Karen's Crossing--21 Year Mile Marker

Hello Readers! Today was a special day in my journey through Karen’s crossings. It was the anniversary of the day I was cured of my epilepsy. For twenty one years this date has come and gone and quietly I have cherished it as the “day I was cured.” It was quite the accomplishment after being disabled for twelve years with my epilepsy to be finally freed.


Year after year I always looked forward to that special moment to celebrate silently to myself the “day of my cure.” However, this year as the date approached I began to notice new mixed emotions arriving along with it on the calendar year. They were feelings and thoughts that recently came aboard uninvited.


My little stowaways just couldn’t wait to reveal themselves unexpectedly. Therefore last night as my husband and I ended our day I started to cry. “What’s the matter, Karen?” he asked as he tried to get an answer out of me. “Oh, it’s foolish. Never mind.” I said as I cried harder and harder. My husband may have fallin’ for that answer several times over the years but he wasn’t going to last night. “No,’ he told me, ‘I want to know what’s wrong!”


Sob, sob, sob…..‘I can’t say it, I’m crying too much,” was my reply. Determined to get an answer from me I finally managed to calm down long enough to speak. I told him for 21 years a certain day has come and gone without too much notice but this year it was totally different. I was no longer ‘cured.” Puzzled by my answer I think he was wondering if I had a seizure after twenty one years and that meant I was no longer cured of my epilepsy. “No, it had nothing to do with my epilepsy,’ I told him. ‘It’s foolish. It’s foolish,” was the farthest I could get.


Impatiently waiting to hear my explanation I finally managed to tell him, that because of my bone and breast cancer I could no longer see myself as “cured.” For 21 years I rejoiced over being “cured” but I wasn’t any longer. As foolish as it sounded it was what was in my heart. I had got stuck on that word “cure” and didn’t even know it. Practically dumbfounded by my train of thought the best he could do was hold my hand in silence.


I don’t know how it made him feel after our talk but it sure helped me to get out what I was holding inside. Often in life that’s the best thing we can do for one another is just take the time to pay attention to other people’s silliness or foolish thinking when they need someone to hear. Our job is not to make sense of it all but just simply listen.


All throughout my epilepsy whenever I had a seizure people would reach out and hold my hand until my seizure had passed. I know in my heart that it will be no different with my battle with cancer. I have been cured of my seizures and that is still something worth celebrating. Where I got off thinking that would be the end of my bad health I don’t know. If you think about it the Bible never tells us that the blind beggar was cured and never got sick again. Or the epileptic boy was freed from his seizures never to have another health problem again.


Life happens and we have to take it one day at a time. We can celebrate the good, look forward to more blessings but always be prepared in our hearts to endure the roadblocks and stumbling stones we encounter along the way. I once heard that what we are filled with is what will come out of us when we are punctured by circumstances and people in life.


When I am punctured I want to be so full of the Holy Spirit that only it can be seen emerging out of my heart, soul, and mind. My goal, may it always be to get the Holy Spirit to flow quicker and stronger than the tears that want to surface. Perhaps someday the stowaways I have on board will be God’s angels on board for the ride in a sea of Holy Spirit, in a soul set on God.


Happy Anniversary, to my cure from epilepsy.
I may have cancer but cancer doesn’t have me!