Pageant Question: You have been granted a miraculous healing power that could terminate any single disease, which one disease would you choose?

Father Mark wasn't used to having parishioners actually wanting to speak with him.  He was used to having brief, polite conversations at the end of Mass; stern conversations with parents of Sunday school kids; whispered confessions muffled by oak and worn velvet.  But not a request to go out for coffee, and never from someone his own age.

The cavernous church emptied further with every funeral.  Grey, silver, white and bald heads dotted the first ten rows.  One Sunday morning, at 10:30 Mass, now the only Mass held because of the poor attendance, there was a new face under a shock of unruly dark brown hair.  A new, young face.  The young man stood and sat and knelt just slightly after everyone else, not as familiar with what Father Mark once overheard someone call "Catholic aerobics".

One Sunday evening as he dozed in the confessional waiting the usual handful of "I took the Lord's name in vein when I couldn't get my pill bottle open," Father Mark popped to attention when he heard a new voice.  "Father, may I speak to you?"

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When you hurt yourself or become sick, your very first thought is to berate yourself for not appreciating the times when you felt fine.  "Why didn't I appreciate being able to sit without pain?"  "Why didn't I appreciate being able to breathe?"  "Why didn't I appreciate being able to concentrate?"

Take a moment now and assess yourself.  How do you feel?  Are you sitting comfortably?  If not, adjust your body or even change your seat.  Relax your shoulders and straighten your neck.  Take a deep breath, in and out.  In and out.  Are you good?  Sit back and appreciate your wellness for a moment.  Even if you aren't 100%, appreciate what you have.  It could be worse, right?  Always.  After all, the dead aren't reading this book.

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How creepy is it to have the heart you were born with thrown out and some dead person's slopping around in its place, waiting to be rejected by your ungrateful body?  Super freaking creepy, is what.  A stranger's heart is hiding in my chest, and I know it doesn't want to be there.  It wants to be back in its owner, a stupid twenty-three year old college kid with a motorcycle and a need for speed, but it can't go back because he smeared himself down a highway.  Luckily for me, they say, the road rash didn't go all the way through his body to damage his heart, which still beats ferociously, wishing to find the adrenaline thrill of a street race again.  Unfortunately, it's in my chest.  My stupid body wants my old heart back.  I want my old heart back.  I wasn't meant to be parted from it.  I was born with it, and I should have died with it, but since I'm only a few years older than that stupid dead motorcyclist hot rod, I'm alive and waiting.  I hate the sound of this heart which beats, traitor...traitor...traitor...  I'm a traitor to myself and I know I will pay when my body finally says, ENOUGH! and rejects this adrenaline-junkie's meat.

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Many people, not just men, mind you, believe that PMS simply makes a woman bloated, bitchy and desirous of chocolate.  That is only partially true.  The symptoms suffered by premenstrual women, or by women suffering from any hormonal fluctuations, are often more subtle and much more psychologically harmful than indulging in extra chocolate.  The following example may help to demonstrate the transformation due to PMS.

Dreams become weird.  They are colorful and frightening.  Demons lurk in basements and the feeling of loss and personal error leading to loss lingers upon awakening.  Helping to magnify the dream state is poor sleep.  A sufferer finds herself weary during the day, but unable to fall asleep.  She may also wake frequently and have difficulty falling back to sleep.  Dreams haunt until morning.

The sufferer will find herself marked by zits and bruises.  Often, it is a sudden zit that will first alert her that something is awry.  The bruises come from carelessness with one's body.  The corner of a bookshelf will be closer than is realized, bruising an elbow.  She will take a corner too closely and bruise a hip.  She will crack a shin, a knee, her head.  She will close her finger in a drawer.  However it happens, there will be bruises.

These are, perhaps, first noticeable symptoms, and they may be understood by the woman and then used to acknowledge that the more harmful symptoms she has already been experiencing (unnoticed and unacknowledged) are due to hormones and not due to any suddenly revealed Truth about the world.  It will seem that Truths (with a capital T) have been revealed.  Motives behind others' actions will suddenly be realized.  Tone of voice will indicate volumes of hidden feelings.  Words unsaid will speak to the heart and be understood when once there was just a nice, quiet moment.  The world will show itself as it truly is.  HOWEVER: this is a lie.  It is a lie told by hormones that seems just like a revelation.  You must look back to the pimples, the bruises, the dreams, to remind yourself that these heart-wrenching revelations are untrue.

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Sudden weakness drained her ability to stand and Carly felt her ankles and knees and hips fold as if from a distance.  She wanted to stop her descent, but could only manage a slightly slower collapse by brushing her arm against the wall.  Her stomach considered heaving out and her bowels considered opening up, but neither body rebellion took complete hold.  The movies always made swooning seem clean and glamorous, but the truth was sickening, hideous inevitability and enduring embarrassment.