Reflections: Great 4th of July!

 My niece/editor came to visit from Colorado this weekend and as we said goodbye she warned that I better have a reflection ready for her to review by the time she landed this evening.  She is so lovely but that redhead can be intimidating when necessary.

So here we go. 

Two weeks ago I started getting ALS muscle twitches under my left eye similar to what  I experience with other muscles but this was the first time near my eye.  I didn't think much of it until I started to experience a vision issue similar to an ocular migraine where gray blotches cloud my vision.  I've had ocular migraines before but they've never lasted more than a minute or two and these were lasting longer and when they stopped I still had some distortion in my vision.  When I told my ALS team about it they said to get to hospital ASAP in case it was a retinal tear.  They diagnosed me with a common condition for people over 60 that should go away on it's own and so I'll go for a followup soon.  

Having gone through this, I now found myself lying awake at night thinking about where this disease could be headed.  The dread of being trapped in my body unable to use my hands or legs and having rely on a computer that I can control with eyes as my way of communicating was now compounded with the possibility of losing that means of communication if I should lose my eyesight.   While ALS does not pose any additional risk for eye problems, that did not keep me from going down that dark path.

 I've never experienced that level of despair and while I've heard and shared that the answer lies with leaving our burdens at the foot of the cross, but I needed some help to get there this time.   As Patti and I have been listening to the autobiography "A Story of a Soul" by St. Therese Martin, (aka.The Little Flower), in which she shares the intense struggles of her life including the tuberculosis from which she died of at age 24, I thought to reach out to Fr. John who is a priest at the The Little Flower Basilica named in her honor near downtown San Antonio.  I've known Fr. John for a few years through a mutual friend when he needed help with his Macbook.  I help Father fix his computer and he now he helps me fix my spirit. 

In talking to Fr. John about what I've been going through regarding anxiety and trouble staying attentive during prayer, I started to realize what might be causing this anxiety.  I have never spent so much time thinking about my own discomforts as I have in the past 18 months. So much of my adult life was spent addictively seeking comfort, pleasure, and feeling good about myself and I was pretty efficient at feeding these addictions.  Now that sleeping, eating, breathing, drinking, and communicating are a problem it's making those life long addictions much harder to satisfy.   That afternoon I read the article that Fr. John gave me with writings from The Little Flower and another Doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila, about how they dealt with their own suffering. With all of that, I was reminded that my life is not about my comfort, pleasure, or honors.   My life is not about me.  My life is about doing what I can so that when you encounter Hector you can encounter a tiny bit of Christ that can shine through all the messiness of Hector such that you can experience how wonderful even a microscopic measure of how much Gods love for you can be.  If this disease can bring this experience to you,  I'll learn to find comfort in any discomfort.

And all of this wrapped up on July 3rd.  Best 4th of July ever.  God Bless.