I'm trying hard to just get up from bed today, and I pray to be able to ignore the sharp pain in my spine at the area where the two-year-old new fusion ends at the L-2 and L-1--not worry that I've done something or perhaps the deep tissue massage therapist did (unlikely her) that will cause me to have to undergo more spine surgery. Praying I've done nothing in lasting damage. The knee is painful but have on brace; will try the back brace up high as I can get it--see if that helps the sharp pain. The disorientation seems better with the pump med release increase but need it increased more so that I can better get up; still have to augment with oral medications.
This Arachnoiditis is a grind to endure, a progressive grind, but a relatively slow grind.
Called the financial advisor, also a good friend and fellow Catholic--but truly and mostly a very good soul, a marvelous Christian. Going to sell an investment that I was never that keen on due to what to me is an immoral place and pathetic form of entertainment per a Las Vegas hotel investment. Sure, they put on entertaining and decent shows, but all else is decadence in my view of matters. Going to pay off someone I'd said I'd gift due to the years of help and putting up with my pain and moaning and the downcast and frustration that goes with rather debilitating pain. it is best to do what will attempt to meet the needs per the others' perceptions. And the perceptions might also be accurate, and perhaps even more should be paid than this extra amount. But I need to get it off my mind and done rather than my original thought to do it in segments of smaller payments, which I call Penance Payments, for any and all aspects of which I've been a burden and said or done things that the other was hurt by, even if, of course, I did not have bad intentions.
I just don't seem to be able to express thoughts well or maybe too well at times, or easily trigger other as I increasingly have little filter, or maybe haven't had a filter for years with the pain and fatigue that goes with it.And surely knowing this, I could discipline myself, bridle the tongue, just listen and not comment, don't make suggestions or try to help with ideas. Just listen in silence or have a little statement of encouragement, such as, "You are doing great (or well or as best anyone could, etc), and you will figure it out, I know you will. You will succeed! I'm so proud of you!" That would be better than concrete suggestions or agreeing if the person is upset over someone or a situation involving others.
But mainly sometimes people are just ready for me to die or be out of their lives, give them a rest. And in fact, I am actually as if already dead in most temporal regards except this body of pain and the responsibilities of trying to get up and function and tend to upkeep of this temporal dwelling place where my body lives mostly on the bed.
I keep asking God to please help me see and know what are the lessons He mentioned to me in a dream last week, a spiritual, lucid dream the likes of which I've not had in some time--as it is harder for me to perceive and listen and be aware given that I have become more adept at distracting my mind with all types of distractions temporally in attempt to get away from the body of pain.
Perhaps one lesson is to let go of people and not have any expectations, especially those whom I love most--family. To leave it as "love and prayers", as I mentioned to one who more directly expressed not wanting contact. That does not mean I cannot love and pray, for I can love others without them loving or liking me, even if it baffles me how especially family persons can decide to dislike someone over what are essentially, idiosyncracies or thoughts or words, I suppose, that trigger and get twisted by the other, and before long I am on the outs when my intention is to be supportive and helpful and to love even if tough love can always be part of love.
So I have this lesson to learn: love and pray. Do not share thoughts or suggestions. And also, stay clear. When someone does not even want a gift, that is a fairly strong message of having had more than enough of me, when I am barely in others' lives at all--except, I suppose, residing in their heads as an annoyance or trigger point. I consider a relative who has since being a child, she says, disliked her mother. No amount of years of talking with her, trying various therapy techniques including mirroring and cajoling, using opposition, discussing Christian principles of which she would identify herself as Christian. No amount of explaining her mother's personality and upbringing and career and talent in art--nothing seems to dislodge the dislike and the sense that her mother lives in her mind and might continue to even after her mother passes.
All I can and ought and must do is: Love and Pray. That is what I will do on the other side--that which I hope in God and pray will be the case! That I will love and pray, and also experience God's love for me regardless if there is any other loving that goes on by others for one another on the other side.
Another lesson is likely: Patience. I am impatient to have Jesus come back for me and take me with Him. I feel as if I've made such a bungle of my life and not succeeded in anything I'd hoped to do that would be helpful to others and as a parent, to be a very good parent which was my hope and goal, also.
Another lesson or lacking is: Discipline. I have always lacked discipline it seems to me. Or maybe the more recent situation has made me realize that I definitely now lack discipline. But I think in the past, too, discipline has been not strong in my existing and going about daily life. Yet I have discipline in some ways, such as in the very slow progression of trying to do manual labor--or whatever will force me out of bed and try to bring order out of disorder in my immediate surroundings.
However, with too much pain now, and fatigue, and being brought low in what seems more than being humbled but being that crushed seed yet without germination to grow--I am barely functioning, and I'd not know how to get this all finished and sell and then go where and do what? Succumbing to being fully bed-ridden except up to get something simple to eat in bed or bathroom--I'm not quite mentally there because of the temporal mess I'm in that would not be possible to finish and sell or even get rid of stuff that I no longer can use, such as most of the clothing in the closet--items with waists. The pump bulges and I have to leave open the fly and wear suspenders to keep up anything with a waist to it, and I have one pair of baggy overalls that I've purchased, but am not quite ready to get another to have two to switch off, and wear those exclusively. It's akin to wearing a bag or sack, this lightweight version of overalls made in China by underpaid women in sweat shops.
So I must focus on keeping the payment promise, and once that is easily done, focus on Christ and my love for God, and my love for others which includes letting them go live their lives without my being in them other than as we do with those who have passed--maybe think of them now and then in memory, good or bad. And that, too, is a choice. I tend to choose to remember those who have passed on with good memories and to appreciate all the more with the passing of time and my gaining perspective in my own life, in understanding the trials or personalities they had in life and why they had them, and express gratitude with thoughts or sometimes a spoken word in the solitude and silence here. But thought is as good if not better than sound, than verbal or written, as I'm coming to grasp. Thought and heart is what will be on the other side, when I am officially allowed to be taken from his earthly body and from this temporal world--and just look in on it and on those for whom I pray and love--family, friends, strangers, stinkers--and love and pray without anyone hearing or reading words or thinking about me and of course not seeing me.
This is more what dying to self is all about, which likely is the main lesson God wants me to learn before I'll be able to be taken away by Jesus and go with Him to where our souls go--the souls who love and try and believe in God and repent of our sins, flaws, weaknesses and maybe even our human idiosyncracies.
God bless His Real Presence in all of us!
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