May you find your voice and may it be heard. Amen

When I began to be incredibly ill in December of last year, I remember thinking if I could make it to Saturday and submit a prayer request to this Facebook group I’m a part of, then maybe I could live through another week. Someone responded to one request with that simple prayer that you first read. All my life I have felt that my impact was small. I have silently survived and made do for as long as I can remember. But people began to notice my rapid neurological decline. They wondered what I was doing and why. There were multiple trips to hospital ERs, balls were dropped, and I realized that I would have to rehab myself again. Being sent home with a brochure was a poignant moment of the pre new location journey.

Then I began to speak again. It didn’t make much sense, I was still so ill, but I had a voice.

Going to Mass was an integral part of my survival at the beginning of this journey, and continues to be to this day. Normally, I am very foggy by the end of the day since I cannot go to Mass as much. It is also difficult walking and dragging my body around as it is now. But after I receive Communion weekly I find that I am alert and cognitively very much myself. Physically, I’m not sure where I will end up, but my brain is awesome. It will heal as my face already has.

I don’t pretend to know why things happen. God is the ultimate authority figure, and I’m skeptical of know it alls and those who claim to know as He does. All I know is that His goodness and mercy in my life is so vast and surpasses my understanding.

I suppose staring death in the face all those months is what makes me bold. It makes me unafraid to speak for the first time in many years now that my voice has been found and is heard.

Thanks Be to God.