Catholic Consecrated Hermit, Christian, Mystic, and Victim Soul: Update

 

I've not been writing much at all on this site for a year or more.  It's been a very difficult year with health trials following a total knee replacement a year ago June 20--a surgery that failed.  My left knee is constantly in pain, is large, hardened from fibrotic tissue that grew erratically beginning actually during the surgery. 

Now I continue the oil and wraps and heat packs, the PT, for the knee is always going to be a sad and sorry state of added suffering that should never have occurred but for the only explanation I located that was not due to the surgeon or his PA mucking up--was that possibly the Arachnoiditis caused oxidative stress on the cells during surgery, which I read can the oxidative stress can cause the collagen cells to grow erratically and rapidly thus the thick layer of impervious collagen tissue--and a painfully stiff, hardened knee that causes permanent disability in walking, bending the knee and coping with enough pain of its own that would need pain med.  

Aside from the failed knee replacement, I'd been so fatigued that the month prior (May), I'd gone to an internal med doctor who did blood tests and found my thyroid had gone kaput.  I was put on medication that replicates what the thyroid used to produce, and began to feel a little better but not at all back to normal (factoring in the Arachnoiditis pain and being 72).  

What was going on behind the scenes of my thyroid and knee replacement was not found until the following November. However, I kept alerting the internal med doctor, a young man whose only interest was in getting transferred to lead an Alzheimer's clinic, that my blood tests showed other alarming results.  He poo-poo'd my concerns and what the blood tests were alerting him, but that is how it can be in the life of one cursed, oppressed by the devil, and a victim soul.

By late summer and fall I was failing--knew it myself but thought the Arachnoidiits was progressing and that this was how it was to be--a bodily decline and increasing fatigued and knew something had to be not right--as bad as the blood tests seemed in at least three of the areas of blood issues.  By mid-November I had a particularly terrible week.  Prior had lots of intestinal troubles but tests okay for colon.  Ended up hospitalized after other trips to ER for intestinal issues.  Kidneys had gone into failure.  Was having allergic reaction since the previous May or before--the indications were in the blood tests that the internal med dr. ignored or was ignorant as they are for when someone is have an extreme reaction.  

Off Meloxicam for rest of life after being on it for 37 years.  But, thankfully the kidneys turned around from kidney diet and no more of that med which pain patients are given despite that very side effect plus liver issues.  Lost health and declined, though. Damage but the filtration rate is up again.  Then still not well and blood tests had still the other bad indictors, so had bone marrow biopsy.  Looked like a blood cancer but was a similar reading but is a precursor so will be rechecked periodically. Also found I have a bad anemia condition that my body does not absorb or store iron. So that's a problem; I take iron supplements. Fatigued, terribly. 

Mostly in bed as a result of pain and fatigue, and the pain doctor replaced extended release meds with non-extended so am veritably a pain yo-yo now--with meds taking awhile to help, then wane after three hours of marginal help; if I forget to now-seeming short time span which happens when doing mental distractions as pain management, the pain can get out of control and take even longer to get pain contained.  Just how it goes--this Christian Catholic Mystic Hermit's life as a Victim Soul of the Sacred Heart of Jesus!  Love to suffer, and suffer to love--words spoken to me from a mystical experience 20 years ago this end of July--has me renewing my quest to fully understand and cooperate with the beautiful, spiritual meaning of what St. Michael pronounced to me, Christ's "victim of love and suffering".  

God bless His Real Presence in us!

Catholic Hermit: Love, Pain, and Death

Some writings of St. Augustine (354-403), Bishop of Hippo and Doctor of the Church, have caught my attention.  He writes in his Discourses on the Psalms about love and death.  I find myself substituting "pain" for love, as it is becoming helpful to me to consider suffering as love, and love as suffering.  

Recalling what St. Michael the Archangel pronounced to me back in summer of 2004 in a vision with locution, is also helpful.  "Love to suffer, and suffer to love!"  

We are told in the Living Word that God is love.  With love and suffering so intermingled in various essences, provided the suffering is not what we cause or bring on ourselves or to others, we can grasp the linkage of love and death, and of love and suffering and death, all the more through the love, suffering, and death of Jesus Our Lord and Beloved Savior.

Today as I continue dealing with the constancy of physical suffering, I finally made myself go for a walk.  Yes, I know I will have increased pain as a result; it is here already now that I've returned and am on icy pad on bed.  But I am blessed that the Lord answered my prayer for motivation and impetus to get up, as the pain has had the upper hand with me in a way that was not seeming as love, for  I was shunning the love of God that can be found in pain.  I was rebelling.

I realize this may seem strange, the concept of love and pain being intrinsic in ways too much for me to describe right now.  But it is as it is, and there is love in pain and pain in love--holy pain and holy love.  And there is God in love and God in pain--if we can remain calm in the midst of such suffering and embrace, not shun.  That is what I tried to do in the enforced walk outside--to make myself not shun the effort that means more pain, for the outcome will be the same.  There will still be pain.  

And I must also keep in mind and heart, that vision 24 years ago in which Mary melded above me with Jesus, and she said distinctly, "You will find Him in your pain."  

I suppose in a way, I found Him in my pain as I walked.  I passed the man putting out more Christmas lights, this time on a tree.  Two weeks ago he was up on a ladder putting them on his roofline.  We spoke as I walked by, and he asked how is the back.  My brace a couple weeks ago was a give-away; today I told him the walk is necessary, an enforced effort.  Then farther on, I passed the elderly man, Bud; we encouraged one another in our efforts.  Kind people, concerned, living their lives despite whatever pain they've experienced from childbirth on:  love the source of life, and God in our pain regardless if we recognize Him or find Him in our pain.

I pray and ask the Lord and Blessed Virgin Mary to help me remember to look, find, see Him in this intractable pain, no matter the level it reaches.  I ask St. Michael to remind me to love to suffer and suffer to love.  (I also will explore interchanging "pain" with "love" in pondering the mystery of Christ's love for us in His suffering and death.  His love and suffering for all of us saved us from our otherwise meaningless selves--without His Real Presence:  Father, Son and Holy Spriit.)

And  I pray to consider what I next will share from St. Augustine, on love and death, and that Scripture from the Song of Songs:  "Love is strong as death."

"'O Jerusalem, may your peace be in your strength' (Ps 122[121]:7)  That is to say, may your peace be in your love, for your love is your strength.  Hear the Song of Songs: 'Love is strong as death' (8:6)....  And indeed, love destroys what we have been so that we might become, through a sort of death, what we were not....This was the sort of death that was working in Him who said: 'The world is crucified to me and I to the world' (Gal 6:14).  It was of this death that the same apostle was speaking when he said:  'You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God' (Col 3:3).  Yes, 'love is strong as death'.  If love is strong then it is powerful; it has great strength; it is strength itself....So may your peace be in your strength, O Jerusalem.  May your peace be in your love."

God bless His Real Presence in us!  

Stay with me, Lord!  Remaining always in this pain, in love, in suffering, in love strong as death.  Thus pain is not as it seems, as solely, sorely pain.


[Later:  I've been considering pain and love, intrinsically linked, and decided to write out the above for my own grasping this experiment, interchanging "pain" for "love" in the pertinent statements.  I think I need this exercise, frankly.  I need to learn to love this pain; it is the only way, it seems, that I can perdure. Perhaps I will continue this interchange, for awhile, in other Scriptures and spiritual reading, for the Lord knows how much I need His help these days, in which this level of pain [consider it love?], of suffering is most difficult for me.  For whatever reasons, various reasons, and those I don't realize:  God knows.

..."That is to say, may your peace be in your pain, for your pain is your strength.  Hear the Song of Songs: 'Pain is strong as death'....And indeed, pain destroys what we have been so that we might become, through a sort of death, what we were not....Yes, 'pain is strong as death.'  If pain is strong then it is powerful; it has great strength; it is strength itself....May your peace be in your pain."]