Well, I had a kind of foretaste of what I imagine hell to be like today, my hefty frame laying very tightly jammed into a long MRI chamber for 25 minutes, eyes closed, hearing loud, banging, tormenting, haunting sounds nearly non stop, emanating from the MRI machine. And as an extra splash of fun, I’m claustrophobic.
When I once was a skinny-as-a-bean-pole kid, I had zero claustrophobia, or for that matter fear of heights. I loved crawling on my back through tiny spaces, the ceiling rock face mere inches from my nose, for meters at a time, a hundreds of feet under the ground in a cave. But with my large size today and psyche scarred by my own experience of adulthood, in this valley of tears, what I did today was in comparison for me a great feat. It took a lot of will power to endure those 25 minutes, arms and shoulders wedged against the inside of the tunnel, listening to sounds that reminded me of demons.
Even when you enter the room and get positioned on the table that moves into the chamber, there are oddly those strange banging noises coming from the back of the room, as if you’ve just entered a room in a Halloween haunted house.
We are supposed to meditate on the Four Last Things daily: death, judgment, heaven, and hell, so to dissociate my mind while in the tunnel I mediated on Christ and Mother Mary in heaven. As I was brought inside the tunnel, I thought I need to meditate on something, so that image is what came to mind. I kept telling them I was offering this torment up for my wife, so that she herself will know what is going on in my back however serious. As this day’s penance in working out my salvation, making each day truly count. Spiritually.
But half way into the ordeal, feeling more and more on edge, my mind turned to thinking about death, hearing those crazy sounds, and of our punishment for sin.
Leaving the room, I was able to muster a joke with the MRI Technician that the experience was a foretaste of the torments of hell. He said he jokes with colleagues that a good way to interrogate-through-torture captured terrorists would be to stick them inside an MRI tunnel with all those crazy sounds, non-stop.
There was about a minute in the tube of a constant, very loud, pulsing sound that to me at least in my imagination sounded like the word “No.” It had a short, hard, sharp, unpleasant sound that reminded me of that word. Imagine hearing all around you what sounds like a loud “No” while stuffed into a dark, tight tube, probably a couple hundred times in a minute. At some point listening to that over and over, the image came to mind of a damned soul, put into a torcher chamber, being tormented verbally by a demon, forever. As if the demon were saying “No,” “you’re never going to have another chance at happiness; it’s over for you.”
When I came out of the tube, feeling now free and unencumbered, seeing the light of the room, I thought of the souls finally released from purgatory into the light of heaven.
My purpose in relating this is to remind people including myself that eternal torment awaits those who turn to despair and doubt in God, temptations I confess I’ve had lately going through this tunnel of illness.
When I got home, my wife not working today, I checked the patient portal and read the MRI results, with a bit of relief, though still serious concern. Two bulging discs, no direct nerve impingement at least on that level of nerve involvement, but nothing else. No stenosis, no sign of MS, my two concerns.
Today I have hope in God to see me through this present tunnel, to get through it, for His grace to ignore the torments of the evil spirit of oppression, as all the saints had to deal with in their struggle for holiness.
My pains still feel less today, my mind more clear and normalized each day, with an action plan following the MRIs: major weight loss, chiropractor, physical therapy, continue at gym but with PT exercises, and consult an orthopedic doctor to make sure I don’t need surgery and for clarity on my back and prognosis. This is in addition to treating the other conditions that converged upon one another so fast.
Part of me worries about worst case scenarios, but I can’t really speculate needing to hear what my family doctor and an orthopedic doctor says, so until then it’s in God’s hands.
I have a lot of weight to lose so it will take time, and on the other end I don’t know how impaired I’ll still be after this, or how much in pain, but I will be much more healthy, God willing, and that much better at carrying out my God-given duties of state. All of this is not to complain, but to reflect for my own sake and for anyone who finds value in reading accounts like this.
It is what it is, a phrase which in its best sense to me means to accept the facts as they are as reality, as God’s Providence, to not dwell on ad infinitum, but to move on and deal with it.
I am a sinner. I at least in part, God knows how much, deserve this for my past sins. It is better to suffer now than after death. To pay the price now and reap the reward in heaven. And to help Christ save souls through suffering.
It can always be worse. There are people literally crippled, homebound, with back pain on major pain meds just to get through the day. I was surprised recently to learn from my wife that St. Joseph died at 60 basically bedridden from arthritis. There are paraplegics, quadriplegics, double amputees, quadruple amputees, and people with strange rare disorders like the so-called elephant man with an extremely deformed skull and skeleton.
But, in conclusion, nothing, absolutely nothing bad we can even begin to imagine in this life is as bad as losing your soul, of descending into hell, of being escorted by a tall lizard like demon to your eternal prison cell (literally, according to many reported near death experiences) and then subject to the most indescribable tortures without end or relief. Forever. Which can happen to us all.
Lord have mercy on us. Christ have mercy on us. Lord have mercy on us.