A very close friend of mine asked if I wasn't fed up with the chronic illnesses and ready to go home to God.
My answer is that I am already home with God. The Blessed Trinity is here with me now, and there is no where I can go on Earth or even into outer space where He would not be right there with me.
As difficult as it may be for some to imagine I still love the view from Earth and I rejoice to have the opportunity to offer up my condition to God as part of my prayer for many important things in the life of the Church and for souls everywhere.
I suspect being born with a form of spina bifida I have never been very far from pain in my life, but I reckoned my life a miracle from the start because I was able to walk, and although I had to wear heavy steel braces on my legs to keep them growing straight, my legs did grow more straight. And I was even able to run and to dance in my youth. And as I have grown older with a syrinx within my thoracic spinal cord, the syrinx has not grown so large as to render my legs immobile. Yes, the pain is sometimes excruciating, but at those points our Blessed Mother and St. Anne have always been very close to me and helped me through. And on one occasion I was in so much pain that I found myself somehow in the arms of St. Joseph who told me that I would not die but that I would live for many more years serving God.
And yes, the strokes were an enormous challenge to me and would have taken me from this world but for the intervention of the Holy Virgin, St. Raphael, and Mother Teresa. I survived and by God's gift largely regained my speech and the use of the left side of my body. Yes, I am at times very frightened by my brain continuing to atrophy and nerves to suffer loss; but, nonetheless, I continue to type, albeit slowly and painfully, and that in spite of also suffering from psoriatic arthritis.
Strangers to the holy Faith see only that I am afflicted and it is distressing to them because as my friends they love me but they cannot see the value in this vocation the Lord has given me. I expect most Catholics would understand that I count myself blest to serve God in this way and to give testimony that life is always worth it, that life is the most profound gift of all, and the life of an individual must be preserved from conception to natural death because it is a gift that comes from God and only God has a right to draw that life to a close.
I hope this entry does not alarm my readers, but rather I hope to offer encouragement to everyone no matter what Cross they must bear. In everything that happens in life, turn to Jesus, and you will find Him right there ready to comfort you and to give you hope for a future of immeasurable joy.
It pleases God that I am here, and so it pleases me. When Christ is pleased to call me away, then it shall be my joy to follow Him beyond this world toward what He has next for me.
In all things and in all people, may the Father's will be done. And may the Lord especially bless my parents who, as Anglicans, gave me the Catholic faith as they knew it and who entered the Roman Catholic Church when I did on the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter a number of years ago.
And may God bless you, gentle reader, in everything that you do for love of Him.
+Laus Deo.
