I keep learning things from MS.  My friends tell me they learn too, just in other ways. 
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That’s one thing I am learning.  MS is has been like a graduate course in how to learn from my friends. 
Two people, in particular, show me how to create the MS narrative in my life. 

One is a toddler who is learning how to 'read' even though she doesn't know her letters.  
To me, having MS is like having a life story but not knowing where the words are pointing—it is too unpredictable and too unique to ‘read’ to the end.  It is like reading my life story without the words to point the way. 
This reminds me of Hero Number One.  She is the star in one of my favorite family videos. 

In this 15-second film, she reads out loud to her mother.  As she tells the story she flips through the book.  She turns the pages forward, then goes backwards, then stops, closes the book, opens it again—and not once does she stop the narrative of her story.  “She Can Read Without Looking At the Words,” we declared to each other!  We all chuckle and delight in this. 

She accomplishes the miracle of ‘reading’ easily.  She grins and tells her story till she is through and then she puts the book down. 

I think about life as our stories.  We have heard the term script used to refer to expectations of our lives.

My script did not include MS.  Does anybody imagine all of the important things in their lives that came to them?  I did not imagine MS.  I don’t know how that story goes, either.

I don’t know where MS till take me physically.   None of us knows where MS will lead our bodies. 

This brings me to Hero Number Two.

He is one of my best friends, a brilliant man, and he died this past summer of early onset alzheimer’s.  Brilliance opened many doors in his life, and he left through that same doorway, even with alzheimer’s.

Though he knew alzheimer’s was going to take control of his body, he took control of his story line.

This is what he did.  When he got the diagnosis, after he took time to adjust to internally, he took practical steps.  He shared the story with people who needed to know.  He prepared the steps leading to the end—he asked significant people to be in charge of overseeing his caretaking and he planned the finances involved.  

He did all of that practical work because, even as one part of his life was exiting, he chose to have his own way of telling his story.

These two friends teach me how to ‘do’ my story with MS. 
From the toddler I learn to grin and wing it when I don’t know the next part of the story.  I figure that’s what we all end up doing.  We tell our stories, we live our life, without looking at the words, we improvise!

From my brilliant friend I learn that we don’t need to have control of the end of the story to choose the way we live now.  How my friend planned the last part of his story inspires me.

Everyone I know, each of my friends, ‘does’ your own version of your life.  The way you tell your story, the choices you make, these things open me to possibilities that I can’t know on my own.

Your life shows me how to live the new pages that come in my story.  You do that for everyone who knows you.

That’s what heroes do.  

            Today’s blog is dedicated to people who gave me exactly what I needed to keep going, when MS had me beaten.  I met and became friends with people with MS who live amazing lives, I definitely did not know that was an option.  Thanks to them, I say the following:  though MS can leave us emotionally bereft, it can also  catapult us to a more powerful life.   

           Today’s blog is about choosing Power MS. 

           My premise is based on a physical reality that we all know:  there is not one bit of muscle growth that happens without working against a force that insists that we either push back or else lay back and give up.
For example, when weights are placed in our hands we can use them to become stronger or we can lie back and do nothing.  A weight placed on us can help us become stronger but it doesn’t have to.  We can avoid pushing against it if we wish.  We have those two choices when we lay back and a bar weight is placed in our hands:

• Let the weight force us to the ground OR
• Do our best to push the weight up.  If we do this enough times, what results is noticeable muscle strength and toned muscles.)

          This is not only a physical truth.  Most important, this is true for our spirit—and when dealing with MS our spirit is more important, in my experience, than our physical strength. 

           I have grown to think about MS as that weight that got shoved into our lives.  We have two choices, to lay back and give up, or choose to oppose the weight, let strength emerge.

            We ultimately have a choice when we get dealt a diagnosis—lie back submissively or develop power.  We CAN develop inner power.  Here are possible spirit response to MS.

           We can push back, and we may discover developed ‘muscle’—emotional strengths—that never had been developed before. 

           We may not find that strength.  We may back and get overwhelmed by what comes at us.
We don’t always have it in us to push back.  At times laying back is the wise thing…not so that we can stay down, but so that we can rest, recuperate, stand up another day.

           Life always presents us with the opportunity to develop muscle.  Our spirit muscles get flaccid at times, but at other times we may discover muscles that we never had developed before. 

           In those weakened times, it helps to know that there are other options.

           We can learn new techniques to meeting obstacles in our lives, to meeting our MS.  I call this Power MS, and I learned it from someone who told me about Jimmy Huega’s seminars. 

           For me Jimmy Huega set the standard for Power MS. 

           When he was diagnosed with MS he transferred the inner strength he had developed that got him on the US Men’s Skiing Olympic Team.  He used that inner strength to meet his MS head on. 

           He taught two things.  He had two messages.  They are simple and powerful—follow your passion and push to the limit.

           Follow your passion.  If you don’t know what your passion is, follow streams of inspiration, and give these ideas all you have.  It is a two step process:  follow your inspiration and then give it all you have.

           Here is how Huega taught it:  give Everything your best effort, always include needed breaks, then keep going till you reach beyond your goal.  Reach beyond your best hopes.

           My friends show me this is true.  We can choose our MS.  We can choose to live with muscle, with Spirit strength.