This day...

I could not fall asleep last night until 5:00...this morning.  I was so nauseous and so frustrated.  I have the hospital bill sitting next to the amublance bill. I look at both and think why go back for a stomach that is acting like my heart.  April 5th.  That's when I can see a doctor for less.  Surely, the nausea, fever, and roiling guts will be gone by then.  Surely.

It isn't just the nausea.  My now wonky heart sometimes keeps me up, throbbing and whoosing and filling my ears so loudly I cannot fall asleep.  For whatever reason (I shall surely ask the next time I see a cardiologist), it is louder if I am lying on my left side than if my right.  Only, perhaps it is not so much my heart but my ears or not my ears but how my brain is telling my ears to work.  In any case, it is too loud for me to fall asleep.  Or my legs are cramping. Or my guts are roiling.  Or I have fiery pain beneath my skin.  Or I have a muscle spasm that jerks much of my body.  Or...SIGH.

I fell asleep around 5:00 and gave up trying to stay asleep at 10:00, after seven different nightmares.  Sometimes.  Sometimes I just wish.

I decided if I was not going to be able to sleep when I need sleep then I was going to eat since I need to eat.  You know, just because you decide that your innards are going to behave does not mean that they will.  Seriously, I am firing them. 

My realtor, who simply has to be an angel mascarading as a human being, has come by the house every few days to bring groceries or take care of things for me.  She is a like a spring breeze blowing the hair back from my face as the sun warms my cold bones from a long winter.  She mentioned struggling to get a mailing out and I volunteered to help from the couch.  So, in between a few naps, though I am trying to stay awake that I might have a better chance of sleeping, I have been labeling and folding and stuffing and sealing. 

Not all that long ago, I would have breezed through this.  I am bothered that I am not yet done.  However, the mailing cannot go out until Monday, so the fact that I am still working on it, a 500 piece, two-label, four-page mailing should not distress me. 

Tomorrow is the Lord's Day.  A few blocks down the street, my Lutheran brothers and sisters will be having the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ placed in their mouths (or hands), given for them, shed for them.  They will be having the sweet, sweet Gospel poured over them.  They will have hymnody filling their mouths and swirling around them.  Oh, how I wish to be joyful for them.  And I truly am.  I just long to be there receiving the good gifts of Christ myself.

Six days from now my beloved Bettina will be here.  Surely, if I am not well enough to venture by myself, she will take me.  Mostly, I just need to lie down some or maybe lean.  Since I have lost more weight, I shall not squish her when I do so.  Even if I did, though, she wouldn't mind.  No, she would probably just shove me back upright.  Gotta love a friend who sends you a link to the proper sort of axe to buy for her so she can split and stack wood for you.  That kind of friend won't mind a little squishing, eh?

I am better, but I am weary.  I am better, but I am not.  I am better, but I am bowed beneath the weight of another loss.  I am better.  And my adoptive brother chided me that I need to look not at the loss but how my Good Shepherd provided for me in the first place and trust that He will do so again.  He is right.  I have had a great blessing.  That is it ending does not change that I have had a great blessing.  But even if I look more to the loss I am forgiven.

I have had more food this week than last.  I have had less nausea than last.  My fever is but slight.  I am sitting in the most beautiful home with a steady wind sending lovely music from my chimeshanging on an amazing porch through the rather gorgeous beveled glass window.  And just two days ago I was served the true body and blood of my Good Shepherd who cares for me even when I struggle to believe by an undershepherd who remembered how much having the cross traced on my forehead means to me. 


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!