Years have passed since I first created this web site. So much has transpired that I thought a heads-up was in order.

I still am who I am. I have come a long way in my work, and have been terribly derelict in my duties to this web site. Life has a funny way of throwing you off course sometimes, but I am coming around and trying to get centered again.

I am now divorced from the man I married in 1980. It was not my choice, but God chose to bless me with another man who loves me very much, even though I know I am not blameless. I suppose that God does not agree with even my perception of sin, or I have properly suffered and atoned for all I have done, and was given a second chance. You pick. It's probably a little bit of both.

At any rate, I was forced to leave my home in Virginia in the winter of 1999, and to move to Ohio, to be with the man who plans to spend the rest of his life with me. Ours is not an easy life, but we are still in love after three years. We have been through so much in such a short period of time. We barely get a chance to catch our breath before the next catastrophe hits, but somehow we get through it all. We know that God brought us together and I demand that God protect that which He has created. So far, so good.

Healthwise, things have been terrible since I last checked in with all of you. I was finally able to locate some antibody serum at the Department of Health in Virginia, but not very much because they used to use it against hepatitis. With the advent of the hepatitis vaccine, gamma globulin was really not needed by the health department. I used up what they had, and was left with nothing again.

It was a very difficult decision to make, once I had found the serum, because there was still the possibility of hepatitis infection from blood plasma products at that time. I cried and cried, trying to decide what to do, because I didn't want to give anything to Craig. For myself, I didn't care. He told me to get the shots, and that if we contracted anything, we would get treated and that would be it. God was smiling on us, though...the serum was clean.

When I moved to Ohio, I had to scramble. For the first few months, I was able to get it at the hospital emergency room, only because Craig was carrying me in...because I could not walk. Then they decided that this was not something for the emergency room and refused to treat me anymore. Then I was in trouble again.

We went through the regular rounds of being passed from doctor to doctor before I found someone willing to go out on a limb for me. The catch: I had to pay for my own serum...if I could find it. It took some hunting, but I did, and was receiving the injections on a monthly basis that way for quite some time. It was not the IV treatments that I needed (and still do), but it was better than nothing.

That following summer, an old problem of mine decided to rear its head and I wound up in the hospital with a ruptured ovarian cyst. I was diagnosed with adenomyosis a month later as well, a particularly painful form of endometriosis. A hysterectomy was out of the question because I already have osteoarthritis of the spine and am unable to tolerate hormone therapy.

Then the sky fell in six months later. I developed breast cancer in early 2001, in the middle of a ghastly winter of viral infections, which caused severe respiratory problems, excruciating migraines and a rheumatoid arthritis-type condition in my hands.

The cancer itself was fast moving, but I was lucky. Within a matter of weeks, it had completely taken over the left breast, but it was miraculously confined therein. The mastectomy took care of it. This is a very fortunate thing because chemo and/or radiation would probably kill me. Breast conservation, therefore, was not an option.

Of course I had complications from being so debilitated beforehand. I fainted dead away when I was brought home, and was carried back to the hospital on a sheet by EMTs. I was diagnosed a few weeks later with a heart condition that I will suffer from for the rest of my life, which contributed to the fainting. I also developed an allergic reaction to my drains, and had infections from that.

One month later after the mastectomy, I learned that I had lost my disability income three days before my surgery. I had to scramble for work. I wrote a ten-page letter to my congressman's office, only to receive a phone call from his assistant, demanding to know why I wasn't driving yet. I informed her that I had only had the drains taken out of my chest mere days before she called me. That was not good enough for her.

Since it had been over 10 years since I had been employed, I delivered pizzas while looking for clerical/secretarial positions. I had held some very high level positions once upon a time in Virginia and DC, but was unable to find employment in my field, so I had to resort to a long-term temporary assignment in customer service with a local credit card company. No one would hire me on a permanent basis for lack of recent work experience and other things (like being too intelligent, too old, too this, too that).

I am now at a horrible job which is just about killing me, but it helps to pay the bills. I am a permanent customer service representative with a health insurance company. It is worse than purgator. It is hell. Every second is on the clock, and we have call quotas to meet, a minimum of 75 a day. When I accepted this job in November 2001, I knew I had breast cancer on the other side, but there was nothing I could do about it at the time. The surgeon wasn't listening to me anyway.

Therefore, exactly one year after the first mastectomy, I was having another one. At least this time my job was held for me, and I received short-term disability income. This was two months ago.

I was very lucky again. This was a more advanced stage of cancer, but still confined to the breast. Again, no chemo, no radiation. And while God may have allowed me to get the cancer again, but He also gave me the time to get established before I was gone for a month on medical leave.

At work, I get yelled at all day about unpaid medical claims, and then I get to go home and deal with it for my own self, from the other side of the fence, with my own health insurance company. I wish many times that I could tell our members the truth about myself, so they would know that I really do understand, and so they would know who they were beating on...a sick person just like themselves who is doing everything she can to survive.

My health is going downhill. In between the cancers, I was diagnosed with a host of other illnesses, all attributable to my failing immune system. There is no help for it, though. I have to keep working and going because the "system" is not going to take care of me. I continue to be penalized because I chose not to have children. There was job assistance at the time of the disability denial only if I had children. Ergo, I was punished for respecting and cherishing life, and not inflicting my illnesses on my unborn babies, instead of being rewarded for being responsible. But that's our liberal government for you in these United States...or it was at the time.

Yes, I voted for Dubya. Have I mentioned that I am a rare breed�a Republican Jew?

The man who would be my husband, if I wasn't so terrified, has been working two jobs for a very long time, almost as long as I have been in Ohio, which is 2 � years. He does all he can to keep me going, simply because he has it in his head that he cannot live without me. He gave up his entire life for me, to save me, to love me, to share his life with me in the short periods of time that he is actually home with me.

My now ex-husband divorced me right before I found out that I had cancer again. It's not been an easy trip, my friends, not at all. He originally sent the papers just as I was finding out I had cancer the first time. As you can imagine, I held out as long as I could, because as long as we were married, I had health insurance. I scrambled to get continuation of benefits so I could get my right breast removed and have it paid for. Thank God it went through. Each cancer episode cost over $7,000.

Can we say "stress"???

In between all of this...and through this...God speaks. I haven't been able to get it all down on paper, but there have been some interesting things happening to me spiritually. So there's the good news. I finally found a synagogue that is not too annoying and overbearing, so I go when I can. I am called to explore this side of me for a while, and will be there as long as I am called to be there. Reform Judaism is a little hard to take sometimes, but then again, all facets of organized religion are that way for someone like me.

The synagogue is women-led but they are not a bunch of feminazis, which is good. I wouldn't be able to handle it otherwise. I admit to crying when I first saw women handling the Torah, which is traditionally forbidden to us, carrying it proudly up and down the aisles and so forth. It was a tremendously emotional experience for me.

I do not agree with Reform Judaism in its entirety. As a matter of fact, there are things I object to strongly. However, I figure that if it was good enough for James, the brother of Jesus, to continue to perform his duties as high priest in the Second Temple regardless of the divisions amongst the Jews at that time, even after the Crucifixion, it is good enough for me. I would also not be allowed to have any real say in anything in a more traditional or orthodox atmosphere, so it is a trade-off. So even though Reform Judaism doesn't recognize even the barest hint of a Jewish priesthood as do the more orthodox denominations, I continue to be friends with the lay rabbi there, and others from whom I can learn.

Therefore, when I had the opportunity to give my first lay service at this synagogue in the summer of 2001, I jumped at it. A house of God is a house of God, period. The only way we can hope for spiritual healing is to exemplify it ourselves, to be willing to preach the word of God wherever His children gather, regardless of denomination. I hold myself neutral and just speak the words I am given. As it was told to the Old Testament prophets by the Lord, "Do not worry about what you will say, I will give you the words, even though I send you to a stiff-necked people." (Paraphrased, of course.)

Yes, as a priestess of the blood, I do bristle at being considered a lay person next to the rabbi, but this is the way of the world right now. Therefore, I welcomed the honor. And a blessing it was to me. If I am lucky, I will be blessed that way again. The service was a huge success and the teaching was widely accepted. Thank you, Lord, for giving me words that Your children could hear. (For the sermon, click here.)

Craig helped me that day. As a Gentile, he can't touch the Ark or the Torah, but he did wonderfully in assisting me. We were asked back to do it again this summer. No, I am not asking for his conversion to Judaism. I do not require it, do not find it necessary, and honestly, I do not agree with it.

I think we need to be who God created us to be in this life...nothing more, nothing less...in order to fulfill His will. Anything else is an insult. I also think, with the scientific part of my mind, that real conversion is impossible. One cannot change who one is biologically or genetically. You can certainly affiliate yourself with a belief system, but you cannot "convert." If you disagree, please read my section on Sodom and Gomorrah.

I keep my mouth shut as much as I can. I am learning wisdom as I get older, if not patience and serenity. I do what they say in the temple, and then I do what I am called to do on my own. Craig and I hold our own very beautiful services at bodies of water and so forth, where we can feel God more acutely. We also married one another in the spirit over Labor Day Weekend of 2001. We feel that if it was good enough for Adam and Eve to have God play matchmaker and witness, then we can handle it. We needed no one else.

And now we stand on a precipice, as always. Some people do not want to hear what I have to say regarding this moment in history for Israel, for Palestine, for Jews, and for the world. I am sorry for that, but I cannot suppress nor alter what the Lord has given me to say.

Many people come to me because I am a Jew, and ask my opinion on the situation in the Middle East. They come away surprised, for what I have to say is the complete opposite of how most Jews feel right now.

How can I even care what is going on in the world with all the problems I am having with my own life? How can I not care? I never lived in a bubble and not about to start now. As I said previously, there is a reason why I am still alive. It is to do the work. God obviously still considers me to be necessary, and as long as that holds true, I do what I'm told.

So how do I feel about the Israeli situation? I will tell you that there is to be no peace in the Middle East. I have been forbidden to even pray for it because it is not God's will. Armageddon cannot come about if there is peace. To avoid Armageddon is to hold the Earth back from evolving to the next plane. Armageddon MUST happen in order for the perfection of our world, our universe, to occur. The birth pangs are hard, yes...but it must happen.

If you read Enoch, you will see what I am talking about. In a later section, I will write about it, and why we should not be praying for peace at this time. Sounds radical, I know...but God's will is God's will.

The only way the Messiah will come is if Armageddon happens�who am I to try to stop that?

And may it be today, Lord...tonight...this minute...this second.

Amen.

Micki June 1, 2002 Home