The Not-Quite-New-Year Food Poisoning Epiphany

Nothing brings perspective quite like a bout of food poisoning.

I’m blessed that it waited until after Christmas and before the New Year: a thoughtful timing, if ever there was one, for something so miserable.  I don’t get sick like that often: once, traveling overseas, and once a long time before that, my second year of marriage, on a beach vacation.

And the thing that is particularly upsetting about food poisoning is that quite often, like the worst of trials, it hits like a bolt from the blue.  One minute you’re minding your own business, eating badly through the holidays, and the next you’re trapped in the bathroom making friends with your toilet bowl—if you’re lucky to get that far before disaster strikes.

When my husband checked on me, he was horrified by how miserable I looked and sounded.  “What can I do?”

“Nothing,” I muttered, helplessly, and it was true.

Nothing to do but get through it.  And get through it you shall, as the body mercilessly and efficiently does what God made bodies to do: get the toxins out of the system posthaste.  When I’m not suffering through bouts of sickness at 2am I could marvel at the process, and I do. 

But the morning after it ends?

That’s like Christmas.

You’re tired and limp and fatigued, yes, with aching ribs and no meaningful appetite, but the misery has passed.  You can breathe and think again.  The mere thought of food no longer sends you into convulsions.  If my food poisoning misery was punctuated by Lord, have mercy and ease this then the recovery was punctuated by giddy gratitude.  Oh thank you, God.  I can breathe.  I can drink water.

I was a helpless puddle an entire day after.  I moved from bed to couch to chair to another chair to couch to bed and took so many naps my husband started laughing whenever he walked into the room.  While I swept, he did the work of cleaning up the house, organizing things and sorting out Christmas presents, washing dishes, generally being all-around Household Manager Extraordinaire.  He prodded me into water and then Sprite and then Ritz crackers and soup when I felt able.  He drew baths and brought blankets.

Two things emerged from the post-food poisoning fog, and they were these:

It means a lot to be loved.  It means a lot to be loved.  Any number of small miseries can be borne when one is loved well and thoroughly.  And what struck me is how fortunate I am to have a person to love me well—several people who love me well.  People who notice if I don’t show up, if I’m off my game, who come in to help if something’s wrong, who really really care—enough to be there for the hard stuff.  It’s rare to be loved so well.

And that’s why loneliness is so hard.  I always find myself thinking of certain people this time of year: my widowed aunt, the church congregants I know without family for some reason or other, college students having to leave family again for school in the New Year, married couples with no children and few connections where they live, the single people without local family…  And I think this is why God put us here. 

The same God who frets over the widowed and the orphaned in Scripture still cares about them.  Still cares about the lonely, lost, and hurting.  He is as present to them in the church as we have ever been.  We often erroneously think about Christmas “giving” as being monetary, and indeed it’s often easier—sign a check and be on your way—but being present to people when they need someone is one of the greatest gifts of love I think we can give.  I still think of the church people who showed up at all hours of the day and night in every moment of need for my family.  When we tried to thank them, they shooed us away.  “Why wouldn’t we be here?”

I want to be that kind of Christian in the New Year as much as I can.

The second food-poisoning revelation was simply this: a trial has a wonderful way of bringing clarity.

Spend enough hours paying the price for whatever toxic nightmare you ate and the smallest things seem miraculous: life without nausea, water, the ability to leave the bathroom.  But such passing crises also place into sharp relief what is critical and what is not.  The presentation I’m worrying about?  Not critical.  The conference I have ahead of me?  Seems huge.  Again, not critical.  Being with the people I love?  Being able to love the people I love with my full time and attention?  Spending time being grateful and enjoying what’s before me?  Important.  Important!

So it seems that for me gift of the New Year comes early this season.  I would rather it not have come with such misery, but I’m grateful to God who always redeems these sorts of miseries for our good.  I want to be right-hearted, going into the New Year.  I want to keep my priorities in place.  I want to love others the way I’m fortunate to be loved.

And I want to avoid questionable foods at all costs.