Hey, remember my last post about getting food poisoning at the end of 2023?
And remember how I talked about finding it futile to anticipate or articulate what 2024 might deliver as a result, and how my hope was simply to bind myself to God as tightly as possible come what may?
Well, I write this to you as I emerge fresh from a miserable bout of bacterial infection contracted no less than a week after my food poisoning, so I feel pretty prescient: 2024 has not, thus far, aligned with any of my expectations or assumptions.
It’s okay. I’ll live. (If God wills, considering the start to my year). But it has gotten me thinking about medicine.
When I first developed a chesty cough, I reached out to the local teledoc service I have through my insurance. The doctor did listen, and seemed to care. But he was focused on my breathing. “Deep breath in,” he said, and listened. “Deep breath out.” He told me I sounded fine, insisted I had an acute upper respiratory infection; it would clear up, he told me, with a good decongestant, some cough medicine, and albuterol. He prescribed me all three.
Seven days later, having obediently taken everything prescribed, I was a wreck: a wheezing cough that seemed to emerge from somewhere down around my spleen, a fever, a lethargy so profound I was content to sit and do nothing more than stare at walls. “It’ll clear up, probably,” I told my husband, sucking on the inhaler and shoving the spray up my nose. “Probably.”
It did not clear up.
Back to the doctor—my GP, this time, who took one look at me and what I was coughing up, said, “Goodness, that’s bacterial,” and promptly prescribed a round of antibiotics and steroids.
I have been on them for one day in total and already I feel like a new human being.
It is a good reminder that a precise diagnosis matters. All the medicine in the world and all the best medicine in the world can’t make a dent in a condition it is not designed to treat. Specific symptoms require a specific response.
I’m thinking about this because, lately, it seems that I’m surrounded by people seeking help of all sorts. Not from me, specifically: just general help, from general sources. Colleagues at work talk about being unhappy with various things: their bodies, the amount of whole grains they eat, the amount of time they spend thinking about their jobs. I read mournful social media posts from people convinced they’re lacking…something. A girlfriend, a spouse, the right sort of home, friends, community.
So many people, crying out.
A friend of mine has recently jumped on board the New Year’s train. When I talked to her in December she was a disaster: struggling with her mental health, cynical, full of complaints and bitterness, frustrated about her body and her romantic life and her career. She was so angry I found myself spending less time in her company than usual.
But when she texted me a week or so ago she was euphoric. She’s decided to “manifest” the changes she wants to see this year: she’s listening to her therapist. She got a new haircut. She’s taken on some new projects at work and purchased a bunch of stuff for her home.
“I feel amazing,” she gushed to me. “I’m a different person now.”
I hope she is able to support all the changes she wants to make. I don’t want her to be miserable. But I found myself wondering, worriedly, on the phone, what will happen to the “new her” when the inevitable strikes: when the work project doesn’t pan out like it should, or a new friend she’s making skips lunch, or her therapist asks something of her she doesn’t want to do.
We build our whole lives on such small human things. On what can break or catch or crumble any moment. We convince ourself that what we make or have or do will save us.
I am convinced this is all a deep spiritual sickness. Richard Beck in Hunting Magic Eels writes that so much of the cri de couer of the modern era—the need for something to fix everything—comes of our having cast God out. Having set up a world without him, many of us are now desperately seeking out alternatives in any and every form.
Nothing can really cure that particular sickness but God Himself.
It’s become more apparent to me in my sickness—which is funny, because my relationship with God right now is as static as its ever been. I’ve been too tired and too sick to pray regularly or maintain my Bible study with any consistency. The most I’ve been able to manage is to thank God, at the end of the day, for what blessings I have received. To, in the morning, ask him to take care of me and heal me as He wills it.
Otherwise I sort of loll around and do not much because I can’t do much—
And God is still here. And God loves me just like He did when I was diligently studying at my desk, unshadowed by such minor concerns as breathing without coughing. For all my travails, I don’t feel bereft or abandoned. That has helped the soul just like the antibiotics now appear to be helping my body.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve or get better. I have my own goals and dreams and lists of things I have planned for when I feel better. But I also have to be careful, have to be mindful, that I don’t deify any of those things. Of course I have career hopes, and I want to take care of myself, and draw boundaries, and invest in some little quality-of-life changes.
But I don’t kid myself that those things will save me. That anything can but God.
And somehow, that makes the current state—which is really not ideal—more bearable. Build your house on the rock, and the storm is just a storm. While I wait for it to pass, I’m grateful that I already have the cure I need for what can ail me most.
Samaritan's Song 