Morah Betsy: Prayers and Dreams Answered

I became disabled slowly, beginning right around the start of 2000, and I entered a pain management rehab program about two years later. In addition to things like mobility class (how to do wheelies and get the wheelchair up or down a curb) and lessons on alternating the canes just as we would swing our hands with alternate steps, there were mental health aspects to the program, including weekly meetings with a psychologist and an excellent art therapy program.

When I started in the art therapy program, most of my artwork was directly related to pain and disability, but eventually I also started to incorporate other themes, and my art became a visual representation of my dreams and prayers.

Last week, I had occasion to go through my art therapy work in an effort to help a friend who is having similar kinds of issues now, and I found my old prayers.

A year after the major spine surgery that changed my life, my dreams are reality! I sit in regular chairs all the time. I dance. I think clearly and take minimal amounts of medication. I am rarely dizzy or off balance. I sleep only eight hours a night. I haven't started bicycling yet, but I am amazingly grateful to God, I am making good use of my time, and I am clearly sympathetic to others in pain. How else would I have ended up going through the artwork in the closet?

Dreams do come true. Prayers are answered. Ten years later perhaps, but prayers are answered.

Praised are you, Adonai, who hears prayer.

בָּרוּך אַתָּה יי, שׁוֹמֵעַ תְּפִלָה.