In Sickness and In Health

"I, ____, take you, ____, to be my lawfully wedded(husband/wife), to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."

Sometimes I think those vows mean more during sickness.  I mean, it's easy enough to be a Good, God-Following, Holy Person when life is easy, and you're in the pink of health.  When you're kneeling before the porcelain throne begging for it all to end?  Not so much.

Which was where I was most of Monday, from 6:30 until 11:00.  I woke up fine, started feeling queasy, and made a command decision halfway to the train station that I wouldn't be going to school that day.  Good decision, too - otherwise, I would have been spilling my guts (quite literally, too) on the bus, if not the train.

The irritating thing about sickness is that it's inconvenient.  While you're curled up in fetal position, massaging your errant stomach, life outside is going by like normal, and you end up missing out on it.

Which is not to mention that it's also painful.  Incredibly painful.  Particularly when you already have nothing in your stomach, and feel the ever-increasing need to relieve your stomach of that imagined burden.  Heh.  I spent a lot of time asking God to either make it stop or take me to heaven now, because when you're in the middle of sickness, it's nearly impossible to see the end.  Even if that end is only a day away, you can't fathom it.  You know that, yes, this too shall pass, but something in you is quailing, wondering how long a minute can stretch out, and how long this horrible pain could last, and maybe, possibly, it might never end.

I find that being in a dry season of my life is a lot like that.  Because I'm in the middle of it, I can't see around the corner, and that discourages me to no end.  I want, oh, I so desperately want to be going somewhere, and achieving my destiny (whatever that may be), and finally getting there.  I often forget that the journey is as important, if not more so, than arriving.  That doesn't make the goal any less important or worthy, but what about the character that is built on the way?  It doesn't happen overnight.  You don't suddenly make a decision to save a life; it is the result of a lifetime of decisions that reflect the same attitude and values that you have displayed, maybe even only for a second.

It's the life behind the scenes that prepares the way for the life that everyone else sees.  It is the journey that makes the goal so important.  It's not the depths to which you've fallen, but the height to which Jesus has brought you.  If you only ever see life as a series of negative events, you're missing the entire point of "for richer, for poorer...in sickness and in health."  Anyone can do good things when they are in a good part of their life; they can pursue God and do great things.  It's when they're in the worst, most rotten, lowest part of their lives, that the true nature of their relationship with God comes forth.  It's when you're sick that those vows matter the most.

"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

~Philippians 3:13-14

Does Paul mean forgetting everything?  Because humans don't exactly forget things; the mind is a little trickier than that.  But what if he is talking about something a little more than mental forgetting?  What if, really, he's saying that, in order to press forward, we need to stop letting the past hurts and horrible things effect us?

I think of it this way: I have a lot of past memories of hurtful things, but they don't hurt anymore.  They have lost their effect on me for the simple reason that they are in the past.  Most of that has been God's doing - because he gives me the ability to forgive, and move on.  Some things take longer than others - healing isn't always a sudden thing.  Sometimes, the most important healings in our lives are processes.  When a wound is deep, you can't band-aid it over and hope for it to heal.  Oftentimes, it has to be opened, and reopened, many times, because it must heal from the inside out.  Otherwise, infection takes hold and can spread, devastating the body and sometimes ending in death.  A wound can eat you alive, from the inside out, if you won't let God begin to deal with it.  It's like the root of bitterness that takes hold and spreads, like creeping charlie; once it invades your lawn, it is nigh-on impossible to remove.

This is not to say that I have arrived in the least - I am still working through some wounds with God.  In fact, I think I could safely say that the majority of [my] life is working through wounds with Him.  I've got such grubby fingers - I don't like letting go of things.  Even now, in some situations in my life, I hold too tightly, either to a person or thing, or to my anger or judgement.  Injustice makes me angry like nothing else.  But I am realizing that my anger usually accomplishes nothing.  It always ends up hurting me, one way or another.

So yes.  I am learning to let go.  Also, I'm learning the sickness part of the vow - both literally and figuratively.

('Cause, you know me.  I don't like to do things in half-measures.)

Exercising: I did situps and pushups on either Saturday or Sunday (apologies; I can't remember), but I haven't done anything since Monday, when I got sick.  The stomach area is still really tender, but I'll get back to it when I can.

Be encouraged!

~Fumble

P.S. Listen to this - it's good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4vhmY5FMSs