It’s been hard for me to find inspiration to blog. It’s so easy to begin to think no one really cares if I go a few days; then it becomes a week; and before I know it, I’ve gone almost two weeks without sharing anything that has been going on. I am sorry for that.
After recovering from strep throat, I was feeling pretty well and getting back involved in all things “team.” With that comes the “check-ins.” It seems like on any given day, I have a running mental tally of at least three team members I need to have some sort of conversation with. It can range from the minor–ie: please make sure you’re picking up after yourself–to the major–ie: you’ve broken this rule, now how do we handle it. Honestly, there were a few necessary conversations that go put on the back burner while I was sick, so it was almost more torture to get healthy, knowing I had to address some major issues.
Last Friday, during quiet time, one of our girls came to me and sort of unloaded some things on her heart. I have known since training camp that there were some deep heart struggles, but not to this extent. She is nineteen, and told me that I was the first person that she has ever shared this with before. That really concerned me, but the whole situation seemed way bigger than what I knew. I had no idea how to handle it, and was talking with Driver throughout the morning about how to help her break free of the bondage she was feeling.
Just after lunch time, I was at the clinic with two of our team members and out of nowhere I started to feel sick. This bizarre feeling washed over me and I started to go downhill from there. I stood up to leave with the girls and almost passed out; the smells in the clinic and the food outside were making me extremely nauseated (and I’ll eat almost anything), and I felt incredibly exhausted. The nurses there noticed, but I convinced them it was probably just dehydration and that I would go home, drink some water, and sleep it off. Well, I tried that, but then a bad fever came on and I spent most of the night between chills and sweats. After a horrible night my bed and the toilet, including falling asleep on the bathroom floor, I began to think it wasn’t just dehydration. I went to the clinic the next morning with a fever of 101.3 degrees. After getting some bloodwork and providing a “sample,” if you know what I mean, I went back home to continue sleeping. A few hours later the results were in–Salmonella.
Seriously, I grew up in a third-world country, have eaten food around the world, and currently eat with twenty-something other people, and I’m the one that gets salmonella? I had already told my mom and Driver that I felt like this was a spiritual attack. If satan could take down the one person that that team member was able to finally talk to, then she would be back in her bondage without anyone to help her work her way out. I was way too weak to do anything, and hadn’t eaten in a day or so, so I was really in no condition to help her work through stuff. So I prayed. I prayed against the attack, and I prayed for wisdom in how to handle the situation when I got to feeling better.
Prayers answered! Not only did I start to feel a bit better Sunday night, but Monday night, the team member opened up to the entire team about what was going on in her heart. We spent a while praying over her, speaking words of encouragement, edifying her, and speaking prophecy over her. There was some major break-through for her that night, and satan’s scheme did not work in the end. She and I talked later, and she said that had I not gotten sick, she would have continued to talk only with me about the situation, and possibly never opened up to the team. The support they gave her was tremendous and helped rid some of the lies satan had planted there over the years. Praise the Lord for knowing exactly what He is doing.
