Sitting in the Holy Hour at St. Mary's I could sense the time and eternity through which Our Lord has traveled, from the beginning of time through the Jews and into the Christian era.   He is with us in time and in the relationships that He has made available to us on our journey.   A peace filled my soul.

While I continue to feel well but my dear great nephew is dying at this very moment - declared brain dead and soon to pass on to the next life completely.  My wonderful niece, his mother, is a model of grief and holiness, just like the Blessed Mother.   May You Lord and Your Blessed Mother be with the Suarez family.  And, dear Sebastian will you ask God to help our struggling world?

Feeling healthy and strong.  I have been able to do my 4 mile walk most mornings and I bring my rosary beads with me.  The idea came from Danny's blog posting about walking with rosaries after receiving communion.  It almost seems as though the diagnosis might have been a mistake.  Or maybe Jesus, you want me here a little longer.  I was able to continue to work on both the science education course and the virtual environments course.  They are in pretty good shape so I hope others can run them at some of your seminary schools.  There is a great need for education and other parts of the world – and Father Erasto is helping me there – and I hope that Holy Apostles College and Seminary can embrace the virtual reality courses.  After receiving the "good news" from Sloan, I have felt more purposeful about moving forward on those two projects.  I have five weeks left for the sabbatical and I want to use it well, dear Jesus.  I am actually looking forward to returning to work, it makes me feel as though I still have some value in this world.  And I have been able to catch up with family and friends and not feeling sort and under the weather.  Thank you for this time.

I also received a relic yesterday from Danny from Padre Pio.  It is the gauze from around his sacred wounds.  I know this comes from the stigmata that you graced Padre Pio with.  I have had the benefit of so many prayers, intercessions through communions and novenas offered, relics around my house, and my own expanding prayer life.  I feel more and more enveloped in your world, dear Lord.

I am reading another book, recommended by Tasha, about fighting cancer.  This is from a doctor who had cancer himself.  He makes good points about the ways we can behaviorally control our cancers.  His points, I think, stretch the findings that he claims are from science, but I think is advice is solid.  But he only approaches religion, for as far as I've gotten into the book right now, from the perspective of meditation or Buddhism.  It seems everyone is still afraid to speak your name in public, Jesus.  I have been toying with the idea of a book about my own journey that I would call "Unfinished."  Can you guide me as to whether this is something you want me to do with the end of my sabbatical time?  As you well know, I have been keeping notes through this blog and through a note to Darren that will be given to him on my death – or at least I hope it will be.  The I note that writing a book would keep me motivated and upbeat, but is it me or is it you, Jesus?

By the way, I did get to see the CT scan data from Sloan.  I can't understand it all but it does seem that there has been some reduction in the hardening of my pleural lining which I think is good news.  Are you giving me more time?  I am feeling a peace.  For while I was really getting into what I call my "wigs and morphine" phase.  I was projecting out to the end and trying to figure how I could be safe.  Could I save my appearance?  Could I save myself from pain?  Could this saving from pain be done with my mind still somewhat intact?  That seems to be melting with a better news and hopefully with your grace dear Jesus.  I think I will start some of the writing, but will ask for your guidance and direction along the way.  Please let me know if that is from you or from me.

Thank you, Jesus, for the good news about my health.  After coming back from Sloan, I was pleased to know that there is no new pleural effusion and that the CT scan looked good.  Not quite sure where this leaves me but I am clear to go back to work in the fall and will be on schedule for October to see when and if they have to move to the next steps.  It is good news and world we sense.

There is also wonderful news in that Dan and Regina are due to have another baby in march.  It is very early right now so please Lord protect this unborn child with your loving care and providence.  I wish they had a better financial scenario but that must be in your hands dear Lord.  I have been able to listen to more tapes from LightHouse Catholic Media and it is improving my understanding of you and of your planned for the Church.

I have been moving very quickly since I got the good news one week ago.  I if think that you want me to finish up the virtual materials so that Holy Apostle can take over teaching them.  I have also been working with Father Erasto about getting the materials to Africa and hopefully we can run some courses with Africa to in the fall.  I am actually eager about thinking about returning to work; I must work very differently and more efficiently.  I am trying to get the headset and speech recognition to work well.  I have been listening to Father Larry Richards about living in the divine will and according to the way he sees things, if I am serving and loving in the work I do then it must be at least part of your well for me.  I am excited about working on the virtual island today and creating it so that it can be an activity that others can use for their own in making their own islands more quickly.  I don't know if I have been foolish to have invested so much of the past 15 years of my life in working with virtual environments, but Lord, please help me if this is what you want me to do – I think it is.  I am happy to think I may be in your service for a bit longer.  Honestly, I had been looking into what I would do if I went through chemotherapy – what type of wig I would buy – and how I would use morphine to help me through those and times.  Those questions are still out there, but it seems you have given me a reprieve for several months before I must deal with them.

Please help me channel the excitement and I feel about the upcoming baby, about my work and my going back to work, and help me use my time well.

I am trying to sense where I stand with you, Jesus, and what you want me to do.  I am almost finished with the science and technology work and I have two months before my sabbatical is over.  On Monday I go to Sloan to see where I stand with the cancer.  I keep on thinking that you want a catholic media enterprise, the world needs it badly and today we lost the Supreme Court decision on marriage.  You know how much this will hurt your children Jesus.  But is that which you want me to do?  Part of me wants to write my memoirs and another part of me wants to write something about the situation in the world in general so that Darren can make good Entertainment Media from this.  I am feeling well and thank you for that lord.  It was good to see Teresa and Tommy and their family's visit tonight for lasagna.  I still feel part of the world and I think that this "dying from mesothelioma" seems to be really more of something I imagined then is something real.  I still don't know when the other shoe will drop.

I am getting close to you through my readings and through my extended visits to church.  I do feel enmeshed in a safe world of beautiful buildings, powerful sentiment, and a deeper faith.  I've realize that I am not a person of feeling and emotion.  I can not expect that you will reach me through those means.  But I am a person who can take long term steps towards long-term goals.  You helped me get a doctorate; you helped me write novels; you are helping me with the virtual reality (which is always very challenging); you will continue to help me I know.  I read St. Therese of Liseux and I see her child like the belief that you will always be with her.

Jesus, it was very good to see Tasha and her family.  She is really raising the children in the faith and they even came with me one day to daily mass.  Hopefully, she will avoid the problems that I had by not raising my older children in the faith.  I know you have forgiven me for that to the extent I can be forgiven in confession, but I will pay a constant reparation for those sins of omission and I will pray for all of my children and grandchildren to return to and live in the faith that you have given us.  I can most definitely see how this faith is helping me now as I face my own mortality.  However, for the past month I've been feeling physically much better and I received a call from my job about the fall.  I did let them know of my illness, but honestly, at this point I am feeling as though it is possible to return to work and be almost 100% of what I used to be.

But now I have a different "eye" as I look forward on my life.  Funny, all the times that we spend talking about the future – such as when I went to the airport recently, talking about how I am getting to be a better traveler.  I don't know how much more time you'll give me for traveling.  It seems our life is full of projections forward and our very language and learning is about giving us what we need for these future experiences.  And I don't know what they're going to be.  Now that I ever really did know but I thought I did – I thought I would be around at least until my late eighties.  Now it's a big question mark.

I have been able to do more reading about you Jesus and the book by the Japanese author Endo is giving me more insights into the life that you lead and the culture in which you lived.  I can't know or understand it all but I can see you moving through time and history and even geography as you work towards Jerusalem and your death for us.  I try to meditate and make You the center of my life, but this life intervenes – such as last week when we are in California – your presence seems to disappear into the background.  I also know from past experience that when the sickness takes over again, I lose my ability to pray.  Therefore, I am trying at this point to anticipate and store up the graces that I will need to get through the "hour of my death" which I know will have the greatest pain and the biggest fear in my life.  (You're well aware of my claustrophobia and fears of not breathing.)  I was reading St. Faustina last night who was well assured that those last moments she would be spending with you directly.  Please be there to help me through and to let my life be an example to those who need you, particularly to those to whom I did not bring your faith when I should have.  Bring something good from my death.  I know that from a bodily sense I will be shriveled, panting, looking lifeless and homely.  That bothers me although I know that should not be a priority.  I still wish to be attractive for my husband and I know that isn't going to be possible.  As you can see, dear Jesus, I am still very much in this world and I need your help to lift me out of it just the way St. Therese speaks of in her diaries.  Lift me out of the silly little old lady thinking that I have and align me with the thinking that you want.  I know I will have no control over the endpoint – none of us do, but I never really thought about it.  I have prayed many rosaries and hopefully will have your help as a transition on eternal life with you.  Help me to be the person that you want me to be; give me the grace please to make this happen.

Dear Jesus, things may be accelerating from the disease standpoint - some fevers, some night sweating, some shortness of breath.  Up till now, most of the discomfort has been from the treatments.

Help me to know what to do with my time and how to address any fear and pain.  Reading the book on St. Teresa with her autobiography and other materials (letters, reminiscences, papal documents) has given me insights into the little way of turning all to you even when not feeling holy or in your light.  I know you are there and you have created this pathway for me, but I still feel scared and unsure.   I don't like pain; I fear pain.  But I will try my best to trust.  Please help me with the grace that I need to be in and stay in your will.  Jesus I trust in you.  Maybe I will see you sooner then I thought.   I was feeling so well for a while that I thought the disease might have been a mistake.

Help me to know you in my travels.   I am still trying to finish some courses and I talked to Meg at work and we are full speed ahead for teaching comes September.  Guide me as to what will be your will for then.

Love you.

Jesus, it has been some time since we talked.  Darren's dad died and there was much preparation, consternation, celebration, and worry with his funeral and burial.   You had granted him a full life, despite the Alzeheimer's of his last days.  Hopefully / prayerfully, the breakthrough in getting a priest to him, even though his was then in the throes of dying from a stroke and lack of feeding, you were able to break through to his heart and gain from him the repentance that you needed.  Who but you can judge someone?  Who but you understanding what the "hour of your death" really means.  In my micromanaging of the world, I could see Dad  now praying for his family from the other side.  How do you break through to the New Age group of which my mother-in-law belongs? I could see myself now at the family gatherings after the funeral worried about so much other then just the passage of a soul -- did I look OK?  (especially since Darren's first wife (from whom his marriage was legitimately annulled) came to the service) was I projecting holy vibs (they all knew that I was dying too but I tried to show faith and hope (but did I come across as pompous and silly?)  did I forever look at the photos from the funeral and look to see if / how I looked compared to the rest?  How long vanity lasts in me.  How and when will I learn to follow your light?

I am feeling considerably better -- I take 3 mile walks in the morning and much of the healing after the removal of the drainage catheter from my chest seems to have happened.  I am enjoying the time with the sabbatical and the reduction in the stress of work.   I still thing about returning to work in the fall and wonder if / how I can do that.  Please be sure to tap me hard on the head with what I am to do job wise; I have a hard time hearing your voice at time.   I did get to the healing mass at the Divine Mercy chapel and I could feel your peace.  But your voice gets hard to hear so quickly for me.  I am (at Danny's recommendation) getting more time in front of you in t your churches; but much seems to get in the way.  His (Danny's) point is that I can not go wrong if I am spending more time in our presence. That is true.

Today we go to Roxbury to get some paperwork signed.  I have more tapes from Lighthouse Catholic Media that I hope to listen to on the way.  Please help them inspire Darren and me.  I still hope that he starts the Catholic media company but I have been pushing too hard - he resists and it might be all about my will and not yours.  Please guide me there.  I am still trying to manage things from this side and the other side of the grave.   Please help me learn to see . . . and to trust. . . your way Lord.

Thank you for giving me my wonderful life and family to this point; help me with the fears that keep coming up.