mission: recovery

welcome back to vertical, rhiannon. we've missed you.

the past week has been a blur, and i have to keep reminding myself that today, indeed, is not saturday. it is thursday. a thursday off of school for Pan-American Day (fill me in if you know why that is a holiday), but a thursday nonetheless.

i spent this last weekend pretty low-key. friday night after dinner, i came back to the apartment and hung out here for a while or up at the school making weekly phone calls. saturday i woke up in an excellent mood, had breakfast and conversation, went for a morning jog in the near-99 heat, spent some time poolside before lunch, and again after lunch. mid-afternoon, anne-ruth, joshua, and i went out to the market and to SD and Deli Mart to stock our fridges and get some stuff for a pot-luck breakfast on saturday. baked some brownies saturday night to share, and then decided to retire pretty early after feeling a wave of exhaustion from my first-unplanned, low-key weekend.

sometime around midnight or one, i woke up convulsing from feeling cold. one word likely never used in the history of describing Haiti would be cold. my entire body ached, and i barely managed to get out of the tangle of my mosquito net fast enough to put on sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt. it still wasn’t enough. i found my sheet and my blanket and came out to the couch with my pillow to curl up. i was miserable. it wasn’t long until diarrhea was added to my laundry-list of unpleasant symptoms (especially in a house with thin, manufactured walls, and no ceilings).

sometime in the morning, my lovely roommates came to my rescue and prayed with me, made sure i was hydrated and fed me an i.b. profein breakfast as i fell back to sleep for an hour or two. before i knew it, i was sweating and tearing layers off of me. i took, and actually enjoyed, a cold shower; and started to feel a little better. laying back down for a bit i realized how wrong i was.

at 9:30 leah came to borrow some ingredients from the breakfast i was so regretfully missing (if ya’ll know me or have ever been to visit in Nashville, you’ve been a recipient of the breakfast smorgasbord, and i don’t take entertaining and hospitality as a light matter!), i told her my symptoms and she said she would get one of the visiting nurses to check on me.

the details stop there as i completely lose concept of time and/or chronology. somewhere in the course of events, my fever climbed above 103, and wouldn’t come down even with the tylenol. just before what was supposed to be our teacher-parent meeting at school, they woke me and moved me in my stupor to shelley and freeman’s house on base, and into a room with electric (and a wall unit when the generator was on or we actually had power from EDH).

it was a violent pendulum from freezing cold to burning hot; and sweating regardless of my state. the headache i had was super intense, and never dulled even if the fever or other symptoms did. my entire body didn’t just ache, it was in pain. the diarrhea didn’t cease. as the visiting surgeon had been making house calls every few hours, he kept checking in on me, wondering if what we were dealing with was malaria.

one of the nights, walking back from the bathroom, i nearly collapsed as my vision got dark and i felt so faint. shelley came and helped me walk the rest of the way to the bedroom, noticing how my arms were even radiating heat.

on monday, they brought ben and i down to the hospital to be tested for malaria. the whole experience was SO unsettling. it was apparently immunization day, so the small laboratoire was packed with about 50 haitian mothers and their babies. the sight of a malaise blanc sitting on the ground in sheer pain made some of them scoff. but even through my ill-content and their laughter, i tried to pray blessings on each of the lives in that room.

when they called ben and i down, for some reason they couldn’t understand that both of us needed the test done and kept mixing up our prescriptions. right there in front of the crowd, without gloves on their hands, with blood splattered across the open vials on the table, they took our blood (from packaged syringes, rest-assured mom and daddy!) as they made loud, snide comments to each other about us. the whole thing was just so unsettling, and my body was in so much pain under this fever that i didn’t have the heart or strength to deal with it.

fortunately, God has the strength. and fortunately, He never gives us more than we can bear. sunday and monday, i slept a good deal of the time throughout the day and night; waking only when visitors came to check on me, give me meds or gatorade, or pray with me. God really gave me a fair amount of rest in my weakness and pain.

monday night, when i was sleeping however, i just could not be comfortable. i was tossing and turning, quite abnormally; like, feet to the head of the bed, head to the right then to left and then back at the top. it was odd. but one time when i awoke, i couldn’t move. i felt, like, this presence; and then God’s peace. it was as if God was speaking to my heart: “don’t worry. it’s my angels; they’re fighting for you. go back to bed.”

it is such a comforting thought, that our God fights for us. i know i’ve revisited this a few times since my Exodus emphasized entries, but it is still so surreal to me. 1 Peter 5:7 tells us to “give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you.” I can never get over how much our God really, truly LOVES us. that NOTHING we have done or could ever do would separate us from His love. a dear friend reminded me of His promises and and scriptures:

as the torch was being passed from Moses to Joshua, Joshua is reminded to “be strong and courageous! do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail nor abandon you.” (Deut. 31; and throughout Joshua). what comfort we find in a God that never leaves or forsakes us. never, ya’ll! we are not once without the Lord. even through the mud and the muck, the vomming or the diarrhea.

in Jeremiah, we are reassured that God’s plans for us don’t include harm (although that is a tactic of the enemy!), but they are to prosper us and to give us hope for the future. God tells us that when we pray, He listens. if we look, wholeheartedly, we will find Him. our God is a living, breathing, actively-involved God. and He’s got good news for us! even when we are weary, perhaps even especially when we’re weary.

“So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold-- though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.” 1 Peter 1:6-8

i’m still comforted by the peace He spoke to my heart, even in the midst of fever-fest ‘0h-10. but i was also reminded that the physical battle is only half of it. there is a much larger, largely unseen battle waging in the spiritual realm that is as real as anything i’ve felt or experienced during my sickness. and that the the one we need to truly be praying into. just knowing that God’s army of angels is protecting me is wonderful news, but for me to need the protection of angels; that’s a mighty fine storm a-brewin’.

the spiritual climate in haiti is darker and more real than i’ve ever experienced. i’ve seen spiritual warfare stateside, but usually in smaller pockets, and not such a grand-scale attack. the enemy has a tight reign on this country, and he’s none the eager to pass off control to a mighty God that expelled him from heaven.

even our base as a whole: we’ve reached our highest number of volunteers yet, and as our numbers increase, so does our reach and effectiveness. the enemy is trying his best with sickness spreading faster than a kindergarten classroom among healthy 20-somethings and grown adults. anything to cripple our efforts. i’m reminded of even the enemies attack to plant fear in my mind and try to kill me driving down to prayer walk in the park one friday morning. the enemy does not have mercy, nor a heart. he loves to see us weak.

but fortunately, God does too. “for in your weakness, His strength is perfected,” 2 Corinth 12:9. after coming out of the physical drain of the extent of my fever, i laid on my living room floor, with an ice pack over my eyes and what felt like a vice encasing my head, in tears Wednesday morning. so beat and worn from the enemy’s attacks. i was crying out to God, how bad would it be if i just gave up? if i gave into the enemy and just left and let him win? i can’t do this; i can’t be this miserable any longer. and fortunately, He heard my cries and stepped in, fought for me, and rescued me.

as the leader from the Denver team spoke these verses from 2 Corinthians over our staff in the prayer room last week, i quickly scribbled his words, as a reminder of God’s movement in our lives:

so often we think during our tough times and struggles, we think were the furthest from God; but it’s then that God says, ‘okay, you’re done; you’re spent. now i can finally show up.’ when we suck at life, God shows up and He’s the one that gets the glory. Cos we just ruin it all.

those words have really stuck with me; shining light on some of the struggles i had been facing in being here already, but carrying on to anything i may and will face in my remaining weeks here. i am so thankful that our God is a present, loving, healing and saving God.