Earlier this week I cavalierly tossed out an opinion that came back to bite me in the bottom last night. I was on the phone with a friend, and I was lamenting how long it seemed to take toddlers to understand very simple concepts. Case in point:
“That’s a purple crayon. Purple. Not green, Sam, purple. Purple. That’s the green one over there. No, that’s purple. It’s purple. It isn’t green, Samuel...”
I could feel my blood pressure rising! It never occurred to me that if I made God the parent in that conversation, and made myself the toddler, our conversations and His attempt to impart basic knowledge to me would sound just as frustrating!
Fortunately, I will continue to repeat the ever-crucial difference between green and purple crayons, and God will continue to repeat His instructions and hopes for me ad nauseam, as last night showed me all too well!
It started around 9pm or so with a stomach ache. The baby was moving a lot, and when I was late into my 3rd trimester with Samuel I remember an awful 72 hour period where he flipped into a transverse position and sent me to the emergency room in agony as a 21", almost 9 lb lump of wiggly boy stretched my uterus into shapes it hadn’t been used to for 8 months. This ache felt like that.
I walked, and the pain got worse. I rested, and the pain got worse. I tried lying in a hot bath and the pain got worse. I ate a bowl of cereal (not a good idea) and had some water and woke David up. “I feel awful!” I wailed to him.
After we agreed that these were not contractions, David decided I had indigestion and I ate some Tums and then wandered the house in a blur of pain for a few hours until trying to lie down again in bed. I couldn’t get comfortable. Up and down and up and down...
But David works tonight until 11:30pm, and so he HAD to be well-rested and couldn’t afford to stay up with me if my problem was probably, I dunno, ‘too much pork for supper and a touchy tummy’. He went back to sleep and I kept up my routine. I would lie on the sofa for 30 minutes, then run to the bathroom, then back to the sofa. In between bathroom jaunts I had cold sweats, then hot flashes and tossed and turned on the sofa as the clock ticked past the hours and I fitfully dozed when the pain let me.
Finally around 4am I got into bed and the pain, while not gone, was definitely in the realm of pain-but-not-agony now and I fell into a very awkward sleep.
This morning, my abdomen was very tender to the touch, sore and swollen, but no longer feeling like it was being ripped from end to end. I treated myself to a cab to work and just made it in the door before making a mad dash to the church kitchen to lose everything I’d eaten in the past 18 hours. I was dizzy and weak after, and my abdomen is still very sore and a bit puffy, but I felt a lot better once I’d been sick and realized that yes, this had probably been a 24 bug of some kind and not, say, appendicitis or something truly serious.
Now, I don’t think that God gave me a stomach virus in order to teach me a lesson. However, there were lessons in that horrible night that can be uncovered, although probably in a better way from someone functioning on more than a few hours of sleep. I thought about how when the pain got to be unbearable and I wasn’t able to think clearly, my reaction was to pray, but when the pain was still at a normal level, then I reacted by trying to control it myself! Prayer, you see, made an appearance as a ‘last resort’, and how true is that in so much of our lives?
Anyway, these are ramblings from a tired Mama who has a long day ahead of her and isn’t thinking very clearly at all. It’s a good day for dry toast and lots of hydration, I think. Oh, and Heavenly Father? I’m still pushing for making it at least until the 13th, okay?
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