Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Lourdes

Lourdes

Being a Roman Catholic by birth, my connection with St Bernadette and Lourdes has been a long one.  I was told and then read the story of the miraculous healings that took place in Lourdes after the Virgin Mary appears to Bernadette.   When I was 11 years old, I was told by my parents that my beloved grandfather was dying.   I begged and pleaded with them to take him to Lourdes.  I knew in my very heart and soul that if we could get him to Lourdes he would not die.  I did not understand why it could not be done, nor did I understand the implications of a dying man and the distance to Lourdes.  It was only when I was a young adult that I realized the impossibility of my request, but for years I held a terrible resentment because I thought no one loved my grandfather enough to take him to be healed.
When my niece, at the age of 3, was diagnosed with a very advanced stage of Crohns Disease, I made it my business to raise the funds to send my mom, her mother and her to Lourdes.  She was very ill when they left South Africa and after one day in Lourdes, she sat up and said she was hungry.  On her return, the gastroenterologist could find no sign of the disease.  That was almost 25 years ago.
My next sojourn to Lourdes was to take my daughter, diagnosed with advanced sarcoidosis and very little lung function.   She went into remission within weeks and has stayed that way.  She now has a 16 year old daughter and a 6 year old son.  Another miracle.  

Lourdes is the most holy place I have been and I have traveled a lot.  The very air of the town and around the grotto is filled with an energy that made me feel that I had champagne bubbles in my heart.  I could not even stand at the grotto – it was as though the very earth pulled me to my knees and I could feel the unbidden tears rolling down my cheeks.  To see that same rose growing out of the rock after more than a hundred years was in itself a revelation.  Now I want to go.  

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Few words from Anchor of my Soul

Anchor of my Soul

It has always been very important for me that I live a worthwhile life.  When I go to sleep at night, I want to know that my day had value, not only for me but at least for one more person.    A day is wasted when I have not made something, achieved something, made someone happy, made a difference in someone’s life, written something and especially not made someone smile. I don’t want to feel that a day in my life has been a waste.  For months and months of illness and an inability to do what I want to do during a day, I have doubted that I am living a worthwhile life.  I have been too ill to really live and I have not done such a good job of dying either, because I am still here.   Living a worthwhile life to me means that every single moment and every hour of the day must have worth.  

Very often, the only people I manage to get to laugh and smile are doctors and nurses.  I don’t feel that is good enough for me.  It is not a feeling of a day well lived.  The key to a successful hospital stay is to keep positive, keep smiling and keep the nurses entertained.  That way, they will be flitting round your bed so you don’t have to have endless waiting for your bell to bring someone to your bedside to help you.  But it is still not a good enough reason for me to know that I lived my day well. 

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Paragraph from 2nd last chapter of Anchor of My Soul

Anchor of my Soul 
Father Leo, the Catholic priest came to visit me.  He told me that there are lots and lots of Catholics in Bloemfontein and that almost every nurse in the ward is a Catholic and that is why he can come and go as he pleases in this ward.   He asked me if I would like the blessing of the sick and of course I said yes.  Insurance…just in case!   
The second time he came to see me, he remembered not only my name, but the answers to all his questions he had put to me the first time he came to give me the blessing of the sick.
          “I am really busy today Dianne.  I have lots of patients to see in a number of hospitals.  Do you want me to say a quick prayer for you?” Father Leo asked me.
          “If you make it quick, that will be great.  Thanks Father”, I responded.
          “Right”, he said, pulling up a chair next to the bed.  “Let’s get on with it then”.  He closed his eyes and began.  “Father, we bring you our sister, Dianne, this morning.  Please can you let her stay down here a little longer?  The world needs activists and I don’t think you need a deputy just yet. Now where did I put the sacrament…?”  He stopped praying while he leaned down, picked up his battered little bag and began scratching around in it.

          “Father, you still praying”, I said, quite astonished by the sudden interruption not only of his prayer and his thoughts, but his actions as well.

          “Now…now…Dianne!   If God has patience with me, don’t you think you could have a little as well?  And by the way, did I mention to you that the story of Job in the Bible is not true.  It is just a parable.  Every person who has studied theology should know that!”


I don’t know where that last sentence came from and what relevance it had to me, but it patience thing and Job shut me up pretty quickly and gave me food for thought for the rest of the day. 

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Last Paragraph of Chapter 10: Anchor For My Soul

Anchor for my Soul

This rare and  little known disease caused me to lose my family, my friends, my children’s home, my self-worth, my self-confidence, my passion, my money, my trust in people, and my need to save the world.  

But it gave me self-knowledge, resilience, peace within myself, a greater capacity to love and to forgive, determination, persistence and motivation to be the best person I can be and finally, it taught me to choose only those fights that I have a chance of winning.   


Nothing is the same…It is as though I was shook up and put together in a thousand different ways.  

I did learn one thing that is very important.  You don’t learn humility by being humiliated – you learn humility by being with people who are humble. 

Friday, May 2, 2014

Some days are just KAK ...

I am feeling fear and angst … a low grade anxiety and a feeling of impending doom. I know that a few weeks from now or maybe even by tomorrow, this feeling will be gone and I will not even remember this day of angst.  

I wander through my mind wondering why I feel this anxiety. I am tired, dreadfully tired. I don’t want to tell anyone about it because they will then tell me how tired they are. My tired is different. There should be another word to describe this tiredness. Even exhaustion does not do this tiredness justice. This tired is not the tired you can sleep or rest away. Even talking makes me breathless and walking up and down these stairs is a monumental task … a fight between my body which feels so heavy … and my will. I want to do things but it feels like I am dragging my body through mud. For weeks, I have woken up so tired that every cell and tissue of my body is burning and screaming for … I don’t know what.

I have to earn a living. I must work because I need a roof over my head and food for my belly. There is no alternative. But what work can I do?  What skills do I have that I can use within this limited way of living?  I want my old life back...to the time when I had energy and could move my body any way I liked...when I could run up and down stairs and do therapies for hours on end without getting tired...when I could ... what is the use of looking back.  I must come to terms with where I am and do what I can with what I have. I can feel the tears form as I write this … tears of anxiety, frustration and exhaustion. 

I look at this pile of medical bills that the medical aid has rejected and I feel despair. If I don’t have the money to pay them, then there is nothing I can do about it right now. I ask myself these questions: Is this a priority? Can I do anything about it? Does it add value to my life? The answer to all or most of these questions is NO … so I must put it down and not carry it with me today. I must see what I can do today, what is a priority, what I can do and do only those things that add value to my life. I can rest. I can lie down and sleep and allow my body to rejuvenate itself. And that will add value to my life.

I know tomorrow will be different. I will wake up and hear the birds singing. I will see the sun shine and I will feel more energetic. I will find my spirit again and I will smile from the inside out. Every tomorrow is different from today and every tomorrow holds the possibility of health and peace. I also know without any doubt that God provides for my every need.   Why do I feel sorry for myself when out there in the world there are a lot of people very much worse off than I am? 

Perhaps my next lesson is to be kind to me and to understand that I am only human and as such I am fallible.  But I do know that it takes a lot more courage to choose life, than to choose death.  Through all these tears, I can see a rainbow of hope.  I choose LIFE!