Just ask the Universe

Maybe this story will help someone. I don’t know.

It began with the usual things. I’ve been known to have aches and pains. It’s just one of those things. If the pain got too bad, I’d take aspirin or the like.

I practice meditation. I try to avoid dairy because of allergies. I try to stay active. But things got hectic and I stopped going to the gym.

Recently, I went to an acupuncturist for a spring treatment. It’s kind of like spring house cleaning. After the first session, I felt like I’d been in a wreck. Wow, I thought, that was powerful stuff. For my next session, she dialed back the treatment. Yet, the aches and pains were getting worse.

Somewhere along the line, I thought that with everything going on in my life, maybe I was depressed or anxious or just needed to chill. I kept trying to figure out if there were psychological reasons for my pain. I felt that maybe I just wasn’t doing the right things. Maybe I needed medication.

I’d seen plenty of women go to their doctor’s for pain and were told that they had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and were prescribed anti-depressants. I dreaded that.

I began to kid with my family that I thought I was having mini-strokes. In the evening, I seemed more fatigued, had painful headaches, and was garbling my words. I was having difficulty swallowing. It was like there was a lump in the base of my throat. My vision didn’t seem right either.

Maybe I’m just getting old. Or, maybe these are menopausal symptoms. I noticed that I was taking more and more steaming hot baths after midnight because of pain.

I called my acupuncturist. She said the treatments wouldn’t cause this stuff. She’d already talked to me about the possibility of thyroid issues. But I’ve been checked many times, and it never shows up as a problem. But, wasn’t my body changing? Maybe I really needed to check this again.

This week, I bought a thermometer to check my base-line morning body temperature for low thyroid. I’ve always run a degree or lower than the “average.” The morning I checked my temp, it was almost 100 degrees. That’s not right, I thought to myself. I must be working on something.

That was enough to get me to make a doctor’s appointment. I was seen that day.

I live in an area that considers Lyme disease an epidemic. We’ve had an early spring. Apparently, Lyme disease is showing up a lot in this practice. Except for the bulls-eye rash, the symptoms seemed to match up. Lots of blood was drawn to rule out other things. But I was sent home with an antibiotic prescription. I was told: if this is Lyme’s disease, the antibiotic will make you feel worse before you feel better.

Having gone through this treatment back in 2003, I also remember how the antibiotic made me nauseous.

After I left the office, I drug myself around various stops to finish up some errands. Passing over the Shenandoah River, I decided to pull off and park. My mind was swirling with so much.

It might sound crazy, but I sure hoped it was Lyme disease since I was afraid of the neurological symptoms. If not this, then what?

What purpose does this illness serve? That seemed like an absurd question.

I am so tired of this, whatever this is – mostly tired. Tired of the headaches, the pain, the self-doubt and inward blaming, the house that is falling apart, my partner’s slow recovery from his accident – something that is taking much longer that either one of us expected.

When will it end? Meaning, when will the illnesses, accidents, heartaches, and all the other injustices end?

Every time I came close to despair, a large fish jumped out of the river. What’s that about? Like a fish out of water? Seeking a bug for nourishment? Jumping for joy? Fish suicide? Taunting the human or the predator?

I would also see a heron about the same time. The heron has a connection to the ancestors among the Northwest Indian tribes. Talk to me. Tell me what to do or stop doing? I did get a honk once from a heron up stream, but I couldn’t assign any meaning to it.

I wanted to cry, but seemed frozen. It dawned on me after a cool breeze caressed my face that the Divine is everywhere. Nature is here to support the cycle of life. Crying would be witnessed in the same way that everything else is around here. Just get it out.

None of my tears made it into the river. But the sobs relaxed my body. I didn’t need to cry gobs, just release some sadness and fear.

Lots of birds had been singing. Something caught my ear.

I couldn’t tell if I had just heard a dog or a barred owl. I waited. Then with a much stronger, maybe closer hoot, I heard two cycles of the chant, “Who cooks for you.”

Thank you. Thank you.

The barred owl has been an important companion on my spiritual journey for the past several years. One nested in a sycamore tree for a few years near my home. It let me photograph it. My grandparents had a general store named “Sycamore Super Service.” How was this tied into my desire to be of service, my connection with my ancestors,and my soul’s purpose?

All that I really want is an affirmation that in the great Mystery of life, that I am connected to something larger. Standing by the river in the woods, I had gotten an answer. My suffering is not in vain. I didn’t have to know why. I didn’t have to know how.

I drove home and started the medicine.