incident to the separation of soul and body. And the motive of this
request was that she might be "purged by the mercy of God, and
afterwards live more to the worship of God because of that sickness." In
other words, she desired the grace of what we might call a
"trial-death," that so she might better meet the real death when it
came. Further, she adds, "this sickness I desired in my youth, that I
might have it when I was thirty years old." And "these two desires were
with a condition" (namely, if God should so will), "for methought this
was not the common use of prayer." But the third request she proffers
boldly "without any condition," since it was necessarily God's desire to
grant it and to be sued for it; namely, the grace of a three-fold wound:
the wound of true sorrow for sin; the wound of "kind compassion" with
Christ's sufferings; and the wound of "wilful belonging to God," that
is, of self-devotion.

She is careful to tell us that while she ever continued to urge the
unconditional third request, the two first passed completely out of her
head in the course of years, until she was reminded of them by their
simultaneous and remarkable fulfilment. "For when I was thirty years old
and a half, God sent me a bodily sickness in which I lay three days and
three nights; and on the fourth night I took all my rites of Holy
Church, and weened not to have lived till day. And after this I lay two
days and two nights, and on the third night I weened oftentimes to have
passed, and so weened they that were with me.... And I understood in my
reason, and by the feeling of my pains that I should die, and I assented
fully with all the will of my heart, to be at God's will. Thus I endured
till day, and by then, was my body dead to all feeling from the midst
down." She is then raised up in a sitting position for greater ease, and
her curate is sent for, as the end is supposed to be near. On arrival,
he finds her speechless and with her eyes fixed upwards towards heaven,