Inspiration

The power of inspiration in our lives, in our families, in our culture and in our history can not be over looked or discounted for the impact it has had on all of us.

What is inspiration? Inspiration is basically insights, thoughts and feelings that arrive to your mind and heart with such impact, power and  clarity that they are easily distinguished from our normal neural activity; Upon receipt they should be pondered for action.

Inspiration arrives, when it arrives; It can ride into your dreams in the middle of the night while in a deep sleep, it can distill upon your mind in the quiet moments of the morning, settling in with a comfortable assurance; You might be driving down a busy highway and a sudden burst of insight flow into your mind like the rushing waters of Niagara… filling your soul with a with a peace and confidence of understanding.  When it arrives you know it immediately,  you feel it, you are uplifted with the knowledge it has brought: it has given you a much needed insight for the situation at hand.

The Bible is an inspired book of actions which were preluded by the inspiration of prophets over a number of millennia.  God would inspire his chosen servants to direct His people in the pathways of safety… if they listen and obeyed they were protected, if the people chose to disregard His guidance they fell into harms way.  The foundation and formation of our country was guided by inspiration; The Founding Fathers often referred to their inspiration and guidance as coming from a higher power.  In our daily lives we are able to touch others or be touched by them with the inspiration we or they have received.

Adam is suffering from a loss or is experiencing a deficit in his speech due to the removal of areas of his brain.  We count our blessings as he still has most of his motor skills, his ability to hear and understand most of our conversations, he is able to walk and is gaining strength daily in a number of areas. Yet one of our major concerns has to do with the recovery of his speech.

The doctors have ordered speech therapy twice a day…Over the past few days I have included a few video clips of Adam going through this therapy.  This past week, Cari has been his main speech therapist, each therapy session lasts between 10 and 20 minutes.  Cari, will take simple objects along with the name of that object written on a flash card and show them to Adam.  The idea behind this is for Adam to try to associate in his mind the actual object with the written text of the object.  Even though he has lost some of his abilities to find a word for an object he still knows what that object is.. so by showing him the actual object and a written flash card of the object we hope that he will build the new pathways in his brain in order to form new associations.

The objects are very simple.. a ball, a cup, a toothbrush, etc. along with these Cari will use a book with simple animal drawings.. much like you would find in a book for a 4 year old.  Adam is asked to pull the picture out of the book… held in with velcro.. and tell her what the name of the animal is. The pictures include a monkey, a cat, a dog, a snake, etc… so far the progress has been slow… until… INSPIRIATION arrived.

Adam is having difficulty in speaking, every so often he will say a word or two… maybe a phrase he had said a number of times.  You could see the frustration in his eyes, in his facial expressions and in his body language.  After his frustration would reach a certain level with a particular word, he would say “whatever.”  This “whatever” was becoming the norm and not the exception.  Finally Cari and Adam came to an agreement that Adam would be limited to saying only 10 “whatever’s” for the day… Of course Adam wanted the limit to be 40…but they settled in on 10.  Progress was slow until one night when inspiration came in the dark sleepy hours of the night to a caring speech therapist.

As Cari related it to me, she woke up in the middle of the night with a clear picture in her mind what was needed for Adam… A Cell Phone.. A phone conversation.  It was so clear.. most of our communications to each other requires us to concentrate on the conversations we are having… The harder Adam concentrated the more frustrated he became because he could not find the words to speak when being asked.. in his mind he knows what the words are, but the connections from thought to speech has been severed. In addition, having someone right there in front of him… waiting for him to respond… watching him, added extra pressure to the situation, making it more frustrating for him.

Then Cari had the inspritation to use a phone conversation to help Adam to communicate and to begin to make the connections in his head.  When we talk on the phone our conversations can be somewhat automatic, they have to be… at least in part; we are time sharing our brains with our immediate surroundings.. our visual, our audio, our physical senses… an example of using all these in a combination would be talking on the cell phone while driving a car down a busy interstate….as we continue to talk,  we are able to perform other functions.  The other functions take a measure of our cognitive ability.. so we have to be on automatic, at times, while talking on the phone.

I called Cindy to tell her the game plan and what we were trying to accomplish.. She was in.  I gave Adam my cell phone, after unlocking it I asked him to give mom a call.  For the first few seconds he stumbled on the numbers, not quite dialing the correct order.  I softly offered a few suggestions and he got her number dialed in no time… I was amazed!

After dialing her cell phone number he put the phone up to his ear like it was second nature.  Cindy answered the phone and Adam said…”hey, how’s it going?’ as if the clock had been rolled backed two weeks.  Adam uses this phrase 90% of the time when calling someone in his initial greeting.  Cari and I were standing off to the side and were stunned.. we just smiled at each other and glowed with excitement.  Can this be? Adam and Cindy kept the conversation going for a few minutes… not all of Adam’s conversation was perfect, much of his responses were, “yes, no, maybe.. we’ll see” etc…But they were words connected to the thoughts.  At the end of the conversation Cindy must have said that she loved him, because his response was “I love you to.”

I can not tell you the joy I felt to see my little boy speak again, even in little sentences… then to hear him say to Cindy “I love you to” …I knew  that he knew what was going on for the first time.  INSPIRATION received in the middle of the night from a caring therapist put our feet back on the ground … from the small and simple things come great victories.

INSPIRATION…  If you go back a few posts I wrote about a small, yet beautiful inspiration that Cindy had while driving home from the hospital one day.  She was given a wonderful insight into Adam’s future with an analogy of a caterpillar in a cocoon who will emerge as a beautiful butterfly.  The more I pondered this the more I began to see this transformation happening in Adam… I saw the immediate and I saw the future for this young man.  I saw him preaching the gospel, I saw him caring for others… I felt a family around him… some how, some way he was going to emerge from this silk sheeted cocoon of silence as a stronger, more compassionate, more insightful man.  I could not see the road, yet I felt its bumps and sensed some unimproved surfaces… but they were all navigable.

INSPIRATION: If I might offer a word of caution when it comes to inspiration.  As beautiful as it is; it can also be discouragingly out of place. I believe that we receive “good” inspiration from divine sources.  I spoke previously about the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit.  This divine inspiration, which leads us to good, comes from this Third Member of The Godhead… The Holy Ghost.

Now the word of caution: Beware of Counterfeits, for all things have their opposites.  There are forces which will try to inspire for the wrong purpose… judge them by their fruits.  Ask yourself: Are they self promoting? Do they seek their own glory? Do they wish to put themselves on center stage?  Are they seeking Gain or profit?  There was one a long time ago which tried to do all of these and because of his rebellion… he and a third of the host of heaven were cast down, out of the Father’s presence, for seeking their glory over that of our Father in Heaven.  The battle still rages, his goals are the same… Please beware of false inspirations… I would venture to say that  if you were listening to a hard rock song and felt inspired to do something crazy, that this inspiration is coming from the wrong source.

However, if you were pondering the life of the Savior and and had an inspired thought to help someone in need or to assist in a worthy cause;  That this inspiration is coming from the Holy Ghost.

The still small voice will visit you, will talk feelings to your heart and he will guide you… you will feel his warmth and his influence radiate about you… follow these feelings.  If we ignore them he will leave you… he will never be too far away so invite him back.

INSPIRATION is a wonderful guide… it is a blessing from above.  Civilizations have been built upon it and have flourished when followed, but when divine inspiration is disregarded as old fashion, societies change and begin a darken downward slope.

I am grateful for the simple inspiration I have both seen and experienced during this short time that Adam has been in the hospital… it is nothing less than amazing.  I have seen the work of angels, both seen and unseen lending helping hands to a poor worried old man in pain for his son, his one and only son.

Faith displaces dispair. Light removes darkness.  How grateful I am for my faith and for the light and knowledge that has been given to us. How grateful I am for divine inspiration to move our lives in a better direction.

A Smile That INSPIRES