Ah!!! All of it – yuck! It clambers on me, like a slime mold, slowly advancing. It climbs up my feet, and legs, though I protest, holding my arms high in an effort to keep it away. I try to push it back, frantically, but it advances. The yellow goo, unfeeling, is slowly encapsulating me. Will I be unable to breathe?

As it climbs up my chin, and toward my mouth, I cry out a guttural sound. I try to scare it with my bellowing roar but it enters, past my lower lip, advancing.

I sit on the ground, defeated. It continues to climb higher, up my cheeks now. I have succumbed. What is next?

And then you approach. Your legs are at my eye level as I sit on the ground next to you. I lift my eyes to your face. The slime swirls under your feet, but cannot climb you.

You extend your hand to me. Will I take it? Of course, I will. I lunge for your hand and the warmth surprises me. You look heavenward, up, your eyes closed as your fingers clasp around my hand.

I feel a tingling sensation, and a deep warmth, like water poring just under my skin. What is this? I am standing now, and I look in wonder at my hand that was just touching yours.

The slime pools and bubbles at my feet now, too, in a swirling confusion, but I pay no attention. I tread on it with ease.

I am laughing, embracing you. “Thank you! And wait!” I begin to say. I have so many, many questions. But you must not be detained. You stand in a circle and turn around once, or twice, and then are transformed into an eagle.

And you soar.

I jump after you. I try to flap my arms too. You become smaller and smaller, a tiny dot, gliding back and forth across the sky above me. You seem to be beckoning me just by your presence.

The impossible has become possible because of your life.

And what do I do, now that I have seen you? Do I sit down on the ground again, in despair, and wait once more for the slimy mold to… no!

But yet I can’t fly! I am lost in confusion. I circle once, twice, spinning, and then fall to the ground, dizzy. I did not transform as you did.

What will become of me? Oh – what was it that you gave me? Yes, I put it into my pocket. That tiny piece of paper.

I read like a starving man who has not seen food for days eats. What does it say?

Pile your troubles on God’s shoulders— he’ll carry your load, he’ll help you out. The Message

And so I rant, and I complain, and I speak of what ails me. And the slime mold oozes from my mouth. It was not outside of me but within me this whole time! When I speak it aloud and expel my inner contents in a mess of turmoil to my God, then the slime mold is expelled from within me.

I wipe my mouth. I feel gross and splattered with my mess and yet my stomach ailments feel better, too. And what now, I wonder? I feel lighter now, almost as if I could…

I spin around once, twice, and then, the wind beneath my foot pushes my foot into the air at the exact moment that I leap up. I turn in the air, once twice, and …

I am an eagle, now, soaring, too.

I crisscross the sky, just above them. Can they see me? I think they can if they squint, look closely, believe. Are any of them ready to step out of the advancing slime mold too?

Get up, get up, dear friend.