I am finally starting to see the light at the end of a very dark tunnel of wretchedly, excrutiatingly painful and horrible sickness. I mean, often I hurt so bad that it hurt to lay down, it hurt to sit up, it hurt to eat, yet I was constantly starving - I was so miserable these past few days that every night in the deep of night, I would end up getting out of bed and just standing against the wall wondering whether it would give me any relief to just start crying. It was very tempting - the only reason I didnt give in because it would only have made my various headaches worse, and the ending result would have only been more pain.
Im not not sure why this happened to me, but I've often viewed my personal sicknesses as bringing me closer to God, or as Him breaking my will in some way. So my Mom used to call me a workaholic type because Id struggle into the office while I was sick, but these days, that is hardly my philosophy - my philosophy is more aligned with hers - health is of God - if God puts you on your back to take some down time, you need to respect that and take the down time. So, on Sick Day #1, the day I left the office early with a temperature over 100 degrees, sensitive skin, a pounding headache, and a telltale sense of foreboding, I told myself I was going to respect God's clear plan and pack it in until the sickness was done.
The bible says "Is there any sick among you? Let him pray." So I prayed. Another passage speaks clearly about "Let him call for the elders of the church." At the late hour, I had my Mom and sister pray for me also (the elder also prayed the next day). I believe God is the healer of our bodies, and I dont take medicine for that reason. During the night, the very very very very cold night, the very very fevered night (such that I could feel the heat trapped between my face onto the pillow), I remember tossing and turning, and on one of my many turns, I was facing the wall and I just began to tell God: "Lord, please help me now. Please help me now." Because I am resigned at this point - I've been through this so many times Im convinced that it wont be my mother or my sisters or brothers or father or the saints that save me. Its not going to be Chicken Soup that saves me. Its not going to be necessary rest and vitamins that save me. It takes God to save me. It takes God to heal me. I knew I would have to endure the sickness, that I would have to suffer - but I was very concerned about the fever because it had been consistently rising all night. Im not well-versed in sickness but I know temperatures are matters of grave concern the higher they get, and I wanted the fever to be gone.
On the morning of Sick Day #2, as I catalouged all of my aches and pains (there were many), I realized that my fever had broken in the night. Praise God! I then immediately despite the extreme protestations of my body went to check my blackberry for email messages or voicemails from work. There were none and that was unusual - so I decided to log on to the web server from home to ensure it wasnt just that the blackberry server was down. I got all logged in and up and running, and went to check my email and noticed that even on the server, I had received no incoming messages. Odd. I receive reports all day, every day. So I fired up a query email and sent it. A strange message popped up - for some reason the database was down (or something). So I logged off. Despite the raised eyebrows of my Mom and sister, I still called several offices trying to make contact to see whether a server was down. At the end of the day, it turned out that the only person down was me. It is like God put me, my laptop, my web connection, my blackberry, and all my work electronics into a little silo and turned off the switch: nothing out - nothing in.
So, many painfully sick days later (well, actually only 3 in total so far), things are looking up, Im feeling somewhat more human, hoping for no relapses, and hoping with a restful weekend Ill be out of the woods. Many other things can be said or related - time would fail. Ill end it by saying, it has really been a learning experience for me, in a whole new way. And I thank God that he trusts me enough to give me this experience, and give me the courage to go through it.
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