Maybe You're Not Doing Anything Wrong

I have a new suggestion for hospital emergency rooms.

Beds in the waiting room.

I realize there may be some logistical problems with this idea, but sometime between being triaged with a 102-degree fever and waiting for an actual ER room to become available, I became convinced this could be my greatest contribution to modern medicine.

Because when your abdomen hurts, you're nauseous, your head is pounding and every chair seems to have been designed by someone who has never actually been sick...you start looking at the floor differently.

I could lie down there.

And then common sense returns.

Kimberly. This is an emergency room floor.

Germs. Never mind.

It wasn't exactly how I had planned to spend my Monday.

Actually, none of it was.

By Sunday I had developed pretty significant abdominal pain, and when I woke up Monday morning, I knew my normal Monday wasn't going to happen.

By 8:30, I was driving myself to Acute Care. A 102-degree fever and elevated white blood count earned me a trip next door to the ER for a CT scan.

Yippee. (I don't think this is one of the prizes anyone is hoping to win.)

Eventually, a room opened up.

And for the first time in my long and rather distinguished career as a patient, I was doing the ER by myself.

I almost expected a sticker.

FIRST ER VISIT ALL BY HERSELF!

No sticker came.

Some Things Don't Get Easier With Practice

I hadn't asked my husband to come. He had work. And if I'm being completely truthful, I'm tired of people seeing me sick.

There. I said it.

I've spent enough years being the patient. Enough hospital gowns. Enough scans. Enough people asking me to rate my pain from one to ten.

And some things get easier the more you do them. Going to the ER isn't one of them. Neither are needles.

As I lay there while the nurses worked to get an IV started, my body remembered things my mind wasn't necessarily trying to remember.

Medical PTSD is real.

The pokes. The anxiety. The anticipation of whether this one will work.

First poke…labs…success on one try.

Second attempt…labs & IV started…took awhile, but she got it in…yes.

Third poke for more labs…no success, and it gets a little harder to remain your cheerful, charming self.

Thankfully, they stopped at three pokes.

Small joys.

And somewhere between the IV attempts and waiting for the CT scan, I started thinking about how much of my life I've spent in rooms like this.

Hospital beds. Clinic rooms. Infusion chairs. Scan tables. Waiting rooms. And something in me got angry.

Not raging-at-God angry. More tired angry.

Seriously? Haven't I given enough blood? Haven't I paid enough of my body? Why another thing?

And then came the question underneath all the other questions:

What am I doing wrong?

Maybe You're Not Doing Anything Wrong

I wonder if you've ever asked that question.

Maybe you're doing everything you know to do and your marriage is still difficult.
Maybe you've prayed for your child, and she is still struggling.
Maybe you've worked hard, and the business still isn't where you thought it would be.
Maybe you finished treatment and thought you could finally put hospitals behind you...and then your body threw another surprise your way.
Maybe you're simply tired of being strong.

And somewhere along the way you've started wondering:

God, am I doing something wrong?

I could feel myself heading down that road Monday. But instead of trying to think my way out of it, I gave it to God.

The frustration. The fear. The exhaustion. The seriously, haven't we done this enough already?

And lying there in that hospital bed, I felt something I hadn't expected.

Peace.

Not answers.

Peace.

And one word kept coming to mind:

Refine.

Kim, you're not necessarily doing something wrong. You're still being refined.

I've been thinking about that ever since.

I don't believe every hard thing is a lesson God sends us. I certainly don't think God needed to give me diverticulitis to straighten me out. But I do believe there are seasons when God uses the things I would absolutely never choose to shape something in me.

Refining isn't punishment. Pruning doesn't mean the plant has failed. And another difficult season doesn't necessarily mean you've somehow wandered off the path.

Sometimes we're simply living in a broken world where bodies get sick, people disappoint us, plans fall apart, and Mondays refuse to behave like Mondays.

And God meets us there.

The D Word

Eventually the doctor came back with my CT results.

Diverticulitis.

I could have kissed him. I didn't.

Mostly because I'm happily married, and partly because I didn't have enough energy for that level of enthusiasm.

But diverticulitis?

I'll take the D word over the C word any day.

And just like that, some of the fear loosened its grip.

Later, I could have sworn I heard my name being called from around the corner.

Kimberly...Kimberly...

Turns out it was probably just the Pepsi machine. Pepsi is one of my first loves, right behind Jesus and my family. And I was too nauseous to drink one. That's how you know things were serious.

When Monday Isn't Ordinary

I've thought a lot about that hospital bed since coming home. Not because I want to write another story about being sick. Actually, that's the last thing I want this to be about.

I keep thinking about the woman who is having her own version of an unordinary Monday. The one who thought she'd already been through enough. The one sitting somewhere by herself with thoughts that are getting louder.

The one asking:

What did I do wrong?

Maybe today you need the same reminder I needed.

Another hard thing does not automatically mean you're doing something wrong.

You may simply be in another place where God is going to meet you.

You don't have to understand it yet. You don't have to turn it into a lesson today. You don't even have to be particularly cheerful about it.

You can tell God you're tired. You can tell Him you're angry. You can tell Him you really thought you'd paid your dues already. And then you can let Him sit with you there.

Because that's what I've learned through all those hospital rooms and waiting rooms and scan tables.

God doesn't only meet us on the other side of the hard thing.

He meets us right smack dab in the middle of it.

God is the anchor.
Hope is the thread.

And sometimes hope looks remarkably small.

A little peace in a hospital bed.
A CT result that says diverticulitis instead of cancer.
A blood draw attempt that finally works.
And maybe even the promise of a Pepsi when your stomach can handle it.

Life in the middle is like that.

Some Mondays simply aren't ordinary.

But God is already there.