On Sickness and Light

If I were a character in some story, would I have a happy ending?

That is the question I ponder as I lie in the MRI machine. All I can do in in this mechanical tunnel is think, remember, and wonder. I’m nearly thirty, and I’m not where I thought I would be. Cracks run through my bones, making it hard to stand, hard to move. It’s a rare bone disorder I’ve carried since birth, but it tightened its grip last October. Since then, it’s as if a pause has been added between every moment, but I’ve learned to view these beautifully useless moments as a blessing.

The machine blares around me like a distressed metal animal, and I’m tempted to think of all the things I could be doing in this time. It’s the same thought pattern I used for years to terrorize myself into a state of constant productivity—but no, I don’t dwell on that. There’s too much to be grateful for.

I am grateful for the pain. I am grateful for the hours of tests, the appointments, the unending insurance paperwork. I am even grateful for the physical and mental agony of sitting behind a desk, trying to meet a ghostwriting deadline while prescribed pills that make me feel like my IQ has dropped thirty points. Life has arrived as a full package; I must be grateful for all of it, or for none of it. I choose all.

I couldn’t feel this gratitude if I thought all these separate threads were meaningless. Both logic and intuition tell me there is a reason for everything, that every experience builds toward some future good. I don’t know exactly what that reason is, but I do know that we can only heal others to the degree that we ourselves have suffered.

The speaker overhead announces thirty minutes of imaging left. That’s all right. I can handle being useless now. It used to depress me, because I believe the purpose of life is to help others, and I didn’t know how to do that in a broken body. But these long hours of stillness have taught me how I can help, even within my limits. Still, I wonder what I will be able to accomplish in my lifetime. Give me as much life as possible, I think. I want to do as much as I can.

But why? Is it not simply enough to be alive? Do I have to be alive and a well-known author? Do I have to be alive and live the dream of a family, a home, a successful career? For me, there can be no “and.” Being alive is enough.

Death has always terrified me, but the hospital makes it feel close, touchable. There have been moments when I’ve felt closer to my end than my beginning, and I wonder, What will it be like? What does crossing over to the other side feel like, look like? Anything? Will I still be myself? Will my name be Colin, will I think my own thoughts, will I have my personality?

These questions could lead to a dark spiral, but instead, they lead me upward. I know life does not end. This spiritual mystery I call consciousness did not begin with me, and it will not end with me. Life becomes life, in newer and greater realities.

The machine is loud, but its sounds are mere echoes in the silence. My body throbs with pain, but it rests in open space, suffused with God’s love. I remember the times in my life when there was no room for despair, because my mind was absorbed in miracles. Sometimes it happened in dramatic settings: a Zen temple in Japan, the Australian Outback, ten-day silent meditation retreats. More often, they were ordinary: walking along Lake Michigan, watching a leaf fall to the ground, or times of prayer when God moved through me like liquid sunlight.

These moments form a single bond of love. This is how I know I am human: I love. Without it, I would only be a mechanical assemblage, no more alive than this MRI scanner. But with love, I can live for others, beyond the gravitational pull of the self. I can choose to do good in whatever ways remain open to me. Lord knows others have loved me in this way. How can one person handle so much love in a single life?

The machine clicks, and I start sliding out of the tunnel. The exam is over. I go back to the waiting room and surrender my future to God. I speak to him, and he speaks back—not in audible words, but in something that feels like memory. I don’t always understand it until I put it into words. That is what I’ll do when I get home, and that is what I’ll do until the day I cross over to that place where no words are needed, because then I will know fully, even as I myself am fully known. My eyes will be filled with light, and I catch glimmers of that light now.