage, crashed into the refrigerator, and took off running down the hall.  I scurried to grab my four year old who had wandered into his path of destruction, and when my ex-husband saw me near, he turned around and kicked me hard.  That was the beginning of the end.  I filed for divorce less than a year later.

The revelation: I have a history of being kicked when I am down, and when it happens, it means my family is gone, my home lost.

Some part of me felt it was warranted.  “Buck up!” says my internal voice.  “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!  Pick yourself up off the floor!”  There is a difference between fortitude and self-loathing, between independence and exile.  In my opinion, this culture worships individual resilience far too much.

What if being there for one another is simply a joy?  What if helping and being helped is just plain wonderful?

So there I was on the floor, and someone was called to help me up.  Maybe, just maybe, I could have lifted myself off the floor without help.  Maybe not.  Does it matter?  Love moved, and it uplifted us both.

Let Yourself Be Given To

The day before his arrival, he said, “Make a list of what you want done,” and later added, “Just think of me as your indentured servant.”

I pulled out paper and pen ready to make my list.  The task was surprisingly difficult.  My first attempts were filled with thoughts like “well, it would be ever so nice if such-and-such was a bit more clean.”  “What am I doing?” I thought.  This person is flying halfway across the country to serve me with love in his heart.  Who am I to stand in its way?  By the end of the day, my list had this tone: “This is what I need, plain and simple.”

Suddenly, it dawned on me that I have made such lists before, lists to the universe, lists to God, and every time, I wrote my list from a place of guilt and smallness.  Yet, witnessing the joy welling in up in another person at the mere thought of helping me, I thought, “What if this is how the divine feels towards me?”

Throughout his visit, my guest thanked me profusely for letting him serve.  His gratitude was so sincere, that rather than countering with my own gratitude each time, I was compelled to simply say, “You’re welcome.”

Ask and it is given, not because you discover the secret trick to manipulating the universe, but because giving to you is God’s joy.

The Power of Words

Speaking of asking and receiving, another earthshaking miracle was woven throughout the altruistic mission of the culinary bodhisattva.

I have been praying all of my life to write and publish books.  Last year, I began asking the universe for someone who could help me through the initial stages of bringing a book to life.  It was clear that none of my ambitions would materialize without someone believing in me, someone knowledgeable about the practical aspects of publishing.

It just so happens that another frequent reader of Waking Heart, the beloved friend of the chef, is an acquisitions editor at a successful publishing company that specializes in psychology and spirituality books.  She fell in love with my writing and helped me start a draft of my first book proposal.  A process that seemed so monumental and confusing for so long, publishing a book, now feels inevitable.  She offered to introduce me to an author who teaches at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, where we both coincidentally once communed with the rolling hills.

She truly believes in me, and what is even more precious, she has become a dear friend.

I cannot wait to write my love letters to the world, printed and bound.  May the words find all those who need it.  May they help ease the suffering I know so well.