My heart is broken as I write this. My baby niece, who has already had one surgery on her hand due to sepsis after a small cut from a fall in the snow, may need yet another one. Her little body is not responding to days of antibiotics to heal the infection. A big thing made out of what felt like nothing, out of nowhere.

“Baba is my hand dying?”, she manages to ask her dad in between wails of crying in level 10 pain.

Her dad, my brother, a larger than life Physician, a Pulmonary Interventionist who deals with life and death on a daily basis melts. My gorgeous sister in law with a faith that has survived multiple anonomoly deaths and losses within the past year shaken once again, Looking at her husband for answers when none of his answers are good enough. My other two brothers, also physicians staring on, feeling useless, present, to give love and support.

What do you do when you can’t do anything but pray? What do you do when what you need is magic and miracles?

The only answer I have that I have tested over and over again is SURENDER.
Surendering to what is.

In a way I or we don’t have a choice.
And, in a way, surrender is too active and requires too much courage for it not to be a conscious process that has to be undertaken.

It’s the shifting of thoughts and emotions from a default trajectory of the ‘worst case scenarios’ to a ‘miracle scenarios’.

But how do you change the well formed, fast running train tracks of thoughts when everything outside you is insisting on supporting you to stay on the familiar tracks of fear, anger, pain, upset, etc?

I have only been able to shift into surender after I have already been disregulated in this one way.

GRADITUDE.

An infusion, an insistence, an unstoppable, consistent GRADITUDE.
Making a conscious choice to overtake my mind and my heart with an endless shower of graditude.

Insisting the voice of graditude is stronger, louder, and more consistent to drown out the fear, the anger, confusion, upset, and pain.

Just not stopping until I have shifted my consciousness from fear to LOVE.

While I’m busy making up stories why not make up those that are infused with graditude instead of fear and worry.

I insist this confusing situation that is presenting as pain is going to have a gift in it even if I cannot see it just yet.
I surrender to my limited perception and knowing.
I will contincue to insist I want to experience the gift in the pain until I see it and once I do – more graditude, likely with tears of joy.

I have never been disappointed before.
I KNOW I won’t be this time either.

Send love, light, and graditude to my beautiful, vivacious, powerhouse of a baby niece.

All is Good.
All is God.