Snapshots of Transformation #5
One of the most excruciating limitations for Kathy was not being able to pick up our son, Seth, as a baby. We picked him up and put him in her arms, and as he grew more mobile, she helped him scramble up into her arms. Simply picking up your toddler was something Kathy had lost the physical strength to manage.
When she started physical therapy in 2006, her Therapist asked, “What do you want to be able to do? Not how much do you want to lift, but what do you want to do?”
“I want to be able to pick up my son,” she replied.
This is no one’s goal. No one places this item on a to do list, bucket list, or any other type of dream list.
Unless you can’t do it.
After six months of physical therapy, when our son was closing in on three years old and growing too big for almost anyone to pick him up, she did it!
With wrapping paper and presents strewn around the living room at a Christmas gathering of family, Seth got excited about one of his gifts from us. He ran over to Kathy with expectant celebration as any young child would do, but backed off as he had learned to be careful around mom.
“No, come here buddy!” Kathy encouraged. And she bent down and put her arms under his arms as he wrapped his around her neck. She straightened up holding her son!
And the room fell quiet for a brief, sacred moment as we all witnessed what we had never seen in his young life. The moment was not lost on any of us. Tears welled up in her mother’s eyes and mine too. Excited conversation started up again as we expressed gratitude for what had just happened.
She reached her goal just in time. She picked up our son. And it was a profoundly major victory for us, though it is the kind of thing that may be taken for granted by almost everyone else.
Takeaway? What is your small victory that may not be so small? What might be one to work towards?
Worth Repeating
The great victory, which appears so simple today, was the result of a series of small victories that went unnoticed.
-Paulo Coelho
