this time i’ve ascertained for myself that not only do i not like being sick, i actually fear being sick. having been in hospital a few times is enough to let me dread that place, and i really wouldn’t want to be there if i can help it. the most recent memory of course is being stuck there, chained to be drip stand with nowhere to go, nothing to do, watching Christmas commercials on tv and thinking of how i’m missing on the week before Christmas. and then waiting and waiting for the doctor to come, wishing and wishing he’d say i can go home, then be condemned to another night’s stay in hospital.
thankfully, that was almost two years ago now. but in place of that one major illness a year i’ve been having spurts of illness that got more frequent this year. and i’m not talking incessant runny noses or even countless trips to the loo. that i can handle. but i really am not good with nausea and acute pain that makes me pass out. nausea especially, empties out my mind completely. no wonder most of the time there isn’t even anything much to vomit.
i wonder if this is part of the training for a stronger mind. so far it seems like all it has done is to ascertain the fact that my mind is weak. because once the giddiness sets in and i can’t think properly, i more or less go back to my eight-year-old mindset: very frightened, terribly insecure, mostly incapacitated, in need of placating but feeling too old for simple pacifying. and then of course now there is all that work to finish up.
today was one of those quite bad days. afraid of being alone, car-sick from taking the shuttle bus, tired out after one short presentation, half feeling like puking while eating my lunch, grouchy at having to study for test, feeling like i’m not gonna make it. and like, very very grouchy. and it was back to the make-plans-to-run-away-as-soon-as-i-can state, which is very very primate and dreadfully unfortunate. and i was just thinking what i’m gonna do when i come back and go through the evening alone cos my sis is on call, and how i’d be able to make good use of time. and suddenly, before i realised it, time didn’t pass too painfully while i was doing my german test, the nausea stabilised, dinner-buying was okay, the walk back was rather pleasant, and by the time i got back, i was almost happy. sometimes i really wonder how He plucks me out and puts me on safe ground again. (maybe not so much “how” as “why”…and then perhaps a “what for”)
listening to the mp3 of two sundays ago, Pastor was talking about mr kang, and how even in hospital, and having been there for weeks, being rather ill, he could still think of the Lord and give thanks. and now all the more, i’m in admiration. how, indeed? i don’t know if i’d be able to do the same. right now, probably not. everytime i’m ill and reduced to the state of having to be fed by my mum, the only thought about the Lord that i manage to hang on to is such a simple one…it’s like everything else i’ve learnt about Him has been stored elsewhere. of course, in dire need, i’m sure the Spirit will call to mind again what i’ve learnt, but then i wonder how much and how well i’ve learnt. Pastor cautioned me once to take time to really understand and appreciate lessons, and not just find intellectual thrill in them. perhaps that’s why. what i store in the intellect does not get recalled when i’m sick, because the intellect is not in use when one’s body is malfunctioning. what ought to come to comfort is everything i’ve imbibed in my soul, and right now it seems like that’s very very little.
how now brown cow…thankfully i’m getting better, even the swollen lump from the misfired injection is not bothering me that much anymore. and of course the people that the Lord brings me — mum’s call, dad’s call earlier on, mari’s funny call…hearing my housemates talk outside my open room door, listening to mp3. and remembering strange little things from the past that make me thankful. like hot water all through the shower, instead of the spurts in toh guan when somebody was showering in the other bathroom at the same time.
but there’s so much more.
