I’ve always had it in my head that I’m kind of invincible.
I feel like I have this Super-body that nothing can touch.
I rarely get sick, and when I do I bounce back so quick it hardly slows me down. I can fall from any height without breaking bones or major damage. No cavities, stitches, diseases, or allergies to record. Even mosquitos avoid me.
I feel like there’s nothing that my immune system can’t handle.
And then every once in a while I get flipped off my feet and pinned to the ground by something that I can’t fight off.
And it shakes me up inside.
Because I realize that my body, just like everybody else’s, is breakable.
Last night I woke up at 2 AM clawing at my face in my sleep and had the sinking feeling that this was one of those times.
The rash was spreading.
It started around my mouth on Monday, the day that my fever was the worst. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I had been violently ill and feverish with something that I think I picked up in the ice from a street vendor. My teammates suggested going to the clinic, but I figured my immune system would fight it off in a couple days.
It wasn’t until today, Thursday, when I woke up with the rash all along my jaw line and creeping across my cheeks and down my neck, that I finally broke down and went to the doctors.
Today as I sat on the brown-stained hospital sheets listening to the Cambodian doctor explain parasites to me in his broken English, all I could think of was those horrific “Monsters Inside of Me” episodes, and I felt like a defeated warrior.
Why is it so hard for me to ask for help?
I could have been better by now if I had just gone to the clinic last Sunday.
So yes, I have parasites. Not a big worm-like parasite like I thought at first, but hundreds of tiny microscopic buggards that live in your gut and come from unsanitary drinking water. I think we usually call them amebas. All the other symptoms are just a reaction to the amebas and due to the fact that my immune system is shot. At least, that is what I have gathered.
The doctor gave me some shots and medicine to take home, recommended red meat and rest, and said I’ll be fine in a couple days.
But as I’m laying in bed, I’m wondering why it’s hard for me to rest and asking the Lord what it is he wants to teach me in this.
“My heart and flesh may fail, but my God never will.”
Confidence is good, but not when it becomes pride.
Pride keeps you from reaching out for help.
It’s a stumbling block that keeps you from Me.
Stop running at a hundred miles an hour and take a look at your heart. Take a step back from the fun and do a soul check-in.
There are parts of your heart that you have become over-confident in and that don’t think you need help in. You think things will sort themselves out on their own if you just let them be, but they won’t. The longer you wait, the harder it gets. I want to fix them.
Let Me win your battles. Let Me heal you.
My strength is made perfect in your weakness.
“My heart and flesh may fail, but my God never will.”
Turns out I’m not a superhuman, just a regular human who's slow to admit she needs a doctor.
