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Whenever I have been in overwhelming situations, it has always helped to write about them. My terminal illness, Interstitial Lung Disease with Rheumatoid Arthritis and the enormity of facing my mortality fit that category. So, I set to work in November 2019, with daily blogs posted on my website, heartwhisperings.com. Perhaps some would be interested in such a chronicle.
Hospice caregivers and helpers responded to my needs, minimal at the time; they still gave much to write about. There was no dearth of topics.
Months, then years hummed by and although weak, I was not dying nor discharged from hospice. Central to each day was the production of the blog, but the topics changed from issues related to death and dying to book reviews, significant scriptural passages, dreams, responses to poets, aspect of spirituality, stories from my past, global trauma, nature and its metaphors—whatever touched my imagination, with the accompanying words.
Challenging, at times, exhausting, the blogs filled what could’ve been empty time with significant learning for which I’m grateful.
With the worsening of my symptoms, however, I have decided to shut down the blogs and devote more time to resting and prayer and writing, if able, my dialogue with Precious God.
I’m heartened that some benefited from my blogs, still found on WordPress and Mail chimp and Facebook.
Images of spiritual cleansing abound, but one with a strong appeal is composting, discovered in my psychic depths through the study and practice of the Twelve Steps of Chronic Pain Anonymous.
Much of my composting stinks of long-term resentments and the many faces of anger carried from childhood. Greed, envy, and sloth have also lined the perimeter of my ditch for decades. Denial kept me prim and pretty and codependent. Seldom was fault owned, lest the thief in the night despoil me. Filled with terror, I hid from life—Safer that way.
In the almost five years I’ve been a member of Chronic Pain Anonymous, the shrill voices of my sinfulness, past and present, red flag immediate recourse to the gentle, but trenchant, uprooting found in the principles of the Twelve Steps: honesty, hope, surrender, integrity, willingness, courage, humility, love, responsibility, discipline awareness, and service.
My adherence to them is on-going, and the results, gratifying: the very disorders I’ve discarded, with God’s help, have resulted in the development of a new sense of being that deepens with more practice. Only the death of my body will end this process.
Note: These changes only occur within the global spiritual fellowship of CPA. No one does this arduous work alone.
At 6:10 A.M., I awoke with this affirming dream:
Advent will soon arrive and our group plans our annual project. Instead of buying holiday gifts for loved ones, we will bake pastries in each other’s kitchens, Mondays after work—Of little concern that no one knows how to bake.
After our first Monday gathering, we step back from the mess: sinks filled with soiled pots and utensils, counters crammed with half-opened ingredients and stained cookbooks, floors pastiched with icing and brown sugar. What looks like a plate of chocolate chip cookies sits near the oven. My crocs make stickery sounds as I join the others with a bucket of water and mop; disheartened, we clean into the night.
On subsequent Mondays, some progress brightens our moods: Pastries are beginning to resemble the pictures in the cookbooks.
Our final Monday yields holiday boxes of pastries, unique in taste, design, and decorations. We’re glad to share.
I liken this dream to my daily practice of recovery found in Recipe for Recovery: A Guide to the Twelve Steps of Chronic Pain Anonymous (cookbooks). Its format resembles a cookbook, with Ingredients, Description, Directions, Preparation, and What It Looks Like. Working this program requires willingness to reeducate our psyches from less-than responses learned earlier in life. Such conscious work also benefits others.
The dream opens with the season of Advent, a four-week arduous preparation for the Christmas mysteries. Similarly in CPA, the penitential climate of Advent informs the practice of the Twelve Steps, a lifelong practice.
Our group symbolizes the spiritual fellowship that consciously takes on this challenging project, with Higher Power’s help. Kitchens represent CPA’s website and the varied sites—phone or Zoom—where meetings are held. Our first Monday gathering reveals deep willingness in the group’s initial efforts to mix/blend/simmer ingredients which flop. Even more is this willingness demonstrated in cleaning up the kitchen. No matter that my crocs will be soiled; they can be hosed down, and I’ll return the following Monday with the others.
The mess stands for Step One, the powerlessness and unmanageability of our lives. Some progress speaks to the beginnings of changed behaviors and attitudes that keep us humble and teachable.
Thus, Holiday boxes of pastries represent the joy of living with Higher Power, now and even more so in the next life. And the final Monday, the last day of this mortal life.
My gladness is deep
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Heart Whisperings 