Coming Out
First, I don’t quite mean it exactly as it sounds, but I have published a little profile image to go with comments. Also I have experienced some dramatic lifestyle changes this year. A few years ago I met a psychologist from New York and we kept in touch as friends, until last spring when we became engaged and married this past summer.
However, a couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with a serious illness, and last June it hit a crisis. I ended up in hospital for about a month, getting tests and so on. Finally, a doctor just sat down and said that he was sorry that I was so young, (not that young) but anyway, I could not be cured and it was really too bad. I later learned that my husband (then fiancé) had been told I had only a few days or weeks to live. I could read that in the doctor’s face.
As it turns out, there was an intervention available, and I was discharged from hospital in fragile but stable condition. We got married a few weeks later. Now six months later, I am still in stable condition, no further developments.
So this is how it happens that I am on medical leave from my job in Vancouver, have moved to Toronto, and have submitted my application for a green card. I spend about half of every month in NJ, where we have a house, but I still travel back to Vancouver sometimes, by choice, for medical treatment. I am writing this because so many things have changed in my outlook in this past year. I want to talk about some of it on the blog.
BLT 
Here I am!
So nice to “see” you. For a minute I thought you were going to give us a doom’s day announcement. I am so very relieved that you are doing well. Your contributions to theology and the Christian faith are too important to lose.
Wow, you’ve been through so much! All my wishes and prayers for your continuing health and happiness!
Thank you for “coming out”! What a momentous period, I’ll join my prayers to the others for your continuing health.
Adding my good wishes and prayers, and thanks for the pic and your continued writings. I am very glad that God’s mercy (healing anointing, interpreted as such by the late Met. Anthony Bloom) met you in this way, and that you are still on this side of the curtain and doing well. Very much looking forward to whatever you write, as usual. Every blessing to you & husband, Suzanne.
Dana
Oh, my! What a whirlwind of the kind of things that really, really matter. Best wishes on your marriage and for your continued health, and I look forward to hearing more of your stories.
Suzanne, I hope and pray for a complete and full recovery. And as of now, you are not just a “survivor” (which has sadly become a cliched and abused phrase, but which everyone understands) but you are absolutely thriving!
This series of posts also demonstrates amply a very special skill that you have: the ability to frame intellectual issues not only in the abstract sense (in the way that our teacher Aristotle taught us) but also in a personal way. I do not know how to do the latter, and reading this series of posts is, for me, a master class. Thank you!
Suzanne, thank you for sharing this, and the three following posts. I had heard you were sick but few details, and nothing about the new man in your life. Belated congratulations on your marriage! And an “Amen” to the prayers for your full recovery, and for a long and happy new life in a new country.
Thank you so much for all your loving comments. Participating in this blog and with all of you as friends means so much to me!