CLERGY CORNER: To lift up

Posted on 19 June 2014 by LeslieM

I was at one particular health center recently where the lift was broken. For those of you who may be unaware, a lift is another name for an elevator. There happened to be a group of students in the building getting a little real life experience as they hoped to work in healthcare in the future, and they, like everyone else, had to wait for the lift to come.

After what seemed like forever, it finally arrived and, after those who were coming down got off, several of the students started to get on the lift. The only problem was that there were four people in wheelchairs who were residents of the facility who were also waiting to get on and go up to their various floors, and not only did the students not help them get on, but the students filed into the elevator so quickly that there was no room for the patients in the wheelchairs. I had to say something and I did as I called out, “My dear students, our job here is not to lift ourselves up. Our job is to lift others.”

We hear so much about those who pull others down that I thought it would be uplifting to hear a true story of brothers who literally and figuratively lift each other up. Hunter Gandee is only 14 years of age. He is not a huge lad, but he is a big brother. And I think maybe he is the kind of big brother that all of us would like to have or to be.

You see, Hunter has a 7-year-old kid brother named Braden and Braden has a G-d awful time lifting himself up. In fact, he has trouble controlling even the simplest of movements as he suffers from Cerebral Palsy. So how does this little one get around? Well, his favorite mode of transportation is his brother’s back as, since he was a toddler, his big brother Hunter would lift him piggy back style and take him wherever he wanted to go.

Hunter happens to be on his school’s wrestling team. In fact, he is the captain of the team and he is also the president of his junior high’s student council. While he wants to have the ref at each of his matches lift his arm up in victory, he also wants to make sure to lift his brother up and make him victorious.

And while Hunter is busy lifting up his little brother, don’t think that it is a one -way street. Hunter will be the first to tell you that when he is in the midst of one of his wrestling matches, his kid brother Bradon is always in the front row, and just knowing that he is there, rooting him on, lifts him up and gives him that extra boost. So there you are two brothers who lift each other up as one wrestles on the mat and the other wrestles with Cerebral Palsy.

We all wrestle with something. May we have the good sense to learn from these two most loving of brothers; may we lift each other up and, as we do, may we realize that in so doing, we also are lifted ever higher.

Shalom my friends,

Rabbi Craig H. Ezring

Rabbi Ezring is a member of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains and of the Association of Professional Chaplains, He works professionally in this capacity with a number of healthcare facilities in the area, and with hospice. He is the Spiritual Leader of Temple Beth Israel of Deerfield Beach.

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