Here, as the author of this book, I will humbly share my journey of suffering. This is done not to draw attention to myself, but as St. Paul says, “May I never boast except in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). During one of my walks to church, I wondered if I might someday be granted such graces so as to be able to speak another language. For years I had struggled to learn Spanish without ever gaining full proficiency. An idea came to mind: Our Lord had given me a universal language. This was the language of suffering. Indeed, when two strangers meet and they find that each speaks a common mother tongue, there is an immediate bond. Such is the case when two people who have been in the crucible of suffering meet and discover they share a common experience in that they have suffered. There is an immediate understanding between the two hearts, and there is an openness to speak freely. It has been my experience that when a person shares their own suffering, I feel immediately drawn to that person, and my heart opens to likewise share with him or her.

It has also been my experience that in reading some spiritual works of literature, I have found consolation seeing a similarity between how God worked in another soul and how I am experiencing His working within me. Indeed, the Director of all of our stories is the same, although the plot may be different. It is my hope that in reading this account one can see that although the road that was taken was not always easy, when suffering was given in healthy measure, good things resulted in the soul of the traveler. Thus, seeing this testament, may others take solace that indeed suffering does bring a harvest of fruit that provides in abundance.

This story is being laid down as a testament on my birthday, February 9. This brings me the occasion to thank God for the gift of my birth that was not altogether certain. As a single mother in the mid-1970s and unwed, my mother faced significant pressure from my father to have an abortion. My grandparents disowned my mother, and she found herself in a tough and financially precarious situation bringing a new child into the world. Yet I was given the gift to enter the world. My mother sometimes worked two or three jobs to ensure I was well provided for. Her parents later relented and accepted me into the family, which was a wonderful grace. This led to many childhood visits to Grandma and Grandpa’s home when I was sick. Since my mother was a single parent, she had to juggle taking care of me with her duties at work. As I was in daycare, I always seemed to be coming down with some cold or flu. Thus, I spent many visits recovering under the care of my grandparents. A childhood that included much uncertainty laid down a strong grain of a desire for self-sufficiency, and as I entered adulthood, I settled on a profession in the sciences. This was done, I told myself, to guarantee I could always “stand on my own two feet” and provide for myself. My father had left before I was born. Watching my mother struggle to provide for both of us instilled a strong work ethic and a determination to never rely on anyone else. I harbored no ill will toward my father; it was rather just something subconscious that led me always to look for a future that had safety measures in place. The safety measure I was seeking was a skill that would always have value and stability. In this I found dentistry a good match. It blended my artistic interests with an ability to travel the world and help people. The latter two I began during my years of training, visiting such places as Haiti and the Amazon region of Peru where I helped to provide dental care during mission visits.

After four years of dental school and three years of residency, I was now not only a dentist, but also a specialist trained to do root canals and dental surgeries. I had met my husband in the combined medical and dental school curriculum at the University of Connecticut, and we were married just after my graduation from dental school. We spent our residency training traveling between three states as my husband’s training was in two medical centers in states neighboring the state where I was in training. Those years of training in my twenties were ones rooted in worldly things. My focus was on schoolwork and attaining the ultimate goal, which was a good job and long-term security. I had become a lukewarm Catholic; I attended Sunday Mass, but there was an absence of any significant prayer life. This had not been the case early in my life. As a young girl, I attended Catholic elementary school, high school, and college. At least once a week during my middle and high school years, I worked in my church rectory serving the priests dinner and answering the door. In high school I traveled to World Youth Day and made other pilgrimages. My mother and I did not pray nightly as a family, but I did pray privately and had a deep relationship with God. But during my twenties, I drifted from daily prayer, the intimacy of my relationship with God became distant, and I found pride hardening my heart.

As we completed our medical training, we were able to purchase a home, and I accepted a job as an endodontist. It seemed like everything was falling into place. This was, of course, according to my plans. That first year of private practice, I began to have difficulties with my joints and especially in my hands. This seemed very odd as I was just thirty years old. We also discovered we were expecting our first child. The joint dysfunction continued to accelerate in my hands requiring me to leave my job after just one year. I was scared and embarrassed and at first did not fully explain to the other dentists in the group the reason for my departure. I still held out hope I might recover and return to treating patients. This was never to be the case.

During the pregnancy, I was diagnosed by a geneticist with a rare genetic condition affecting my collagen. The name of the condition is “Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.” There are several types of this condition. The form I have is called “Classical Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome,” which has many of the features of the other subtypes. Included in this are joint instability and dislocations, which for me was one of the most debilitating parts of the condition. There are varying degrees of penetrance, meaning some individuals carrying the genetic defect may exhibit symptoms to a lesser or greater degree. It appeared I had a more severe case. The joint instability, as was explained by the geneticist, becomes particularly pronounced in one’s twenties and thirties. He did not recommend pregnancy because postpartum, my health would decline. He said the increased instability could be temporary, or I might never regain my prior stability even months or years after the baby was born. However, I was already pregnant and was not considering ending the pregnancy. What the geneticist had discussed with us came to pass. After our son was born, my joints became even more unstable. Certain bones in my feet and ankles would slip out of place, causing severe pain and an inability to stand more than five minutes or walk the distance of more than two houses on our street where the homes are tightly placed. The inability to take walks was a big loss. This had been a source of great joy for me. We live near our town center, and my husband and I loved walking into the center in the evenings.

As these different functions were lost, there was a mourning that occurred. Unlike professional athletes that are shown coming back from an injury through hard work and toughing it through the pain, this disability required a different approach. Instead of pushing through the pain to attempt to return to function, the opposite approach was needed. It was an approach opposite to my natural inclination. Instead of doing something, the needed course was one of restraint. More activity only brought one down the road of more injury and other parts of the body being pulled into the dysfunction. The dislocations immediately caused a feedback loop within my body to cause a locking down of neighboring muscle groups and an atrophy of muscles in the area of the injury. Thus, with each injury I became increasingly weaker and more prone to injury. It was a vicious cycle. One might question such a situation as I did, but as a person with significant science training, I attempted every avenue and found restraint was the path of prudence.

Within the three months following our son’s birth, I began to think of increasing our family. With my poor health, adoption seemed a natural choice. My husband and I made the decision together that we would pursue international adoption of an older child. In this way, I would not need to lift an older child, which was not possible for me. It also seemed like we could help a need as often older children are considered harder to place in a home. We also began to look for an older sibling pair. The process of adoption took us around the globe to Kazakhstan. We adopted a girl and boy sibling pair. The older of the two, our daughter, was eight at the time of the adoption, and her brother, our son, was four. Thus, when they came to live with us, our biological son was just one-and-a-half years old, and we were now a family of five.

When our two adopted children came to live with us, I was still able to drive. I was still in pursuit of finding a solution to this condition myself. I was convinced I did not need God. Thus, I did not take the situation of my disability to prayer. I see very clearly now that had I turned to God earlier, I do not think I would have been brought so low. But in complete stubbornness I persisted in my search for a specialist to solve everything.

The next year was a spiral downhill. A terrible injury to both wrists by a doctor trying to help me left me unable to drive. The injury was so severe that my elbows also were involved, and then my right shoulder became frozen for a year. I could no longer wear normal clothes as I could not raise my right arm normally. Loose sweaters that fastened in the front kept me warm as coats were not possible. I could not wash my hair properly, and it became matted. My whole appearance deteriorated. One doctor recommended a medication that made my face break out, and again I felt more self-conscious. I felt terrible and looked terrible. I was losing hope and slipping into despair. My husband could see this and felt very badly for me, but he did not know what to do.

I would compare myself during this time to a puddle. I was nothing. I could go no lower. It was at that moment that I finally surrendered to God. I went to confession. It had been several years since I had gone to confession. Tears flowed as I began to speak to the priest. I took a tissue to blow my nose and injured my hand. I thought how pathetic it was that I could not even cry about my situation. The priest showed me great compassion. It was then that hope began to flood into my heart.

Following the confession, I began to pray a nine- day novena. There was a very gentle improvement and stabilization that began in my body. It was nothing dramatic, but I noticed it. At the end of the novena, I stopped praying for a week and noticed a backslide physically. I can now see this was a gentle guide from the Heavenly Father to encourage me on the good path I had started on, and when I started to drift, He showed me my error. Noticing this, I returned to prayer. There began in my heart a desire to go to daily Mass. Yet the inability to drive and walk to Church posed a problem. Thus, with great earnestness I prayed that God would give me the ability to walk to Church. This too came through a novena of prayer. Shortly after the novena I began to be able to walk to Church. It was a tremendous gift, one for which I continue to be grateful.

One particular day after Mass, I stayed and noticed a group of women praying the Rosary. I joined them, and thus daily Rosary after Mass became my normal routine. My prayer life continued to build, and we began to pray as a family with my husband reading the Bible to all of us each evening. The children loved this time together.

One Christmas each child asked for a Bible. On Christmas morning we went to visit their grandmother. All were content in a corner of the living room reading their Bible. Our youngest was too young to read, so there was an audio component to the Bible which he played.

Joy was back in my heart. Surely it was not easy. There was much suffering, and I was dependent on everyone for even the smallest tasks. It was as if Our Lord was bringing great simplicity to my life and making me in many ways like a tiny child who needed to ask for help with everything. The Lord through the gift of suffering and disability had given me a great armor of humility. No longer could I tell myself I was in control. No, I could not even open a refrigerator or prepare food for myself. When I wanted to lie down, someone had to take off my shoes. I was not in control.

There had been an occasion before the Confession and my return to prayer when I went to a doctor. He was treating my hands routinely with injections into the joint spaces. An irritating solution was injected to try to thicken or scar the ligaments to create some level of stability. As my joints were often chronically dislocated, the joint spaces were already in an inflamed and painful state. I would see one practitioner who would try to reset the joints, and then immediately my husband and I would go to the next doctor to inject the joints. It was a very painful process. Leaving the doctor, I saw that my hands and wrists looked like someone wearing boxing gloves. The skin was stretched with the fluid that had been injected, and blood oozed from the many injection points.

One day we had decided to allow the doctor to try to inject many locations in my neck, back, and the base of the skull to help with instability in this region of my body. Getting into the position to even receive the injections was precarious and fraught with risk. No longer could I get on my stomach or lean on my knees and hands, and yet this was indeed what I needed to do. Once I was in position, he began with the many injections. Tears ran from my eyes into the pillow where my face was pressed. No one could see my face. I felt like a pin cushion, and self-pity set in. I thought to myself, “Is this what my life has come to?” There was no joy in the experience. . . only utter sadness and grief over a life that felt worthless.

Some ten years later, preparing to make a mission trip to East Africa, I decided to return to the same doctor. I knew the injections would help provide some stability in my back, which would be needed on the long trip. Even in my controlled environment at home I was prone to many injuries. How, then, would I fare in Africa? I looked forward to the appointment with the doctor not just for the stability I hoped I might get in preparation for the trip. I also knew that there would be considerable suffering involved in the treatment and that this would be a great help in the trip as each soul saved requires a sacrifice. If one hopes to help Our Lord in evangelization, the currency to help Our Lord reach souls is suffering.

When I finally saw this doctor again after some years, he was most happy to see my husband and me. The trip to see the doctor was lengthy, and as I did not drive, I also wanted to get a large part of my body treated as most of my joints are unstable. He agreed to try to treat as much as we could do in the time he had allocated as long as I was able to tolerate the procedure. It was challenging to get into the position needed, but this time my spirits were completely different. As the injections began, I united my suffering to Christ’s suffering. Joy flooded my heart. Tears ran out of my eyes, but they were tears of joy. The doctor kept asking me if I was okay, to which I responded that I was “good.” I could feel the pain, but I was without sadness. The self-pity was gone. Instead, gratitude filled my heart. God gave me the strength to undergo the procedure, and more treatment was rendered than the doctor had anticipated.

Because there had been an earlier experience to view in parallel, I could see how different the two experiences had been. The bedrock of the second experience was trust. Trust had not existed in the prior experience. The first time, I saw myself alone in my lot in life. The second time, I saw I was not alone; I was united to Christ, and we were together.

For me to reach this place, Our Lord had gone to great lengths to establish this firm foundation of trust. It did not come smoothly. Rather, it came in steps. Each soul Our Lord leads in a different way. Our own response to Him dictates how He will work. In my progression there had been a period of stagnation. Our Lord was calling for more prayer with the heart and trust, and yet I had not seen how to move forward. Thus, as I look back, I can now see something drastic was needed.

The scene of the test was along the path of daily conversion we each go through in our journey of life. This life involved daily Mass, multiple Rosaries a day, and other devotional prayers. Yet Our Lord was taking me to the fire to do more work. Another challenge lay ahead. It occurred halfway between the two injection experiences. A physical therapist who had been so critical to my treatment was abruptly removed. He had chosen to join a professional sports team to lead their physical therapy program and would no longer be seeing private patients. The blow of this news was beyond anything I could have imagined. He had been the only person to successfully help me when the complex bones of my wrist would slip out of place. I knew the decline I could expect with no treatment. It was beyond my comprehension. People offered to pray that I would find someone new to treat me, but I thought this impossible and rather said it would be better to pray for a full healing than to think I could find someone to replace this person who had been a linchpin in my treatment. I had become so dependent on him, and the news of his office’s closing had been abrupt. There was no gentle process of wrapping one’s mind around such news. There was just the notification that there would be no more treatments.

Thus, as the news was fresh in my mind, I found myself walking home one day from Mass. There was snow on the ground, and there were also some patches of ice. My walks home were a time of prayer, and as I was about three-quarters of the way home, my foot slipped on some ice. I was up in the air and then landed on the ground. It was so sudden. At first assessment I could not detect any breaks in my bones. My most immediate concern was how to get up. It had been years since I had been able to get up from the ground. I could not put weight on my hands. Sitting there I tried to remain calm. Cars buzzed by on the busy street. Then an older woman was visible approaching on the sidewalk. She immediately came over and offered her help. I could not take her hand as my hands were too unstable to use. She offered to call an ambulance, but this too seemed risky. Often people wanting to help can cause damage because of my frailty.

I had an idea. There was a bit of curb in the distance, and if I waddled on my backside I might just get there, and the lip might give me enough height to stand without using my hands. Thus, with her watching I began making my way over to the lip. Yet between where I sat on the sidewalk and the curb was a mote. It was a berm of grass that was in winter an area of pooling mud and melted snow. As I moved through this, I could feel I was in complete mud. The older woman nudged me on, saying, “You’re in it now; keep going.” I got to the curb but found the height insufficient to allow me to stand. An idea came. Maybe the woman could take hold of my pants at the waist and pull up. It was the only place that could take such force. She came in front of me and pulled up. As if I were a feather, I flew to my feet. I was up. Praise God! I thanked the woman and began my way home. As I walked, I could feel I was in shock from the event, and tears dripped down from my eyes.

When I got home, I called my husband, who was at work. After I told him what happened, he offered to come home. But I did not want him to cancel his patients, and so I went down to the basement by our pellet stove to warm up. I put a dish towel on the seat, and, unable to get out of my wet clothes, I sat there. When I stood up, dry dirt fell from my pants. I was a mess. Yet as I stood, I could see that my condition could have been much worse. My worst nightmare of a fall had been realized. I had dramatically fallen to the ground with no hope of seeing the person whom I trusted to fix me. And yet I was still there breathing, and—although bruised—I had minimal injuries. The Lord would see me through this trial and through Providence to a doctor that could treat my hands. I had faced my worst fear, and Our Lord had seen me through it. I was not alone. Someone was watching out for me. He knew my needs, and I had only to trust Him. This was the step Our Lord needed me to take. I could not have taken it alone. Our Lord had to remove the fixtures in my life that provided stability so I could see that the true stability in my life came from God.

Once I knew this, my view on suffering and life’s uncertainties would take a new direction. The road we began to travel together led to greater and greater simplicity, confidence, and trust. As problems came, the bigger the problem, the smaller I needed to become. Simplicity was the only response. Worry led down a rabbit hole to worse things. My prayers did not center on my physical health. Of greater concern to me was my spiritual health and my hope to grow in holiness. Yet as Our Lord and I worked together in the spiritual Vineyard, I could see tiny improvements physically although I had not asked for them. I was still disabled and needed help, but there were tiny tasks I could do such as pulling up a zipper on my jacket. This was a big victory as for many years I had to walk clutching my jacket together when it was cold since I could not zip my jacket. Yet despite these tiny improvements, I was ever aware that at any moment I could be hurled back to those days of complete instability and excruciating pain. I could not look down the road; I had to live in the moment. For to look into the future only brought a pang of worry. When thoughts like this came, I knew there was but one recourse: to acknowledge myself as a tiny helpless child of Our Lord and think only of the tasks He had set before me that day. Scripture says, “Sufficient for a day is its own evil” (Mt 6:34), and these words became my consolation.