A wake-up call

How a recent health scare is making me put my money where my mouth is and answer the question: what's really important??

Not quite two weeks ago I found myself in another doctor’s office, this time waiting for an MRI.

Those MRI’s used to belong to my late husband. I remember the first time he went in for one…we were at the ER after his seizure and they found a mass on his brain. And then more MRI’s as they monitored his progress with brain cancer.

Alex went through all that, too. With his own injuries from sports and with his late wife, as well.

This time it was for me. I’ve been having some symptoms unrelated to my breast cancer that warranted a neurologist and some further testing. And then I almost found myself in the ER this past Saturday with more things out of the blue.

I won’t go into detail, but my MRI did come back clean and there is no current explanation for what I’m experiencing. And it’s OK because I really have no control over anything anyway (even if I do know what’s going on) and not OK because answers would be nice, for I know firsthand how life can change on a dime and I’m still kind of always in PTSD survival mode, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Why I’m writing this particular letter.

But the reason I share my recent experience isn’t to garner sympathy or attention. It’s because I want you to know that, in life and in faith, I don’t want to be someone who just writes and tells others how to live - I want to put my money where my mouth is and live that way, too. Over the course of my years I have learned that we become holy and perfected through our vocation and state in life, and it is in the particulars, in being faithful to the little things in our state in life, that the channel of holiness and grace can flow. And those things that get in the way, no matter how good or justifiable, should be discerned and handled accordingly.

I had all these amazing plans at the beginning of June to write about the Theology of the Body. June was a perfect month, for “love” is on display and love is twisted and distorted to fit the plan of twisting and distorting God. For God can be known in and through the body, and if you can confuse people about the body, you can confuse them about who God is, and vice versa. For we are made in His image and likeness and the two, the body and the Trinity, are so intimately connected. TOB changed my life and it made me fall madly in love with Jesus, through the Catholic Church, and it made me see life, faith, marriage, my body and everything in between with new eyes. It enabled me to peer behind the matrix that is this world and see the world beyond, namely in the Trinitarian life of eternal Love - a Love in which we are all called to experience both in heaven and in the here and now.

And I burn with desire for others to know and see the same.

But what I failed to take into consideration when writing about TOB is two things. 1) the onslaught of attacks I receive in my life as a result, and 2) the nature of what is on my plate on a day-to-day basis.

The first problem, I can handle. I’ve handled it before. Whenever I talk or write about TOB (or actually anything of value faith-wise), the attacks on my marriage, my family, my faith, my own psychology increase dramatically. I get it if you don’t believe me, but it’s almost laughable and predictable now. And I bear it patiently and not so patiently (in mind and in body) and I know it’s all part of the game. I’m a (traditional) Catholic Christian living in a post-Christian world, a world in which even her own church is flinging arrows. I long to be sent to save souls. I burn with a fire I cannot explain in desiring to bring the fragrance of Christ to the broken and the weary. (For I am broken and weary, too, and I know, I intimately know, what you’re walking…) But in living in this world and in pining to be sent, I am a target of the enemy. And it’s OK…and it also gets exhausting.

The second problem, one I routinely fail to take into consideration, is what I have on my plate. I am a newly-ish married woman, with breast cancer and 7 kids, over half of which I homeschool. I am just about 41 and have been through the ringer with my body, my health, with loss and death and trauma (and burning the candle at both ends for years on end) and for some reason I think I can operate at levels I used to before. And I try, oh goodness I try. Even though I want to slow down and take time to just lay there reading to my babies (while doing cancer treatment of course…and yes they’ll always be my babies) I seem to fill my days to the brim with “good and holy work.” And it takes finding yourself laying in a magnetic tube, wondering if there’s something growing in your brain, too, to hit the point of “um, I think I need to step back a bit.”

And it takes an almost trip to the ER as you and your now husband stare in disbelief at what’s happening to your body, and it takes a text from your dad to SLOW DOWN to realize that I do actually, in fact, have to slow down. And that slowing down means you must look at your vocation and your state in life and learn what is at the top of the list and what’s at the bottom.

This is where I come to you from today. I’m a woman who wants to fulfill her vocation to the best of her ability, loving and caring for her husband and children, while also reconciling this call I have in the world, namely, to bring Jesus to you. And I’m sure you see yourself in this dilemma of sorts, as well. You, too, have a vocation in which you are called, in which you’ll be perfected (should you be willing). And you have pulls and tugs of your heart out in the world, maybe to be something or do something, and maybe you’re wondering just like me how to reconcile both those things.

The question of the day.

So, let’s answer this question together: How do I fulfill my vocation and state in life to the best of my ability while also going after those other things I long to do??