- Feb 5, 2002
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(OSV News) I have a hole in my head — an extra one, that is. It’s in the temporal bone, where a useful skull covers the superior semicircular canals, maintaining an even pressure around the delicate parts of the inner ear involved in hearing and balance.
My skull is not up to this relatively simple task. Coupled with vestibular migraines, I am left with headaches, imbalance, vision issues, anxiety, fatigue, brain fog and a rare hearing problem called autophony. I hear — and quite loudly — my pulse, my creaking joints, my footsteps, my distorted voice and other bodily sounds best left unheard. I can actually hear myself blink.
I was in the fifth year of formation for the permanent diaconate when this cluster of problems became something I could no longer ignore. Because the eyes, brain and inner ear are all heavily stressed trying to piece together positional information from my broken internal gyroscope, I’d begun to have the peculiar feeling of being in a malfunctioning virtual reality headset. It’s hard to do graduate-level theology while your brain also is trying to navigate a world that seems oddly surreal.
Anyone preparing for ministry can tell you stories about the trials they endured on the road to ordination, and the men in my class were no exception. These trials can take on a spiritual dimension, and the suffocating darkness sometimes has a quality — a suddenness, a strength, a particularity — that feels supernatural. In any life a little rain is bound to fall over six years, but there’s rain and then there are hurricanes.
It’s hard not to wonder: Why me? I think of St. Teresa of Avila, lying in the mud, and saying to God “if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them.”
Of course, the answer is “Why not me?” Or, in the words of Charlie Brown, “Why me, Lord? Don’t answer that!”
Continued below.
www.oursundayvisitor.com
My skull is not up to this relatively simple task. Coupled with vestibular migraines, I am left with headaches, imbalance, vision issues, anxiety, fatigue, brain fog and a rare hearing problem called autophony. I hear — and quite loudly — my pulse, my creaking joints, my footsteps, my distorted voice and other bodily sounds best left unheard. I can actually hear myself blink.
I was in the fifth year of formation for the permanent diaconate when this cluster of problems became something I could no longer ignore. Because the eyes, brain and inner ear are all heavily stressed trying to piece together positional information from my broken internal gyroscope, I’d begun to have the peculiar feeling of being in a malfunctioning virtual reality headset. It’s hard to do graduate-level theology while your brain also is trying to navigate a world that seems oddly surreal.
Anyone preparing for ministry can tell you stories about the trials they endured on the road to ordination, and the men in my class were no exception. These trials can take on a spiritual dimension, and the suffocating darkness sometimes has a quality — a suddenness, a strength, a particularity — that feels supernatural. In any life a little rain is bound to fall over six years, but there’s rain and then there are hurricanes.
It’s hard not to wonder: Why me? I think of St. Teresa of Avila, lying in the mud, and saying to God “if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them.”
Of course, the answer is “Why not me?” Or, in the words of Charlie Brown, “Why me, Lord? Don’t answer that!”
Continued below.
The God-shaped hole in my head
What makes sense of pain? It's often pointless and miserable. God can bring good out of evil, but it’s not automatic.
www.oursundayvisitor.com
