Scandalously irreverent and theologically imprecise briefs on heroines of the faith, written by a recovering Protestant agnostic seeker with practically no training and exactly zero filter.
Remember when we were little and we’d get scraped up from falling off our bikes?
And remember how sometimes we’d lose a chunk of skin, and our moms would bandage us up, but then be all like, “Hey honey, I’m just gonna take this slab of your flesh and put it over here in this vase, k?” But then the whole town would notice the sweet smell coming from our rotting body meat and show up at our doors so we’d have to make our crazy moms bury it in the yard just to keep the hoards of people away?
Oh, what’s that? That didn’t happen to you? Yeah, me either, but it did happen to St. Lidwina.
One of nine kids, she was born in 1380 in Holland. When she was 15, she fell while ice skating and broke a rib, but then became almost completely paralyzed. The story goes that after that, “great pieces” of her body began falling off, and blood poured from her mouth, ears, and nose. 😳
Not gonna lie, when I first started reading her story I wondered if maybe someone had slipped me some LSD, because while I knew the words I was reading were in English and that the sentences should be making sense … they just didn’t.
Her whole tale is wild AF.
Thanks to advances in modern medicine, many people now believe she actually had multiple sclerosis, which is why she is the patron saint of chronic illnesses. Through fasting, even in her continuously deteriorating state, she became known as a healer and a Holy woman. She eventually died, at age 53.
She’s the patron saint of MS and also the patron saint of ice skating, which is sorta petty but also completely awesome. I wonder if she’s who Nancy Kerrigan prayed to when she took a pipe to the knees.
Oh, and another weird fact: At one point soldiers occupied her city and one was charged with authenticating her fasts. They abused her, and because her body was swollen from her illness(es), they assumed she was pregnant and tried to pin it on a local priest. (Also: 😳 — Ed.)
Now you’re probably wondering if you’ve been slipped a tab too, right? I bet it was Tonya Harding just trying to keep us all out of the Olympic trials.
Destiny Herndon De La Rosa is the founder of the secular pro-life New Wave Feminists organization. She is a frequent op/ed contributor to the Dallas Morning News and a sought-after speaker.
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