I am currently sitting in Panera, tears streaming down my face because of a Tweet someone sent me. Yup, that's right, a simple tweet on Twitter. I have a YouTube channel that focuses on helping people deal with stress and anxiety and sometimes I get heart-warming emails and messages telling me how much I have helped people. It's extremely humbling but this tweet that I got today was that and even more to me.
Hey, maybe I'm overreacting a little (or even a lot) but the person who messaged me is in a wheelchair and that hits home for me.
Richie is my cousin's husband. He's been a wheelchair since before I was born. He suffered from a stroke in his 40s and since then has been in a wheelchair. The stroke greatly impacted his brain and although he can think as though he is fully functional he has difficulty putting his thoughts into words. I have caught Richie with looks of sadness and frustration since people are oftentimes not very patient with having him try to speak.
When I was around 10 we visited my cousin Elvie (Richie's wife) and him in Washington, D.C. where they live. Richie is a veteran and Elvie worked briefly for the government. I had been exhausted from walking around downtown D.C. all day and Elvie had been carrying around Richie's extra chair around with her. Basing my actions off of 10 year-old logic ("I'm tired, oh look! A chair!") I opened up the extra wheelchair and sat down.
Elvie went ballistic. She grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the wheelchair so fast that my head probably did a full circle and I didn't even notice.
"What's wrong with you?!" she said. Then she started to cry. "I never want to see anyone in a wheelchair."
A few years later I asked my dad out of nativity, "Do you think Elvie gets sad sometimes? Or frustrated that she's with Richie when he is in a wheelchair?"
My dad's eyes drifted down to me and he said, "She loves him."
And that was when I realized that I didn't want just any type of "love" in my life. I wanted a love like Elvie for Richie.
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