Turbatio

I have just been speaking to X about my symptoms, fears, and feelings related to whatever neurodegenerative disease I may have -- it is so frustrating for me NOT to be able to speak and think with the fluency that I once did. My cognitive ability seems to be slipping away so fast. Just now as I type I'm mixing up letters, and I can see that what I'm writing does not have the structure or flow that it should -- see, I'm writing symptoms in when what I mean to say oughtn't to be tainted with such trivial details. What I mean to say should start with the topic, and then describe according to that rather than go off on bunny trails (I never would have used a cliche before, and here I cannot think of the words to say what I mean with nuance and texture.) So: I've just been telling X that if I have to go through this disease (new neuro)/ these diseases (neuro+nephro) I want it to have some meaning. But how can I have meaning, make meaning, offer meaning to the world, when I cannot think, speak, or write clearly (which would be my usual meaning-making mechanism), when I have no hand eye coordination or proper vision, when my proprioceptive field and interactive abilities have degenerated so? If I cannot balance, I cannot dance; if I cannot see, I cannot paint or draw; if I cannot process, I cannot understand conversations or make music or cook -- how can I go to school, do for others, know and be known, love and be loved? I feel like I am in a cage, like the cage is closing fast. Perhaps I will not degenerate so fast as I have been; perhaps some of my function will be preserved. But then there is the very good chance that I will come to death soon (for which I feel God MAY have been preparing me for some time). "For me to live is Christ, for me to die is gain." But if I say, "I will not remember Him Or speak anymore in His name," Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire Shut up in my bones; And I am weary of holding it in, And I cannot endure it.

GOD will make meaning for me; I cannot machinate to make my life meaningful; He brings salvation with His own hand. 

The paradox: Christ went to death obediently, not opening His mouth (and so I should follow His example so much as He gives me grace to do... I do not want to die, but I do want to be obedient. Not because I want something, not because I want healing or an afterlife in a movement of greed,  but because I want Him... for His own sake.

Christ was oppressed and afflicted; he did not open his mouth. He went to his death without acting as I would -- speeding to get everything said before he died, trying to make everyone understand the meaning of what He was doing. But we know because of what he said before and what someone else (the prophet) has told us what his death means -- that he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, and made the way of salvation open to us all. Following Christ, then, it is not necessary for me to "open my mouth" in the way that I would -- to, as do the poets, obsessively work to leave the creative residue of themselves in the world for all time. All the creative residue I need to leave is Christ's work in me. "He did not open his mouth," and yet the prophet says "But if I say, "I will not remember Him Or speak anymore in His name," Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire Shut up in my bones; And I am weary of holding it in, And I cannot endure it"; so, if I am to speak, I speak Him. If I am to make or to do or to act or to interact then it will be all as unto him. For like the prophet, I am weary of holding it in. Like Psalm 34 says, 

 I will bless the Lord at all times;

His praise shall continually be in my mouth.2 My soul will make its boast in the Lord;
The humble will hear it and rejoice.3 O magnify the Lord with me,
And let us exalt His name together.