It feels so good to be blogging again! Since my last post, I spent three days in the hospital. I'm currently blogging from Pittsburgh. I guess I should start at the beginning...
About a month ago I moved to Ann Arbor and dove head first into my new life. From staff meetings, to office training, to wandering around the Diag hopelessly lost, I was a woman of action. After about a week of this, I woke up in the middle of the night with stomach pains that quickly turned into nausea/vomiting. My roommate thought I had the flu. But I never knew the flu to cause stomach pains without a fever. By the next morning I felt better, so I shrugged the night off as my body's way of adjusting to a new environment.
3 days later I awoke at 6am with the worst stomach pains I've ever experienced. Pain is a very humbling state of being because any pain worth its name suggests that the person in pain has exhausted all means of relieving the pain. I knew I had to go to the hospital. Thankfully I live within a ten minute drive of U of M's hospital and my roommate had a car. After a several hours of pain medication and ultrasounds, the doctor informed me that I had an acorn-sized stone in my galbblader. My galbblader would have to come out within 24 hours.
So here I was an otherwise healthy 22 year old. Laying on a hospital bed 5 hours away from home drifting out of a narcotics-induced state of consciousness. I remember laying in my bed and hearing God say that he wanted to heal me. My first response was great, but couldn't you heal me in a less dramatic manner? I absolutely hate being the center of attention. I know that the speed of news, particularly bad news can travel faster than sound and that people were going to want to talk to and about me. God responded by telling me that me getting sick was not about me. Then I fell asleep. Again.
It was not until a couple days ago that I understood what God said to me. Before I left for Ann Arbor, my mom and I fought about me leaving. She did not understand why I needed to go live 5 hours away and work for free for a year. I tried to explain to her the benefits of living in the community there, but my arguments fell upon deaf ears. When I got sick Mom hopped in the car and drove to Ann Arbor. She was blown away by the kindness every in Ann Arbor extended to a girl they'd known for less than a month. Their care of me during my illness explained community life to them in a way my intellectual arguments failed to do.
I'm going to be heading back to Ann Arbor this weekend. When Mom drops me off this time she'll be able to drive back to Pittsburgh knowing that she can turn off her mom radar for the next little while because there is a whole community of people in Ann Arbor willing to sit in the emergency room with her baby girl.
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