An eight-year-old girl sits Indian style on her bedroom floor with her spine straight against one of the walls. The 1990 Enigma album is playing in the background. How did she understand this as some meditative experience or why did she perceive this music as something spiritual? (though later translation from the French exposed its sexual undertones as well) Up to this point she was still a part of her church’s youth group but wasn’t resonating with the fearful Book of Revelation vibes. There was something else also curious. She had concluded she wasn’t a praying person. Her grandmother, the resident Catholic in the family, always prayed at night and often mentioned who or what she was currently praying for in everyday conversation. But sitting in the church pews or gathered in her youth group, every time the prompt for ‘bowing our heads’ came, the girl would only slightly tilt hers down and leave her eyes partially open. It felt awkward; it felt false; it felt ridiculous. Maybe it was the act of subjugation, of giving over to the unseen. The premise of faith, no control.
I pulled up to the gas station and exited my car to walk around to the side of the pump. Halfway there, a black woman in a sedan pulls immediately beside me with her window down and hollers out, ‘God will heal you. He knows you are dealing with a serious health issue.’ I proceed to walk right up to her car window. I only say,’ Yes actually, I am dealing with some stuff’ and to thank her for her kind message. I’m startled honestly and holding back tears. She then implies she is being told to tell me I need more iron, like spinach but, be careful with the iron supplements for various reasons. This is four days after my doctor prescribed me an iron supplement on top of the iron infusion I recently had. Despite all the meat I’m consuming, I’m still not absorbing a handful of nutrients. Well-manicured, elaborate jewels for fingernails reach out of her car, and she tells me she doesn’t touch people after Covid, but she wants to hold my hand and ask if she can pray for me. “You will be alright,’ she says. ‘God has big plans for you.’ This whole episode is both surreal and perplexing and appreciated. No one can admonish a stranger wanting to pray for you. Unless you hate religion. I sit in my car while the gas pumps and feel shaken.
I have strangers and a whole army of people praying for me, and yet, I do not pray. I cannot imagine a man in the sky hearing my thoughts. I reflect on when my mother was on her deathbed, and I try to recall my internal pleas. I can’t narrow them down because I was living in the present moment; I was fully consumed by it. The situation and circumstances were going to play out the way they were going to. And now, almost one year to the day of being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, the only looping mantra I hear in my head is ‘patience and gratitude.’ It’s what I have and will continue having. Sure, I could tilt my head and close my eyes and ask -or even beg for something. I simply don’t believe in it.
I didn’t intend for this to be the least appropriate Easter Day post. Pardon my radio silence. I’ve not been doing well. When I anticipate a pocket of time to write, I sleep. I had my second infusion of the fourth medicine we are trying this past Friday. Feeling positive about this one. Still underweight; still eating each meal like it’s a prisoner’s choice for their last one. Cooking something different every night has been the biggest change in my habits. I am the type who can eat the same thing for months. Seriously, I have eaten things in the past year I have never had before nor would allow myself to even try due to fitness and nutritional fanaticism. Dang, those hushpuppies were addictive!
Happy Spring. Happy Easter. Thank you for your patience with me.
*Anna Ancher, Study of the Seamstress’ Head, 1890, Skagens Museum, Skagen, Denmark.