Jack and Jill...

The last time I was in a pool was back in 1995.  It was not that long after I was diagnosed with MS and honestly did not understand the ramifications of this disease.  My niece, twelve at the time, and I were in a very large indoor pool, hanging out in the deep end.  Before I realized what was happening, I had become so fatigued I couldn't keep myself afloat.  I yelled for help, but the cacophony of the indoor pool was deafening and no one heard me.

Terrified, I started trying to tell what her what she would need to do to tow me to the edge of the pool.  She had never done a head lock or knew anything about water rescue.  But I couldn't help her.  I had reached the superlative of wet noodle status.  Somehow, my niece, now terrified herself, managed to keep my head mostly above water and dragged me toward the edge.

Just before we got there, seemingly 1,000 whistles sounded and splashes surrounded me as every lifeguard jumped into the pool.  I couldn't even help them lift me out, not one muscle was cooperating.  So, they dragged me out and dumped me on the side of the pool.  I was covered in blankets and allowed to rest.

I have never been in a body of water since.

From time to time, I have wished to go to the ocean or to a pool, to be in water again.  But how could I?  I mean, I would have to have someone with me. But how do you ask someone to be there to rescue you?  How long would it take now?  In water, you use so very many muscles all at once, so fatigue happens more quickly.  Could I be in for 30 minutes or 20 minutes?  Even 10?

When I was a little girl, we would visit Galveston regularly.  My favorite thing to do was to swim out past the waves to where the swells were. I would lie on my back and allow the ocean to rock me.  The tide would drag me away from our family spot, but my parents did not care, nor did I.  Eventually, I would swim back to shore and walk up the beach until I eventually found my family.  Once there, I would swim out past the waves once more, each time allowing the tide to carry me further and further down the beach.  I was very little, too little to really be in the ocean alone.  But I was.  And I loved being rocked by the water.

And the silence.  When your ears are in the water, or when you are completely beneath the surface, all sound fades away.  All life fades away, really.

Recently, I have been told heat couldn't possibly affect me the way that it does.  Not by medical personnel, but by others.  It is hard to bear such a thing, especially since I have worked so hard to stop bowing to pressure to do things outside.  I keep getting, oh it's not really that hot.  But hot to you and hot to me are worlds apart.  Read about MS and you will see that air-conditioning is my best friends (well, just behind Bettina).  I recently angered someone who wanted me to walk around Mt. Vernon.  I refused.  For one, it is too hot. For another, I cannot walk around but more than about 45 minutes now, before I start getting tired and my legs start hurting.  Then the hurt and fatigue builds until I cannot walk and am essentially trapped wherever I am.  I was told how selfish I was for not going, for refusing to do something friendly with others.  All I kept thinking was: Why is it not selfish of you to ask me to do something that is dangerous to me? 

Still, that criticism/doubt has been ringing in my head.  So, I took a bath last night.

I cannot really describe how it felt to allow the water to fill over my head and to find the peace of that silence.  The tub was so full that I actually floated the tiniest bit.  So, I lay there trying to remember being rocked by the ocean swells.  The hot water, my hair floating about me, the silence, the comfort.  Well, it was great.  It was what I needed.

When I was first diagnosed with MS, one of the wonky things that was happening is that I would take a hot bubble bath, reading a book, and then become incredibly weak when I got out.  I often fainted before I made it the few feet to my tub.  Once I learned why that was happening, I took baths a few more times and then quit. I gave them up.

From time to time, I have tried to ask someone to stay with me (not in the bathroom) while I took a bath, thinking that if I just had help getting to my bed, I could sleep off the heat-related effects because once a person with MS cools down, the symptoms will abate.  With extreme heat, the weakness and such can last for a long while, but the fainting, the confusion, etc. will get better.  But no one safe ever really wanted to do so. I guess that was an inappropriate thing to ask.

But knowing the cost, I took a bath last night, thinking more about that doubt, that criticism, than what I know is healthy for me.  I savored the time in the tub.  That profound silence, the stillness, being awash in a place where the world faded away was something I really, really needed.  I guess I just need to find another way to achieve it.

For I did not make it to my bed.

Instead, I stumbled about on the way to my bedroom, tripped on the floor rug, and then went headfirst down the stairs, landing against the bookcase.  It fell.  Those darned Harry Potter books tumbling all over me again.  Only this time, I was so weak from the heat of the bath, I couldn't move the bookcase off of me.  All night.  I actually slept beneath it.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown.
And Jill came tumbling after.


Lying there beneath the bookcase, I kept thinking about a line from a poem someone read to me on Saturday:

Hymn to God, My God, In My Sickness

                                     ~John Donne

SINCE I am coming to that Holy room,
Where, with Thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made Thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before;

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die;

I joy, that in these straits I see my west;
For, though those currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
In all flat maps—and I am one—are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.

Is the Pacific sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar?
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

So, in His purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord;
By these His thorns, give me His other crown;
And as to others' souls I preach'd Thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own,
“Therefore that He may raise, the Lord throws down.”


I am not even sure what it means...I shall be made Thy music...but I savor that thought.  There will come a time when I no longer disappoint, when I no longer fail, when I no longer cast such a poor reflection of all that He has given me, when I am no longer confused.  There will come a time.

I will no longer be wrong in my thoughts, feelings, opinions, and desires.
I will no longer need to be anyone, any way, but who I am.
I will no longer be hungry for the Gospel and to understand its doctrine.

At His feet, I shall finally be what He created me to be.





Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!