Reflecting now, I know I learned compassion from having asthma.  I was led to my first volunteer work also:  At the hospital where I had so often been cared for in the Children’s Ward, I had seen the adjoining Home for Crippled and Orphaned Children where mentally and physically disabled children resided.  The nurses and nuns caring for me would tell me about children from all over the world living there.  At the age of 14, I walked in and asked if I could help.  They knew me and my limitations from asthma, but allowed me to comfort the children, to help bathe and feed them, and just be with them.  A crippled and dwarfed woman resided there, who had lived there for her entire life.  It was she who taught me how to iron as I helped with the children’s laundry.  I was given an early awareness of ministry.

I believe that asthma blessed me with learning to be a good listener, and consequently to see God in the stillness, in the dark, in meditation; and to find peace in the silence.  My heart-to-heart conversations with God, His Blessed Mother, and the Saints, began as a small sick child as I learned that prayer could be my faithful companion.

My early desire to be a writer came from being asthmatic.  My love of writing was born in first grade when I discovered I could easily express myself through writing, where I didn’t have to worry about breathlessness.  The poem I wrote that year was published in the city newspaper, a seed of encouragement.  As I learned to read I realized that I loved the sentences more than the stories.  Words fascinated me!  That fascination continues today as I find that writing letters often solves loneliness as I “talk” to friends and relatives on paper.  Writing is also a source of comfort to me. 

Asthma brought limits to my life, but only physical limits.  It doesn’t limit my spirit, my praying, or my loving.  Limitless have been my hopes and prayers, my dreams.  It is because of the times when I had difficulty breathing, that I so cherish each breath I take.  From that same need came my realization that it is really the breath of God, which keeps me going, blowing profusely on my spirit and giving me strength.

End Chapter 1.

©Pat Montesano 2003 All Rights Reserved.