Setting a goal

 One thing that helped me in my recovery was having a goal. I was still in the hospital. Itwas not even 48 hours after the stroke and I was asking my husband, no telling my husband that I wanted to do two things. the first one  of them was that I wanted to find a therapeutic horseback riding center. The other and more important  thing was that I wanted to make sure that I could pursue my dream of studying to be a psychotherapist.my husband thought that I was crazy .Tom thought that
i needed to go see a therapist! Tom was trying hard to comprehend the situation. He was still trying to figure out if I would be able to go home and care for myself without having the aide of a nurse.
He wondered if I would be able to dress myself, feed myself and be able to be left alone while he was at work. And here I was talking about riding a horse. But I needed to have a goal something to work towards, something to hang onto that would make me feel That my life mattered.The world needed to matter. I needed Something to make me feel like there was going to be more to my life then just lying around doing nothing. I had been a care manager and I had seen many clients who  had strokes. I thought I had been compassionate and caring and I thought I had understood their predicament but I wasn't even close to understanding. The sense of loss that I felt was so overwhelming. I was sure that someone (I) had died only I had forgotten to stop breathing. I needed to have something that would make me feel like I did not die. So much of myself was lost from the stroke. I needed to hang on to at least one little piece of who I was. It was my love of horses and my determination to get my doctorate that kept me going in those first days. So I held onto my dreams Like my life depended them. I had other dreams but I did not dare voice them. I still wasn't ready to hope. You see I was still wrestling With god over that abundant life conversation. As I look back I know that I was testing God. If he was going to promise me an abundant life I I wanted him to provide me with that kind of abundance that I Wanted and I was not ready to trust him to come through with this.