Why Me

A week or so before we left for the trip and this whole health fiasco happened with my stomach, my husband put on an old episode of Mother Angelica.  In it she talked about being in a situation where she was asked to do things she didn’t feel capable of doing and she kept wondering why me. So she prayed to Christ and said, “why me?” And he answered her, “why me?”

I remember thinking how profound that was, and that maybe there was a reason I needed to hear that. Then two weeks later I am in the hospital with a hole in my stomach. A week after that, my stomach has been pulled through my skin and I am excreting into a large, uncomfortable bag.

At a time like this, it is easy to ask, “why me?” I have had a hard year with two surgeries and a bone infection and being on PICC line antibiotics for weeks. And now this. And I’m only 28. Why the hard year?

But then why did Christ, who was blameless as a flower, have to suffer on the cross and die. By rights it should have been someone who did such a terrible wrong that they earned it, but He was white as snow and still had to pay with His crimson blood for our sins.

My troubles are so small compared to His suffering. And life is not fair. And our Father takes care of all of us. And why not me? Diverticulitis is going to happen to someone. Why not me?

If I’m smart, I’ll use this trial to draw closer to God. It’s hard to imagine, but it is probably what I need.

The Narrator

The narrator is mopping the floor with my tears,

which for him fall like rain through a hole

in the roof.

What promise this day had,

born at the height of the malleable moon.

What now,

since favor, faith, and fancy have

disintegrated?

The narrator begins with an article

that will barely clothe me from the cold.

Outsonneted

I have been outsonneted by a suction cup,

Clinging to my window like a starfish to the sea.

Lately my similes get away from me,

Dogs always unearthing hideous bones in

My backyard.

The curious climate of my moist mind

Is most conducive to marigolds, azaleas,

The pancreas.

My face is all sugar,

My tongue a cola.

See the stained glass the suction cup holds?

Memorabilia from an unremembered saint.

Pharmacological Fog

Recapturing yourself will be easy.

White still in the bedroom,

structure from private, necessary snow.

dreaming of silence.

Your mind is a playground of artillery.

 

Capturing the sense of yourself will be hard,

Lost 2 feet tall in a field of chaff.

The women have needles and no yarn.

A man sits toward the curdling sun,

his face a mouth.

 

Sound your siren song

A gentle offering of wisteria wishes

and sulking letters.

Give her a sonorous rope to tie round her wrist

a little balloon bobbing desperately toward mass.

 

Bag of Humiliation

Some things are just a humbling experience. Having a bag attached to you in which you pass gass and excrete with no control about when or how loud or where is simply mortifying. My stomach finally started working with the bag last night while the nurse was in the room with me and it was terrifying because it was so embarrassing.

I can’t believe I’m going to have to live like this for three to six months. Or that other people do it their whole lives. How will I bear being close to people and how will others bear me? How can I go to public places?

I am literally going to have to change my very conception of self and surroundings. I am going to require more mercy and compassion from my husband and other people. I have to hope and pray they give it to me, or this will be a lonely time in my life.

I don’t feel sexy. I feel disgusting and gross.  This is messing with my identity, but then I remember  that I should have my identity in Christ. To put it crassly, God loves me but everyone else thinks I am nasty.  I am still a poet and creator. I am still a wife and mother.  I still have a place in the body of Christ.

But I feel so repulsive and isolated.