This will be a little health, wellness, and soul check-in from a spirit of unknowing. I still don’t know if my suffering is progressive Crohn’s with chronic pancreatitis or something more. It’s okay to not know what God knows.
What I know is that GI issues, nerve damage, and inflammation keep me limping along, but I’m no victim. I do all the smart wellness things I can, including expressing healthy anger because years of repressing it likely contributed to present pathology. But prayer is the most important smart wellness thing I know. It is ever a challenge to convince my immune and nervous systems that I’m safe…I need supernatural authority! Chronic illness may bring me to my knees, yet in this posture my soul opens to God. This soul is always safe from harm. Always guiding me according to what I need, not what I want. This is how God can come disguised as my life. This is how I stay well.
When Grace Meets You Right Where You Are
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I hope the quote from Theresa above isn’t off-putting. For me, these words echo what it means to vulnerably go beyond ego and humbly embrace your true nature.
My ego wants to be in a position of power and puffed up arrogance. It is concerned with identity, self-protection, and acceptance. I don’t want to feel small or unspecial. But when I acknowledge my smallness and un-specialness (in the sense that we are all one), it feels uncomfortable. I want to deny or avoid being “poor in spirit.” A dwelling place for God, a pleasing shelter, is more like a humble stable than a suite at Ritz Paris.
There have been plenty of opportunities these days to be displeased. Pancreatic attacks and asthma bring stress and pain. But they also create more room in my heart for blessing. My nephew and his wife just welcomed twin boys into the world, and to connect with a tiny newborn is to see heaven. I’m seeing it everywhere.
A few weeks back, multiple skin infections and blisters on my face flared and brought discomfort. But the need to see multiple doctors was somehow a blessing. I helped an elderly couple find their way on one visit. On another, I comforted a nurse. Even the nitty gritty of illness and its realities will set you on a course of growing compassion.
If you have lived a similar journey, then you know: bearing the trial requires Grace, and Grace transforms us. I’m always mentioning how I don’t know the mechanics of Grace and divine movement, but there’s a lot I know after living with chronic illness all of these years.
Prayer matters, and prayers are always answered. We are often dissatisfied with answers that come, but my growing faith assures me heaven hears them all.
With age, I am more attuned to becoming the vessel God desires for me to be in order to be fruitful. While the divine is not hemmed in by time or space or matter to answer prayers, we are often the hands and feet needed. What a privilege to be used.
Since I grow tired and forgetful, I miss miracles and guidance right under my nose. But sometimes Grace comes as a consolation so dramatic, there is no dismissing its glory.
About a week ago, I was speed-walking laps indoors on one of those dual-direction tracks at the gym. A husband and wife in their 70s held hands as they inched towards me at a snail’s pace. I recognized Alzheimer’s in the wife’s anxious eyes while her husband’s face was so completely illumined that his smile and light nearly knocked me to the ground.
A lightning strike. Moses with the burning bush. Peter witnessing a full net of fish. Isaiah’s vision of a throne. Woe is me! I caught a glimpse of the face of God, and I was undone. So overwhelmed and full of holy tears, I retreated to the locker room. What healing Grace entered me with consolation?
Who knows? I only know I am not crazy, just permeable. I know that our bodies and this earth are the perfect place for such energy collisions. After all, we’re made of stars. As above, so below.
But Grace also comes in moments we are slow to recognize it. Two days ago, I boarded a plane in Mesa and sat for more than an hour waiting for takeoff. At the first sign of delay, I began to pray for every mechanic, pilot, employee, and passenger. We had to de-plane and await further instructions due to engine trouble.
Gathered with fellow passengers at the gate for hours meant plenty of folks became aware of each other in a heightened fashion. I noticed acts of gentle kindness everywhere. Someone I love who was not on the flight showed up out of nowhere. I was unaware he had begun working at this airport, and he just happened to be passing by on break (or was he?).
Then my attention turned to a young expectant mother with an infant in her arms. Without a stroller, she walked her 5-month old daughter up and down the corridor. I wanted to relieve her, but my husband assured there were others traveling with her, and since I was having asthma I should rest.
Three hours later on our new plane, this same mother and child sat across the aisle from me, and the baby began to wail. She could not be consoled with nursing, rocking, or distraction. It was heartbreaking, and tears began to roll down my cheeks. I let my husband know I was not in pain and couldn’t explain the incessant tears. My nose would not stop running.
At first I wondered if I was simply overtired like the child! A flight attendant offered the mother a teething biscuit which the baby firmly held while screaming. The grandmother relieved the mother and did her best, but the volume continued. We were all powerless.
The baby girl was so close to us that I kept trying to catch her eye to make a silly expression or beam love. Once again, I wanted to insert myself and exert control. Both mother and grandmother remained completely, miraculously calm and centered. I could hardly keep my eyes off their peace.
The pregnant mother wore a long, very plain dress and a blush pink scarf on her head, and it took some time for me to realize I was seeing an archetypal mother of Jesus. I was witnessing a little Christ suffering. I sensed a world of loving souls together in a vulnerable cabin high above the clouds.
Then I noticed my asthma improving. I was no longer anxious about my airway closing as my thoughts began to fall into my heart. Holy air was returning to my lungs as I kept my gaze on the little suffering Christ.
I did not notice any passenger looking in the direction of the struggling child with anything but compassion. Grace changes the atmosphere. Grace leaves us transformed.
Walt Whitman wrote in “Song of Myself,” in the faces of men and women, I see God. Me too, Walt.
Me too.
Peace to you right where you are.
-michele
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