Lucky

I'm lucky. I suppose some would call it blessed, but I don't think I'm quite at that point yet. I'm sure I'll figure that side of things out someday, but for now all I know is that I am so entirely grateful for the path my life has taken lately.

I stopped writing last year for a few reasons. One was that everything was changing so slowly for me without any notable event or revelation acting as a catalyst. Its only now that I can look back and see just how much my heart has softened and my anger has cooled. Another reason for my hiatus, is that it became too difficult to write. My brain was swiftly loosing the ability to string together coherent sentences even in normal conversation, let alone the task of writing and editing. So I faded. I curled up in bed and prepared myself for what I knew would be a slow and painful death as my body spent the next few months shutting down more and more.

But then I got... lucky (again, I don't know what else to call it). A new doctor offhandedly decided to test my vitamin D levels because people in the north tend to run a little low. We received a letter two weeks later with the results (which were shockingly low) and a prescription for a few high dose vitamin D capsule. Two days after taking the first pill the pain that had been my constant companion the last few years vanished from my muscles. I was in shock, refusing to believe that an answer could be this simple, this elegant. It all seemed too good to be true and I braced myself for the inevitable crashing reality of its eventual failure and the return of the pain. But it never returned. That was 5 months ago. 5 months I've spent holding my breath as I watch symptom after symptom improve then disappear. I felt muscles begin to return and move fluidly under my skin. I relished in the strength of my lungs as they breathed in and out with ease and felt the strong beat of my heart as it began to pump steadily in my chest. I began to trust the flow of a body that could heal, metabolize and move as life once again began to flow through my veins.

And Greg... even in death I could feel him by my side, reassuring me of his love. I don't know if he's the one responsible for finding my cure, but that doesn't really matter. Even if I had died I would have known that he loved me, and that was more then I could ever ask of him. I was grateful for that. I don't know when I started to believe so strongly that he existed, the whole past year and a half is a bit of a foggy blur. I know it happened slowly. I know love took its time. Fixing itself into the air around me, slowly saturating my skin and winding its way deeper and deeper into my soul till it became a part of the very cells that made up my being. I value that. I value what I've found. A part of me still mourns for the years that I lost and the pain that I've experienced, but I'm so very grateful for what I've found. As I've said before, I'm lucky.

Finding Some Faith

A few weeks ago i had coffee with a friend of mine who believes in god and the sovereignty of the bible, but has renounced god because he hates him and thinks god is mean. We were joined by his friend who is an atheist, and his sister who believes that god is the answer to everything and will take care of you if you just do everything he commands. I stat back and sipped my drink as the siblings argued over who was right and the atheist laughed at them for caring in the first place. I'm no debater, and i don't like to argue this kind of thing, so besides a comment every now and then I mostly just listened. And through the arguments and exasperated hand motions and sighs, something became apparent. No one cared about Jesus. No one even bothered to mention him. This bothered me because i had always liked Jesus, and I realized that through this big mess of my quest for god, Jesus had been my one saving grace. He was the reason i couldn't just dismiss Christianity. His complete grace and love for me was the one and only thing i trusted. Infact, all of the qualities I've been able to attribute to Gregory, were really just the one's I've always liked about Jesus. His joy, love, sorrow, how much he cared about me and would be beside me even when life hurt. As the weeks went on, it sunk in that some where along the line, i had found some faith. Faith that Jesus was good, and loved me, and the odds were that God was a lot like that too.

I don't know about heaven, i don't know about hell, or most of what is truly right or wrong in this world, or any other type theology, but i know that Jesus cares about me. I think I'll always believe that. And I really hope that's a good enough starting point.