--Now, something more cheerful: Recently, I think last Tuesday, a long-lost friend made contact with me! Brian (real name used with permission) and I took a Creative Writing course together in Fall 2014. I hadn't spoken to him since--almost two years--but he had been trying to find me since the course ended! Thursday we finally talked on the phone...for TWO HOURS. He has come alongside me in my time of need, and he is wonderfully there for me. He loves me and cares about me...not that he's said so yet, but he doesn't have to. It's obvious to me from our conversations. We plan to go to a museum together next Sunday. As always now, I will have to do it in a wheelchair...but that's not a problem because I fully trust him to push it properly.
--And, the tiny miracle: When the Rabbi at the Orthodox synagogue I now attend heard how much pain I was in, and that my doctor couldn't do anything more, he insisted on taking me to the grave of the Rebbe (last great leader of the Chabad movement) to pray for healing. I didn't think it would do much good, but I could tell the Rabbi really wanted to help and this was the very best he had to offer, so I agreed to go along. On the car ride there, I was at a 10 out of 10, and thinking "I shouldn't have come; it's not going to do anything, and the bumpy car rides are just going to make me worse." And yet, somehow, on the car ride back, I felt better! That absolutely should not have been possible, what with riding over bumpy roads, the stairs at the building, and standing up, without leaning on anything, next to the grave for about 10 minutes. Yet it did! Now it brought me from a 10 to a nine--still an unbelievable, unimaginable amount of pain--but I will take whatever I can get.
--To end my post, here is a Reece's Rainbow Aging-Out child. With this entry, it is time to post a girl. So, please meet "ASHLEY," diagnosed with DOWN SYNDROME, and only Down Syndrome! "Ashley" ages out THIS OCTOBER...that's three months.
