The physiological consequences of having a benign brain tumor for approximately 30 years were subtly progressive in my life. There were many changes in different areas of my body’s functioning.
Since these changes began several years before I turned 20, it wasn’t until the day of the surgery, more than half of my life later, that my body had been coping with these changes and consequences.
It was something I literally couldn’t have seen or anticipated. The most critical consequences that led me to seek medical care occurred during a difficult personal time in my life, which coincided with the pandemic. I attributed the symptoms I was experiencing to that difficult period.
After the surgery, the team of specialists described the treatment plan, and I also took the opportunity to ask my questions.
Several doctors asked me:
—Didn’t you have headaches?
And no, I didn’t have headaches; I had other symptoms, but not headaches.
In retrospect, one of the aspects I can now identify as very pronounced was depression. However, I couldn’t have known it at the time, because that was my “normal” internal state; I had nothing to compare it to.
I did have moments of joy, but I didn’t know they were within a frame of chronic and progressive depression.
Today, several years after that surgery, I have a different perspective on life. On a visceral level, I know, experience, and even enjoy what life is like without depression. Nowadays, I can enjoy life, something I couldn’t even recognize before. It was already there, but I couldn’t enjoy it.
In scripture, there is a moment where it is described that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
And you, can you perceive that God dwells among us?
The symptoms of depression I experienced prevented me from perceiving that God already dwells among us in His fullness. The internal loneliness I experienced was abysmal. That I didn’t have the physiological capacity to perceive it at the time is a different subject. And yes, God did dwell and continues to dwell in my life as well. It was so easy for me to dismiss that “presence among us” because of my condition. And in the same way, it’s easy to dismiss the fact that God continues to dwell among us when we focus on so many difficult things happening in our world.
And it is in this world that God has chosen to dwell. Can you perceive it?
Do you want to perceive it?
Before my surgery, in that abysmal loneliness I felt, God was present there.
Within our disordered, complicated, and painful world, God dwells among us.
If the Spirit leads you, share with Jesus the carpenter how you might open your perception to his life in your life. And perhaps you will discover that he is more present than you have realized.
Marisol
P.S.: We can hear about God dwelling among us in the readings for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year/Cycle A.
