This past week has been an interesting one, maybe the general thing would be trusting God through the pain, the literal pain. God has challenged me in a lot of ways, but the most obvious of which was that I got sick. And not just any kind of sick, I got three different kinds of sick in three different days, one of which I’ve never experienced before in my life.
Okay, the first was these full body aches that I get every time I move. This happens to me once every couple of years. We’re not sure what it is, but I was able to recognize it and know that I needed a day in bed to get over it. Or at least I found out that was what I needed after “sleeping it off overnight” didn’t work. Basically I have to stay really still because even though I don’t feel great in general, when I move, my muscles really start to hurt.
Diagnose as you will.
Day two slammed into an intense head cold. Headache, sore throat, crazy amounts of stuffy/runny nose, and all of the fun feelings that go along with that. No residual soreness from the day before, just the head cold. No big deal, right? I can push through that. So I did.
Day three I woke up with a much lighter version of the cold and headed to ministry. I still wasn’t feeling great though, so my goal was to make it to 10 a.m.
I made it to 11. Go me.
Unfortunately as soon as I started walking back to the house to lay down for a bit, I started to feel a pain in my stomach. This escalated quickly within the next few minutes and to spare you all of the gory details, I spend the next three hours on the floor of the bathroom puking up everything that was and wasn’t in my system. After a shaky walk back to my bed which would not have been possible without the help of the amazing Bex and Lo, the rest of my day was spend in bed, trying to keep down anything and eventually succeeding.
By the end of the night I was able to walk on my own, praise God and relatively steadily and by the next morning I felt like it had never happened. All that was left was a slight head cold. I guess I’m left wondering if this was a spiritual attack, considering the three different kinds of sick on three consecutive days. Especially seeing as the last one I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life and dearly hope that I never do again.
Anyway, the next day (yesterday) we traveled about an hour and a half by car and ferry to Grenada. I spent the day walking around, getting super lost with friends, and spending the rest of the day waiting for Lo to get her tattoo (we were sitting there for about eight hours. We stayed because the people in front of us were our friends, but maybe next time we’ll take up the offer from the guy in the park offering the services of his friend.) But it was such a fun day and I know I’ll never forget it.
Today we went volcano sledding. We had to take a three hour car ride to the hostel that provides the trip, another hour in the back of an open truck with about twenty other White tourists to get to the volcano. Then we took our backpacks with our one-size-fits-all jumpsuits (prison orange in color) and hauled our plywood sleds up the hour long hike, and then got to careen back down.
NOTICE: Going up takes a lot longer than going down. 🙂
They also clock you going down so they know what the record for both males and females is. The record for girls was 73Kph. I was clocked at 35, BUT I was going much faster before I fell off twice and you don’t get to the speed guns until the end anyway. For the record, my people tell me I was booking it and that makes me happy.
Okay, so now I’m sunburned, tired, and fighting with the wifi for enough grace to post this online.
Sending happy thoughts,
TL
