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Health & Fitness

The Past, Present, and Future Faces of Thankfulness

There is so much to be thankful for but as Chris heads back across the ocean, Juliana continues working to return to the girl he never wanted to leave behind.

How cliché would it be to say that I am very thankful for all that I have?  I will risk it and go there and say that I have a whole lot of reasons to be in love with my life. I have been blessed with 6 children who I genuinely enjoy being around. They are kids that make me proud of them in many ways, some completely unconventional and I am extra proud of that. I have a lot of good friends and a few very close and dear friends. I am surrounded by love and support and positive energy from a support system that is very good to me. I have siblings that are fun, witty and strong who have taught me as well as learned from me. I have a sister who doubles as one of my very best friends and a future son-in-law who I adore.  As if that wasn’t enough, I have a husband who puts me first absolutely always. 

Yesterday was for me, similar to how it was for many of you. I cooked, I ate, I cleaned up and then ate some more. It was awesome. I wish I would have discovered how much I enjoy cooking many years ago, (and I suspect my first husband would have appreciated that as well).  But spending 8 hours yesterday preparing a meal for my favorite holiday for my favorite people was as delicious inside as out. If Dylan, Chris, and Michelle were there, the day would have been completely perfect but it was still pretty darn close (minus the smoke in the kitchen when the turkey juice spilled in the oven, of course). Then when dinner was over and the day nearly done, Juliana left to visit with her dad for a few hours and that gave me some moments to relax and visit with my guests. I love the girl dearly but a break now and then from the attention she requires is necessary, especially on a day filled with activity and people. With Chris on the road again, I will slip into the more attention-driven perspective as I work to preserve the progress he made. It is always in his weeks of hands of help that the best improvements occur, although her month in the hospital was pretty impressive. 

Before he left he "casually" drew my attention to an area he was growing concerned with: her right hand. Since her super-human feat of pulling off the cast, the usage of that same cast as a split brace has been lack luster. It is hard to "fight the good fight" on her behalf all the time when she is so against it all.  But we are finding ways to convince her that the road is filled with progress. Nothing was more convincing than a very emotional breakdown by her fiancé that had her feeling like she needed to return the favor and this time, save him. He desperately tried to appeal to her and break through the shroud this injury has placed on her emotions and expressions. It was difficult to watch him like that but he was bearing his soul with pain and purpose and, as is the case each time he puts his mind toward igniting her improvement, we saw an encouraging response. She wants so badly to return to the girl she was, now more for him than for herself. 

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The hard part is that "wanting" doesn’t look the same on someone with a brain injury, at least not our "someone."  Her ability to empathize with Chris and see this injury for how much it affects the rest of us is more limited than effective but it is making an appearance more and more as time goes by. I have never cared what drives her to succeed in this fight, I just wanted the results and even when the days are hard to endure, there is always something to be grateful for, if I choose to see it. But watching Chris plead with her to recover for him meant waterworks for us all. He was genuinely broken but his defeat resulted in Juliana's inspiration, in as much as she can maintain anyway. No small example is the fact that Juliana didn’t even use her wheelchair yesterday except when she left with her dad. That means walking to the bathroom all day long, up the stairs, and to the dinner table.  Don’t get me wrong, she didn’t like it, but her acknowledgement of improvement peeks through just enough that "dislike" didn’t alway equal resistance.   

As I see her return to where she left off two years ago by the teaspoon I am also watching how this great opportunity is unfolding for Chris and feel how this deep and soulful man is tortured by the alternating guilt and joy he feels through the experience. Although he is not perfect, he is every bit as wonderful as he appears to be in his devotion to Juliana’s recovery and his talent exceeds even that which brought him international attention. We are blessed to experience his concoction of both in his music. He has earned the right to love the success of his career but is consistently haunted by the distance between his fame and his pain. As Juliana physically reacted to his expression of sorrow it seemed as if she understood and wanted to be better for him as well. 

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The cycle of humanity includes the pursuit of happiness followed by the reflection on loss. We never really have, or more accurately, notice that we have, what we want. We don’t spend much time "in the moment" of appreciation for achieving but instead continue treating that vapor in the distance as the place we want to be. No sooner do we get there then we are peering over our shoulder at the mosaic road we have just traveled. The curse of human nature I call it:  We always seem to really want the thing we can’t have as if the ‘missing’ of it is the only true driver to our actions. Some people wear that concept like a coat, others use it as armor and still others, like Chris Medina, it has become his skin.

That is what I see expressed in the beautiful video for Chris’s new single on You Tube, One More Time, and I understand his message to be equally personal and universal. You can see it, you can hear it and you can feel him looking back on what he and Juliana had together and wonders if where they will end up will ever be the same or even something that they can build a future upon. Although I pray every day for that to be the outcome, I am thankful for the days before this one that have afforded me a life so wonderful that I don’t want to lose any part of it—or anyone in it.

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