Health Challenges Aren't Meant to Limit Us

Have you seen the movie, The Snow Walker? I know I don’t usually recommend films, but this one that I watched for the first time the other night, is worth telling you about if you are seriously dedicated to your self-healing.

Now, I’m not going to give away the plot, but I am going to tell you that it is not a film about physical healing. However, it gives you a lot to consider when it comes to understanding what overwhelming challenges do for your spiritual and emotional evolution. In my experience that is what a healing journey is truly all about.

As I watched the movie and considered how small my challenges were in comparison to the life-threatening challenges the characters were dealing with, I was moved to tears in gratitude for the ways challenges have transformed me in the most powerful ways.

Challenges are intended to stimulate and catapult us into greater Divine awakening. We can let them weigh us down into hopelessness, or we can use them to discover who we really are. We can become angry about what seems to have befallen us, or we can greet the challenges with all of their potential to transform us. We can use them to become our worst or our best. It is our journey and our choice.

Some years ago I met a man that told me a seemingly incredible story about a very dramatic healing that he initiated. He had been riding his motorcycle on a stretch of highway where there were too many pot-holes. He hit one of them, which sent him careening on his side.

He lost a lot of muscle tissue in that fall and the doctor told him he would either never walk, or he would walk with some kind of apparatus, such as a walker or cane. He had been an active man and martial artist and the thought of being in a wheel chair or limping throughout his life was unacceptable to him. He decided, through his anger, that wasn’t going to be his story or outcome.

Without even knowing exactly what energy healing was, he set an intention to heal and walk, which included growing back new muscles. Every day, he worked physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually on mending his body. It took some time, but he walks today as though nothing had ever happened.

We let challenges discourage us. We accept illness and injuries as conditions without hope. But they do not have to be.

Yes, some of us do not fully recover from our physical challenges. Some of us die from the illnesses and conditions we have contracted. But we do not have to die discouraged. We can allow our lives to inspire hope and courage in others.

I watched this repeatedly when I taught children many years ago that had conditions for which there were few successful treatments or therapies. Each day they lived, they inspired courage in their families.

They focused on what they could enjoy and give, rather than what they should be getting. They focused on living in the moment rather than fret about a future they might or might not experience. They openly received help from those who were there to offer comfort or assistance in any way. Their short lives were richer than what some of us experience who have lived decades.

Only you can know whether you are here to meet your physical challenges to overcome them or to live with them with inspirational grace. If you decide to watch this movie, notice how each character, in each their own time, embraces their unique challenges and the grace with which they become their most empowered selves.