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My physical entrapment
It did not hit me at first, that I would live a life of entrapment within my own body. It took me a couple years to come to that understanding.
Distress.
The reality of my fate hit my conscious mind when I was a freshman in high school and sixteen years old. I remember sitting on the school bus on the way home from school one afternoon, doubled over as my stomach felt like knives were sticking through it. My mom took me to a doctor who asked questions such as “Do people make fun of you?”
Yes, there were whispering voices and wagging tongues behind my back, but people did not need to make fun of me because my mirror spoke the truth. The shadow my body cast from the sun spoke. My clothes spoke. I could get away from people, but not these things of every day life. I was trapped.
The doctor sent me home with a diagnosis of stomach spasms and high blood pressure, and little pills that had me singing Three Blind Mice in the dark. I was wound up like a top, so he gave me an initial aggressive dose of cortisone to unwind me, and a maintenance dose for a few days thereafter. It worked. The stomach spasms left and my blood pressure went down to normal. But the cause of both was still there. How was I to permanently be free of the anxiety that had worked havoc on my body? How was I going to cope with life?
Run to Help.
I ran to Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, whom I had learned about and embraced when I was in the orthopedic hospital. That is what I did. I basically threw myself upon Him in order to live. And He gave me a life. A normal life in the midst of what was not the norm.
And He gave me more than a normal life, He gave me deep joy. He enveloped me in grace, giving me the strength I needed emotionally to live. I did not understand at the time all that He had done, and in fact it was not until I was in my 40s that I did understand.
When in my 40s I wrote three articles that deal with some aspect of my running to Jesus for help. They are on this website under the Articles tab. They are—Trapped!, Called To Joy, and Hooked on Grace.