Helpful counsel from a seasoned man buoys the sacred work underway in my psyche: His name is Pierre Teillard de Chardin, French Jesuit Theologian and Scientist (1881-1955).

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
In front of the unknown, we are impatient. We should like to skip the intermediate stages and reach the end of everything.

Yet the law of progress mandates passing through stages of instability—of uncertain duration.

Only God can say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will become.
Believe that His hand is leading you and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. It will pass.

I will be more than delighted when it will pass: difficulty breathing, continual use of Oxygen, nightly cocktails/drugs with side effects, increasing weakness, exhaustion, brain fog, occasional slurred speech, and dependence upon walker and cane. Helping me through each twenty-four hours are my spirited helpers and their hugs.

Despite the tangle of symptoms, my days flit by seamlessly like insects drawn to candle flame. I have little choice of what to let go of; it just happens, on the heels of acceptance—And with each acceptance, more of who I am becoming. And just as I had no say in the pre-birth development in my mother’s womb, so, too, I’ve none in its final formation. I bow to another Artist, at work, fashioning my birth into eternal life, for that’s what it feels like.

Daylight’s color and form give some stasis for this process, but eruptions of impatience during nights dismantles me even further and compels holding on to this vision of Teillard de Chardin. It helps.