By Cynthia Aralu

Hi everyone. Here’s your reminder to pray the Rosary.

I told my baby brother last week that it wasn’t until I suffered hardship—not that I hadn’t suffered before—that I could really feel and resonate with the “Hail Holy Queen” prayer. Especially the part that mentions “this valley of tears”.

That line—“To thee do we send forth our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears…”—felt real to me, as I lived it. Although my past suffering was no less real, I suppose it hadn’t been accompanied by prayer in this way before, and perhaps, it took that moment for me to resonate very deeply with the prayer. I suppose, some things cannot be fully explained.

I will be sharing bits of what has been happening lately. I hope it blesses someone who needs it.

Visual Sensitivity

I mentioned previously that I suspected I might have a visual sensitivity. Recently, my symptoms worsened—worse light sensitivity, worse blurry text on computer screens, new burning, and new pain—so I went to see an optometrist. It was uncomfortable to voice what I’d been experiencing, especially since it didn’t make much sense to me. The initial eye exam showed my vision was fine, but further tests revealed iritis in my left eye and severe dry eyes in both.

Thankfully, the iritis was caught early and only had to treated with prednisone drops. Thanks be to God, it’s now resolved. My optometrist advised me to return if I experience any symptoms like I did, as iritis can recur. But that leaves me uncertain: dry eye symptoms are similar to the symptoms of iritis, so how would I know the difference? I also don’t know what exactly caused either.

While both conditions explain my sensitivity to light and contrast perception challenges, they don’t fully account for past experiences. For example, when I lived in Lagos (Nigeria), there were times I felt pain behind my eyes that forced me to go to sleep to rest my eyes or essentially close the affected eye (I don’t remember which). Back then, I wasn’t using screens much and stayed indoors a lot. When I voiced the pain from when I was younger, my optometrist told me Alberta’s dry air could be the culprit, but I’m doubtful since I lived in humid Lagos (Nigeria) then and I didn’t have the additional symptoms I experienced recently.

I remember a photo taken outdoors when I was a teenager—my eyes were squinted so tightly they were nearly shut. At the time, I blamed the bright sunlight, but now I wonder. I don’t think the others who posed in the same spot struggled. It’s funny how that one moment stuck with me. I had to retake the photo because I was told my eyes were closed, so I’d forced them open, and I think, if memory serves me well, they even watered. That memory resurfaced recently when I watched a video of a mother describing her daughter’s sensitivity to sunlight causing her to close her eyes (although hers is probably worse). It made me pause—was that reaction not typical?

I also remember living in London (UK) and experiencing eye pain and headaches just from looking out a window—even though it wasn’t particularly bright. I figured maybe my eyes had just grown unaccustomed to light after so many gloomy days. There were also times during my walk home from work when I’d feel nauseous and get headaches from the flickering sunlight flitting through the tall shrubs/plants along the path. Something about that shifting light threw me off. I actually recall avoiding the sunlight. Did I wear sunglasses too afterwards? I’m not sure. A similar thing also happened here in Canada, and even while riding in a moving car.

My memory isn’t perfect, and I’ve not really been keeping very good track of these episodes. I just keep pushing through life, managing everything as best I can, without ever stopping to consider that maybe this isn’t entirely usual.

This is just my thought—I could be wrong, and maybe I won’t truly know until I’m face to face with God, or He chooses to reveal something more clearly in this valley of tears. But I think the visual sensitivity was always there. It’s just that the iritis and dry eyes pushed my symptoms from something manageable to something more distinct and disruptive. My optometrist assures me my vision is fine and that we should focus on treating the dry eyes. In any case, I’m giving thanks to God for revealing the iritis in time for it to be treated with just one medication, and for also bringing the dry eyes to light, something I’ll try to manage better, though I admit it’s hard to keep up with everything I’ve been advised to do.

Honestly, I think it was finally putting on those sunglasses on my final driving test that stirred a reckoning within me that there might be something wrong. I believe God was gently nudging me to take it seriously.

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My Inheritance

Something unsettling happened at work recently. An error was found in a protocol, and the author who is the PI denied making the change or knowing who made the change—implicitly casting suspicion on me. Since in that situation, the modification could only have come from either of us, he did not have to say that I made the change for anyone to believe that I made the change. He just had to deny making the change or deny knowing who made the change. However, I don’t have the authority to submit changes to Health Canada or the REB without the PI’s explicit approval, even if I edit the protocol under his direction or in an effort to improve it. Despite this, a team member, who has often seemed antagonistic, nearly accused me outright, and did so in front of my team lead.

I was placed in a difficult position where I had to defend myself and provide proof—through emails and document history, including the audit trail in our tracked Word protocol file—that the changes had been made by the PI. Even after presenting clear evidence, the tone remained unchanged. My team lead later spoke with the team member who just about accused me, and together they reviewed the documentation. According to my team lead, she only grudgingly acknowledged that I wasn’t at fault.

I felt deeply anxious and unsettled. Honestly, I felt unsafe, but when I shared this with someone, they reduced it to me simply feeling bad. Another had told me that maybe the PI forgot he made the change, but he was provided email evidence twice, and told to his face twice but it did not make a dent. Even if he missed the second email, I had already informed him in person after the first—shouldn’t that have prompted him to check? Was he truly unaware? That’s between him and God. But I don’t think it’s fair to place the burden on me to make sense of his actions.

I think it is difficult for some people to feel empathy until they are on the receiving end. The truth is, I didn’t just feel bad, I felt unsafe, accused and undermined. Is it really unreasonable to think that I would feel this way?

In any case, I’m profoundly grateful to God that I had the evidence to support myself from every angle, because even someone tried to bring forward an angle of how it could also have been my fault, which I had to refute to the person’s silence.

Bits of a bible passage came to my mind during this period, “You will refute every tongue…it is your inheritance.”, or something like it. Here is the full passage:

“no weapon that is fashioned against you shall prosper, and you shall confute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, says the Lord.”

Isaiah 54:17

Now, what if there were no emails or document history, what would have happened? Even with truth available, I still received hostility.

I could see the availability of evidence as a gift from God and I felt the weight of responsibility to handle this well. I came close to going too far in defending the truth, but even then, God called me back. I am thankful to God for His mercy on me.

I wasn’t perfect. I felt like a mess. But my baby brother reassured me that I was taking the necessary steps, and that meant a lot. I found myself voicing emotions I hadn’t expressed before, navigating unfamiliar territory in how I responded to others who acted strangely to me. I don’t have all the answers about this situation. I’m still learning how to act toward those involved, and I’ve wrestled with whether praying a Psalm for my accusers is the most charitable thing to do, but it is a prayer from the Bible, and it is the Word of God, which I cannot dispute is good. However, I have been commanded by God in the Bible to bless my enemies and not to curse them. I told God that I don’t wish for their destruction. Still, I prayed the Psalm because it is the Word of God, as well as variations or inspirations from the Psalms, while also praying for their shame and repentance and trusting that it is all up to God. I do not say all this here so you follow in my footsteps. I don’t know the truth. Ask your priest. (PS: I hadn’t gone looking for the Psalms. It was simply there—on the facing page of one I recite often—and I think for the first time that night, my eyes caught the brief description at the top of my childhood Bible: “Prayer against accusers” and I jumped at it because there was a prayer for what I was going through).

I think I felt lighter the morning after praying that Psalm and listening to others as I lay in bed before sleep. Afterwards, I believe I brought everything I could remember and understood to bring to confession, including the things I was unsure of. I didn’t receive any counselling at confession. I received absolution and penance which I believe God felt is sufficient.

One thing I know for certain is: without God, I am nothing.

On a final note, pray the Rosary!

Thank you for reading today’s post. Remember to like this post and share it with your friends if you enjoyed it. Follow me on my blog, Katmira’s blog, to receive notifications whenever I have a new post. You can also subscribe below to get an email notification whenever a new post is out. This is particularly helpful if you don’t have a WordPress account.

Let it be, until we meet again or “Ka ọ dị” as it is said in Igbo.

Note: Co-pilot was used as an editing tool.