The strangeness of being ill

Being ill is strange.

 

Obviously, everyone’s ill from time to time. We all get headaches and coughs and colds. We all have good days and bad days. That’s all normal; but I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be properly ill. That’s where it gets strange. Being so ill that I couldn’t think, finding that much of what was happening would not lodge in my memory, being unable to stay awake… that was strange.

 

The worst part was that I even found it hard to pray. The constant chatter between my Heavenly Father and me is an important feature of my everyday life. I don’t know how I’d get by without that whisper in my ear, telling me to do this, do that now, go there. I can’t imagine not having Him there, ready to share everything with me.

 

For a while, I wondered what I’d done wrong. It was like living in a fog. I knew God was there but I couldn’t feel Him. I knew I had things to tell Him but I couldn’t work out how to say them. I loved it when a visitor came to see me and then, after we’d chatted for a while, she suggested that she pray for me. The next day, another visitor came. Again, she suggested that she pray for me. They did what I could not. And gradually, the fog cleared.

 

Then, I remembered about Ian.

 

Ian Collins had been the Association Minister (a Baptist Bishop really) for our region and

Yorkshire

a few years ago. He had arranged to come to visit our church and lead a Sunday morning service. Then, he was overtaken by a severe form of cancer. He had to cancel all his appointments, so he didn’t come to us that day. Nevertheless, with the help of chemotherapy, he gradually turned round and was able to pick up on some of his responsibilities again.

 

As we had been the first one to be cancelled, we were the first that he visited then. He shared with us all what it had been like to be so ill that he couldn’t feel God and couldn’t pray. He recalled one of the darkest days, when no-one knew whether he would live or die, and two of his greatest friends came up to see him. One was a fellow minister, the other the General Secretary of the Baptist Union at that time. They had come to pray with him. Ian remembered that as a precious time, when they did for him what he could not do for himself.

 

I was never nearly as ill as Ian, nor for as long, but it has given me a greater insight into our humanity. We are not just physical bodies. We are both physical and spiritual beings, with the various parts intricately entwined together. Physically, I have recovered now. Spiritually, maybe I can see more clearly than before. Certainly, it’s good to be back in active service once again.

 

All praise to our Lord and God, for His healing power, body, mind and soul!

 

Liz Edwards

 

 

PS Thank you for your prayers. I don’t know where I’d be now without them.