Like a weaver, you roll up my life and cut it from the loom…I twitter like a sparrow, I moan like a dove. Isaiah 38: 12-14

This quotation from the prophet Isaiah speaks to the quaking in my depths that sets my teeth on edge: I’m confronted by the Weaver’s power that will end the ongoing project of my life, one I dearly love, but so late in its actualization. Clearly, I am not in control and I don’t like it.

This time, it is nerve pain in my left heel, stinging as I sit at my word processor.

Other bothersome symptoms, related to the Dexamethasone I’m taking, continue shadowing my day: moonface, increasing fatigue and shortness of breath and dizziness, weight gain, increasing deformity and flexibility in my hands, intermittent knee pain. Coughing up infected mucus exhausts me. Only physical death will free me from these symptoms.

In the interim, it’s critical to interface these downers with CPA’s 12 Steps and to receive daily support from my buddies during meetings and phone contacts. Although my terminal illness tries to waylay me into believing that I am alone, that no one cares, this is gobbledygook. Together, we surrender, afresh, to Higher Power and live.

Only the Weaver’s shears will set me free, whenever, however. Until then, like the twittering sparrows outside my study window, I watch and listen. It’s about growing spiritually, one day at a time, with still more opportunities to unfurl my birthright.