When I left off last time, I had just told you about the collapse of my health in my early twenties. At the time, the doctor I was seeing diagnosed me with serum-negative rheumatoid arthritis. We tried several different treatments, but nothing was working.
Between the pain of going anywhere and the rural nature of my parent's house (I was living with them at the time), I was pretty isolated. It was at this juncture, in December of 1984, that my grandmother asked me to write to Cess.
My mom explained that Cess was from their old church. He was currently in prison in Canada, but no one really seemed to know why. Rumor had it that he had beaten his girlfriend while under the influence of drugs. He had recently written to my grandmother, asking if she knew of any Christians who would be willing to be penpals with him.... He said he had given his life back to God and wanted to have the friendship and support of other Christians.
He said that he felt isolated, I was isolated, and it seemed that being correspondents might be good for both of us.
I wrote an introductory letter and sent it off. The month went past, and since there was no response I didn't think much more about the matter.
In January of 1985, my doctor thought he may have found a treatment that might work. It was a six-week course of heavy mediation which had the purpose of getting my immune system to knock off the attack it was waging on my joints. He explained I'd be ill during the treatment, but that with luck it would get the RA into remission.
I began the drug therapy and while sick as a dog, got my first letter back from Cess. In it, he (apparently) sincerely apologized for not responding sooner. He said that the letter must have gotten delayed due to going through the prison censers, but that he was very glad to hear from a fellow Christian. He spoke about how sorry he was that I was in ill health, but was glad to have (finally) met someone who could begin to glimpse what his own isolation had been like.
Now, it has been a long-standing habit to answer letters as soon as I get them. Otherwise, I have a strong propensity to lose them and forget to answer. With that in mind, it should not surprise you that I wrote back within a few days of getting Cess' letter.
We began corresponding fairly frequently. Much of what was written back and forth was theological discussions, and Cess sent some short article-like papers he had written on different subjects. Many of these struck me as the old-fashioned fire and brimstone bible-thumping... and in my own mind I thought that it wasn't too surprising, given what I'd been told of the church he had grown up in. I thought that could I help him get past what I saw as "young Christian" (narrow-minded fervor) to a less militant, more Grace-full faith.
I entered into the relationship with the desire to help: to help ease someone's loneliness, and to help someone grow and deepen their faith.
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