Spirit Matters: Making it through the dark night

Happy New Year.

This is my first fresh offering for the 2024 calendar year, and I am grateful and excited to be back.

As many of you are aware, I had a hysterectomy at the end of December. All went well, and I am now nicely on the road to recovery, but my first foray into the effects of general anesthesia provided some detours I’d rather not take again.

With the weather being as snowy and cold as it has, and the sunshine on sabbatical, I have had to work extra hard to keep my spirits up, while also experiencing cabin fever.

So, I have done what I could do – what I have to do – to stay sane.

I have “journaled” it out.

With notebook and assorted markers in hand, I’ve doodled, scribbled, and spontaneously expressed in words as best I could, the myriad emotions and sensations swirling through my being during this tender time.

Sometimes relief is instantaneous.

Other times not so much.

So then I take St. Benedict’s advice in his monastic Rule, and “always … begin again.”

It is good advice.

Solid advice.

And if you haven’t learned yet, it is advice applicable to pretty much any situation life has to offer.

It can take a while to work through discomfort, whether it be physical or spiritual. The key is to allow ourselves that truth, and be as patient and compassionate with ourselves and our own limitations as we are with those whom we love.

Always, we begin again.

As I was lying in bed at night the first week after surgery, all-too-aware of my own discomfort, but also mindful of how intensely chaotic are the current events on the world stage, I was overcome with a sense of helplessness.

So much – OK, pretty much everything that happens outside the four walls of our home – beyond my control.

My heart aching for the humans near and far suffering in ways I can scarcely imagine, ways far beyond what I was being asked to endure in those moments.

What could I possibly do then, there, to acknowledge my solidarity with suffering humanity outside my bedroom windows? And not just suffering “humanity,” but real, flesh-blood-and-bone homo sapiens, with beating hearts and tormented souls.

People who feel good things and bad, just like you and me. People who experience pain at the most profound physical and emotional levels…

What could I possibly do then, there, to acknowledge my solidarity with those people, with these people?

And then, in the dark of the night, it occurred to me.

As I lie in my bed, waiting to drift off to sleep while navigating post-op discomfort, I could breathe.

With nothing else to distract me, I could inhale, noticing the breath of life as it moved through and animated my body. And then, when the moment at the top of the inhale came, I could exhale, allowing that breath to go out into the space around me – out into the world to the billions of faceless brothers and sisters I have around the world.

Brothers and sisters I will never meet. Brothers and sisters I will never see or touch or speak with…

Brothers and sisters in our shared humanity, our shared suffering, our shared prayer that somehow, someway, we will make it through this long, dark night.

Together.

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.