Once again, I did not react well to pain.  After another draining by the visiting nurse, I took a nap and then struggled to get out of bed.  I had an incredibly sharp pain through the trunk of my body that lasted maybe 30 seconds to a minute but it was very intense and it scared me.  I wondered if it was the end and whether I could tolerate such pain – I did say to Jesus that I knew I wasn't behaving well.  How to decipher that tremendous pain on the cross?  I know I've often looked at the crucified Jesus through the many religious articles that I have and I know I've thought about it when I said in particular Sorrowful Mysteries or the Divine Mercy Chaplet.  I've often realize that I'm just looking at a figure that I think of as being passive and just hanging there on the cross somehow looking mournful but not in pain.  When I was going through that intense pain, I can begin to understand what Jesus gave as he tried to save those He loved.  I know from my reading of Fulton sheen, the grand history that Jesus had and how he came in time to free us from the guilt of our sins.  Suffering pain, which I have had very little of that my life, helps me to understand the gravity of my sins – which have been many, particularly in my long ago passed.  Just as it is hard for me to really internalize the tremendous suffering that Christ had on the cross, it has been hard for me to associate my indifference to sin with the reality of the dysfunction that sin brings to the soul. 

I'm grateful for the life and I hope God's good grace now in my life.  As I read the divine office, I'm thankful to be hoping that I am among the chosen that will go rejoicing to God at the end of time.  In the past it seemed I've had more to offer Jesus with courses that I thought I was creating to be of use to others.  It's really questionable how well these courses worked.  And now I stand here battered, scarred, in pain, and often embarrassed and suffering, trying to give this painful journey over to Jesus.  I will still try to help with the African project and the courses with whatever time I have left.  With the sabbatical coming up, I should be able to move this forward to some degree – and truly it is going to be up to Jesus.  Jesus,  I offer you my skills and abilities, I'm also crippled and weakened and spending lots of time and energy with doctors' visits.  I've been blessed to have time to share with my family and I've been blessed to see the goodness that is in my family that I often overlooked in my haste to accomplish things in this world.

Please give me the right balance, dear Jesus.  This journey to you is coming through a journey to fading health.  Tomorrow I may be able to go with Danny to a shrine in Maryland where they will be a special healing mass.   I would like to be healed, if I can continue to do the work of the Lord and continued to value and enjoy my family.  I know the odds are not good, although I will not know for sure until next week what the odds really are.  After I get the report at Sloan Kettering about the biopsies.  Sometimes I don’t know whether to ask for healing or whether I even really want it.  There is a part of me that it’s just weary of trying to deal with the complexities of the education field and the complexities of working in the college environment.  Sometimes I feel so much the failure there that I wouldn’t mind moving on and asking Jesus to fix what I’ve done and what I have left.  I am putting all of my work into a website then I am sharing with Darren, Tasha, and Danny, and Father Erasto.  I hope that this work could go beyond me, but I see just by putting it together the limitations of the work and the almost a possibility that anybody could ever use it – it is so complex.  But again, I’ll have to leave all of this to you Jesus.  I still think you have something you want me to communicate to the world about education and science and technology; but I don’t know whether that can ever come forward or it is even what you desire, Lord.

Help me understand you want me, Jesus.  I will continue to read more about you and try to be open to your word in my life.  Thank you for giving me these many years already and may use was left of them in your service Lord.