Sickness

(photo courtesy of flickr - mortensen dogmar 'the sickness unto death)

Many of you have probably heard of Willow's visit to the hospital following her sickness from MRSA. 

The little girl is just such a champ. I'm so fortunate that God has given me a child with such a high pain threshold. She deals with everything with such grace already, I'm starting to think that her name Willow is ever so appropriate. She endured several blood tests and heel pricks with the same toughness as you'd expect from a Willow. 

The initial GP gave me the news about her ruptured eardrum and said "well, I guess being a newborn, you wouldn't have known that she was crying out of pain..." I responded with amazement "No, she hardly ever cries! She did cry the other night, which would have been for about 5 minutes." As her mother, I'd like to think that if my child was uncontrollably crying, that I would have sought help knowing that something was wrong. It seems as though with this child, I have to be a bit more on the ball if she's only going to let me know she's contracted a deadly disease from a 5 minute screaming match (and this followed her being up for 5 hours, so I put it down to tiredness...)

Anyway, after being in hospital overnight in the childrens' ward, I was again counting my blessings. There were some very injured kids there. One image which will haunt me was of a young child maybe only a month old or less, with tubes in her nose, and her parents, silently looking in on her sleeping form over the bars of the steel cot. They looked very worried.

It made me think about my response to God if He should decide it best to take Willow from us early, or for any of my children for that matter.

It would be the most overwhelming grief I think I could ever live through. But I would like to think that my relationship with the Lord would become stronger through the pain.

I read of families of missionaries out on the field, and they had plenty of kids, and maybe only 3 would survive. Plagues, sickness would overcome their tiny bodies and without medical assistance (or antibiotics in those days) the children would see death early in life.

I thank God for medicine, for the antibiotics that will hopefully cure Wills of this virulent strain of Staph. I thank him for free health care. I genuinely saw the same care and concern on the doctor's faces as I would have seen in my own reflection this week. And I'm thankful that we are made in the image of God.

I think as time passes and I experience more of the world's pain and sickness, that I will baulk even more strongly at the thought that what we are experiencing now is Heaven.

And I can honestly say that I thank God now for each passing day that brings me closer to the day when I die. When God will wipe every tear from my eyes. Because I see the pain on those children's faces in the ward. Faces that aren't smiling and happy like Willow's. Little kids who have been sick for a long time. Parents who choose to stay in hospital to be with their sick children for months on end. And I think to myself- "this is definitely not heaven". This world should be judged and found to be lacking. This life is only a minute taste of what is to come fully in heaven. All of the joys heightened and all of the sadness dissolved.

As i see more clearly this world for what it really is, the more I long for the life to come. A life where no worldly barriers are in the way of me knowing God fully and walking with him properly.

A life of no more mistakes. I believe that God has prepared a seat for me there, with my name on a beautiful placecard, and with a feast before me. Because one day, I will celebrate with Jesus at his banquet table in all his glory. Because he is a God of abundance and all good things.