Lent 2026 · Day 10: Dysentery on the Organ Trail

When I moved to Overland Park, Kansas, I joined a women’s golf league because golf is my happy place, and it gave me an outlet while my life was emotionally, spiritually, and existentially unraveling.

It was very different from my Rochester women's league. In Rochester, we absolutely drink Bloody Marys at 7 AM and take Fireball shots after birdies like that’s part of the official rules of golf. Overland Park was quieter. Tee times were at 7 in the morning, and it felt less Gucci to be getting your buzz on before the sun rose. Wine spritzers after noon seemed more appropriate. These were retired women. Women of means. Women who looked like their lives were put together as well as their golf fits were.

I got a summer job at the clubhouse restaurant so I could golf for free. Which honestly felt like thriving.

But sometimes you’re not thriving. You’re still you, just in a different location.

And sometimes you’re also the problem.

At least one of my organs was.

I was exhausted all the time. Not normal tired. Bone tired. I thought it was depression. Or grief. Or growing older. Or maybe I was just giving up on life altogether. I was in a city where no one knew who I was or what I’d spent the last fifteen years doing. I assumed the stomach aches and back pain were just part of becoming irrelevant.

Then one morning, finishing the 18th hole at ladies league, a shooting pain hit my back so hard it almost dropped me to my knees.

And instead of thinking, this could be serious, I thought,

“Oh cool. My back is going out again.”

So I finished the round.

Went home. Took Advil. And went to bed.

Because that’s what you do when pain becomes normal. You stop asking questions. You just survive it.

Also, Kansas did not offer poor people healthcare. So there was that.

Months later, after I moved back to Rochester, my body decided it wasn't having it any more. My body was on strike.

I remember apologizing to my roommate for asking her to take me to the Emergency Department. That’s how deep the conditioning goes. You can be actively dying and still worry about being inconvenient.

After hours in the waiting room, bloodwork, and a CT scan, they put me in a hallway bed. Another busy day in the ED. The nurses were kind. My doctor poked around my abdomen and came back and said, “Your appendix is severely infected. We need to remove it immediately. Here are some options.”

Apparently it had been infected for a long time. Quietly poisoning me while I was out there pretending I was fine.

My appendix lasted 50 years in this body and then decided it was done. Just clocked out. No two weeks notice. No exit interview.

Honestly? Fair.

They took me into surgery that night. When I woke up, the pain was gone. Not better. Gone but now replaced with different pain. My body was healing itself kind of pain and the anesthesia was still wearing off, too. The exhaustion I’d been carrying for over a year lifted almost immediately.

It wasn’t burnout.

It wasn’t weakness.

It was dying. Literally.

And here’s the part that’s hard to sit with.

If I had stayed in Kansas, working part-time, no insurance, barely holding myself together, I might have waited too long. I might have gone into medical debt just to stay alive. I might have convinced myself it wasn’t serious. I might not be here writing this.

Moving back to Minnesota didn’t just reset my life.

It saved it.

Because Minnesota believes poor people deserve healthcare. Because someone ran the test. Because someone listened. Because someone cut the dying thing out of me before it took everything else with it.

Spiritually, I’ve always believed the Universe tries to guide you quietly at first.

A feeling.

A fatigue you can’t explain.

A sense that something isn’t right.

But if you ignore it, it gets louder.

More pain.

More disruption.

More loss.

Until eventually it hits you over the head with a brick.

Or in my case, a tiny useless organ tries to take down the entire operation.

Call it God.

Call it energy.

Call it instinct.

Call it survival.

But when it’s not your time, it’s not your time.

Sometimes the desert isn’t trying to destroy you. It’s trying to strip away everything that cannot come with you.

My appendix couldn’t come with me.

Neither could the version of me who believed I had to endure everything silently.

My body knew before I did.

I just had to listen.

Lenten Reflection:

“When I kept silent, my bones wasted away

through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy on me;

my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.”

— Psalm 32:3–4 (NIV)

Scripture understands something we try to outrun. Silence has consequences. Ignoring what is wrong does not make it disappear. It just buries it deeper, where it can do more damage.

My appendix lasted fifty years. Half a century of quiet service. And then, at some point, it decided it was done. It didn’t fail loudly at first. It whispered. Fatigue. Aches. A low-grade sense that something wasn’t right.

I ignored it.

Because that’s what many of us do. We override the signals. We push through pain. We ignore the trauma we are experiencing in our body.

Until the message stops being quiet.

Until it becomes pain you can’t rationalize.

Until the body, or your life, or your spirit picks up a brick and hits you over the head with it.

Lent is an invitation to stop pretending everything is fine.

To listen.

To the body.

To the grief.

To the exhaustion.

To the truth we’ve been trying to outrun.

Sometimes the thing that feels like it’s destroying you is actually saving you.

Sometimes losing something is what allows you to live.

My appendix is gone now.

So is the version of me that believed I had to silently endure everything.

Both served their purpose.

Both knew when it was time to let go.

Take care of yourself.

Take care of each other.

#lentreflections2026 #40days40nights #healingjourney