What a crazy month it’s been! We’ve had to deal with everything from health issues to unexpected surprises that have thrown our plans out the window and left us scrambling to figure things out at the last minute. I had wanted an uneventful, slow-paced Advent and it’s been anything but that.
All this started even before I published the last blog post. I can actually pinpoint exactly the moment when things went downhill, and fast. It was when I posted a “last call” tweet for those interested in doing the 54-day Rosary novena on October 31st. I try to schedule the daily reminders at least one day in advance so I wanted to have a list finalized so I could start scheduling the tweets. From that moment on… it’s like the dreaded pushback of doing the novena was kickstarted into high gear and it didn’t let up for almost the entire petition part of the novena.
Both Mom and I — who do the novena together every morning and share most of our intentions — were both hit with weird (for me) and unexpected (for her) health issues. We found out that my mom had had a stroke at some point… but we don’t know when. She’s been off balance for a while and she’s been having more and more dizziness and headaches but we don’t know when the stroke happened since the symptoms seem to be from a newly diagnosed BPPV issue. Thankfully, since I learned and studied a bit of BPPV (which is an inner ear issue) in my audiology courses for the Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education (speech pathology) degree, I was able to help explain things and help her a bit at home. She’s still very dizzy and off-balance — I have to walk her from the living room to her bedroom sometimes — but at least we now know what it is. We may not know why her memory is declining (she was tested for dementia and they ruled it out) and I’ve had to learn how to feed myself without hurting myself or making a total mess but she’s slowly improving which is all that matters.
As for me… we still don’t know what happened. I had about 24-25 days where my body was in what I can only explain as hyperdrive. I couldn’t sleep for more than 3-4 hours per night for most of that time period because I use to jerk awake every time I tried to fall asleep. I would jolt awake because I felt like I was either choking or gasping for air. We didn’t know if it was sleep apnea, terrible silent reflux or something else. But I felt “wired.” I had so much energy but I struggled to stay asleep when I needed it. I was jittery. My brain fog was absolutely terrible. Nothing I did helped. I started sleeping with the Rosary beads I purchased and had blessed at Clear Creek Abbey when I made my Final Act of Oblation and that helped for a couple of days before it all returned. Then I started sleeping with the crucifix I also purchased from CC (although this one came months before I even knew I would be transferring to CC as an oblate) on my stomach and that started helping me sleep better.
I didn’t know if what I experienced was some weird hormonal or neurological thing but the idea of it possibly being spiritual in nature was theorized by more than one person because of the timing of the symptom onset. Last year we had a relatively uneventful Rosary novena but some years we have “Murphy’s Law” years where one half — petition or thanksgiving — or the entire novena is plagued by everything going wrong. It was interesting that all the physical craziness for me happened within the petition part and it’s been like night and day since a couple of days before the thanksgiving portion began. No rhyme or reason. No explanation.
As you can probably surmise from all that, we went even longer without Mass, confession, or the Eucharist. I actually went a bit over 13 months without the Eucharist and about 7-8 months without confession. Every time my spiritual director tried to come over to my apartment, something would come up. I tried reaching out to a priest at my parish who had offered to come listen to my confession but I never heard back from him. My SD was finally able to come over a week ago — on a First Friday of all days! — and I was able to confess and then receive the Eucharist. Of course I cried because it had been so long and I was aching for it. We still haven’t been able to get to Mass — I was actually still feeling unwell when my SD came over — but we hope to go as soon as both my mom and I feel well enough for it.
In all that craziness, I’ve learned a lot about myself and my relationship with both the Father and the Son. This is going to be a whole other post because it’ll be too long and detailed for this post. I’m actually going to write it out right after I finish this post and then publish it later on. But for now, I can say that I thought I knew myself and my faith journey but I had *no* idea about how poorly the state of my spiritual life and my soul were in until Advent began the Holy Spirit began opening my eyes to so many things. Again, I’ll write all about this and share it on the next post.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this life-update because I know I’ve been M.I.A. On most social media platforms that I’m still on. And while I’m talking about social media — a big “Thank you!” To everyone who has prayed for my mother and I over the last couple of weeks. I was very vague about what was happening to us because of comments that are sometimes made. That and I wanted to get my mom’s permission to share what was going on with her — which I just did. Your prayers have helped us during some of the most physically draining and painful days we’ve endured. I didn’t even mention how sick I got a couple of times (with something that is still unknown) and how I felt like I needed to call the ambulance a couple of times — it’s been that intense. Yeah, it’s been a roller coaster ride for the last month and a half.
I won’t make this any longer so I’ll end this here.
I hope you’re all having a lovely Advent season thus far! Oh, and happy feast of Our Lady of Loreto!
As always, thanks for reading and God bless!
- sr. Marie-Therese, Obl. OSB
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