01 May 2025 at 21:52

01 May 2025 at 21:52

I have always started the year in church

I’ll pray for the year ahead and commit every aspect of my life to God. In itself, this is a ritual, a constant in the person I have been and who I hope to be. I know I will do it next year and the year after that.

All this to say this ritual grounds my year and subconsciously directs the steps I take. Few days after the first day of this year, I fell sick and after that I fell sick again and somehow I ended up sitting in the emergency ward of the hospital at 1 am that night in January.

Your body talks — if you listen, it will tell you where it is at, And my body has always spoken, and when I deafened my ears, it screamed and created a scene as dramatic as me.

First when I was 5 and ended up with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, a “1 in 10000” case in children. Then came the other thousand daily struggles that were inexplicable until 22 when I was stumped with PCOS, she brought tears that were warm and soft, tears that I wanted to stay quiet but came out louder than my speaking voice.Yet I carried through, year to year starting in a church. Then came the dimpling on the left breast that almost broke me. And still I was in church the year after that grounded in my first of January ritual. And then this year….

You can tell by now that my body has taught me the hard way to listen, to pay heed, and so after the third viral infection this year I knew to sit up, to speak to any ears who will hear that something was amiss.

Five months and countless blood tests after I am still no closer to knowing except that we are fighting a battle again at 26

Through all this, I look forward to yet another year, hoping to be in church again and commit.