Suffering

I have been reading Richard Rohr's emails on and off for about 2 and a half years.  I was really good at keeping up with it, until my life fell apart.  Until my world fell apart.  I know that is dramatic, but now that I am coming out of the 'fog', I really think my life did fall apart.  I started reading his emails, I am going to call them lessons, because that is what I think they are, again.  It's interesting the common theme through him and church has been suffering.  That is what I have been doing, suffering.  That is a pretty powerful word when you think about it, especially when I put that adjective on myself.
The suffering began in ernest when my youngest daughter went off to college for her freshman year.  The second or third week she was there, she contracted pneumonia.  Now, this daughter also has an autoimmune condition, ITP, which causes her platlet count to drop, so her immune system is not all that great.  Well, by the time I got to Western Carolina, they were putting her in ICU.  WHAT!?  She was so sick.  Her whole left lung was full and the next morning, it was starting to move to her other lung.  The doctor told me that he would intubate her if necessary in order for her to heal.  That is a scary moment.  I was alone, until my husband managed to score a free flight to the hospital.  I was scared.  That day though she managed to turn the corner, and she started getting better!  That was traumatic.
The second event was my mom.  She finally decided to move out of their 5 bedroom house in Sandbridge to move into an assisted living facility.  I think she has to be the shortest term resident.  She moved in the first of April and ended up in the hospital 2 weeks later.  She passed away on April 16, 2016.  Gut wrenching suffering.  I lost my mom.  One of the most important people in my life!  She was the one that loved me the MOST.  She is the one who loved hearing about what my girls were doing.  She is the one who stood up for me.  She is my mom.  She is my mom.  It's not like I expected her to live forever, but still, I wanted her to.  She was ready to go, though.  Two months later, her brother, my Uncle Stimp left us.  He said he felt like Pat, my mom, was calling him to join her.  He was so ready to join her.
As I was grieving for my mom, my husband was in pain and tired, all the time.  Which brings us to next traumatic event.  I think it started around Christmas, but it started getting REALLY bad shortly after my mom died. After lots of doctor's visits in which he was diagnosed with many things like Rocky Mountain Spotted fever, rheumetoid arthritis, he was referred to a rheumetoid arthritis specialist.  She had the bright idea to do a complete bloodwork panel, which included a PSA test for the prostate.  Well, that got to the bottom of the problem.  His PSA was in the 90's.  He had missed his urologist appointment, and didn't ever realize it.  He was always good about going and everything was going so well since his first run in with prostate cancer.  He got complacent, or his body was just not operating up to par.  Lots of things, I think, played into what happened next.  His cancer was back and it was aggressive.  At least, we had something to blame for the pain.  The first treatment worked for 2 months, then stopped.  He passed away April 29, 2017.  There is a whole other story behind these events, so I will save that story for another day. 
Back to suffering, me, suffering.  Yes, it has been a few years of suffering.  I am recovering, I am coming out of my suffering enough to see the light, and to know that God is with me.  God has not left me, and God is beside me, and within me.  God has not left me, I think I have left God.  God is gently reminding me that I am not alone.   The past two sermons at church have been about suffering, the Rohr emails have been about suffering.  Would I have noticed this common thread when I was deep in suffering?  Probably not.  Now is when I need to know and see and feel.  It is good.  I am waking up from the suffering. I'm not fully awake, but I am on a journey to become fully awake.

A Little About Just Me

     It's a great title, right?  I thought so!  Since I am going to start actually publishing my blog, I thought I might introduce myself to the interwebs.  I will start at the very beginning so this may take awhile, and I have papers to grade right now.  I will be back....
Okay, so where was I? 
I was born January 23, 1963 in Annapolis, MD.  My parents, Bill and Pat Sinclair, named me Virginia Page Sinclair. My mom wanted to name me Caroline, but my dad was not having it because of the Kennedy's.  Virginia was taken from my most loving grandmother, my mom's mom, Virginia Stimson or Stimpson (I will have to check on that.) Hawkins.  We called her Muttie, other people called her Gints.  Page is a name that this same grandmother liked.  I am not sure why they left out the 'i', but it made for some great teasing as I was growing up.  It was a different name for back then, but I finally met another Paige when I was in elementary school.  I was jealous of her 'i'.  I am the youngest of 4 children.
We moved along the east, living in Severna Park, MD, Charleston, NC, and we ended up staying in Virginia Beach, VA.  We moved to Virginia Beach in 1966 or 67.  I think my mom had had it with the moving thing.  I can't imagine doing it with 4 children.  I know my dad would work out of town and come home on the weekends.  I am not sure how my mom did that either. 
We lived in a nice neighborhood called Alanton.  My sister and I shared a room.  My two brothers got their own rooms. 
I am going to fast forward because I see so many stories in just that time, that I will save it for another time.  After my brothers and sisters had moved on to college, my parents built their dream house in Sandbridge, which is still a part of Virginia Beach.  It used to be a small oceanfront community with not many people who lived there year round.  I had to change schools for the first time in my life and it had to be junior high.  I graduated from Kellam High School in 1981, went to Radford University and had a great time for 4 years, but did not earn a degree.  Again, lots of stories in there.  I went to many colleges for a semester or two, lived in Orlando, FL, for awhile, then finally settled down and got my Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Education from Norfolk State University.  At this time, I met met my future husband and we got married June 27, 1992 6 months after I graduated from college.  I was 29 years old.  I had my first daughter in 1993, and my second and last daughter New Year's Eve in 1996.  I got a teaching job in Virginia Beach in 1994. During that time, I received my Masters Degree in Reading from the University of Virginia.  I taught there until 2005 when we decided to move to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  I started teaching in Dare County in 2007 and I am still teaching!  My husband passed away April 29, 2017, and it is still painful. 
So that is my life in a nutshell because I am beginning to see the many stories that can be told within this short autobiography.

Me and my girls after white water rafting in Western North Carolina.