Back in the Day...Part Eight

So I'm watching Simon Burch with my husband and some friends at the movie theater. I am bawling my head off; like uncontrollably. It's seriously embarrassing. After the movie we head to a restaurant and everyone starts looking at the menu. And then all of the sudden it hit me...I'm going to throw up! (I am one of those people who hate to throw up. I fear it more than just about anything other than snakes.) So I start to panic as I try to figure out where the bathroom is. Unable to make quick decisions, I froze and focused instead on a large plant next to our table. I said quite anxiously, "I'm going to throw up in the plant!" My friend, Amy, got up from the table and started sprinting to the bathroom, dragging me behind her. Seconds later I'm vomiting while she's holding my hair back.

The vomiting didn't stop for 16 weeks.

When people tell me that they have morning sickness it's very hard for me to be compassionate. What I experienced was more like hell than morning sickness. I'll give you the short version:

I threw up everything that touched my mouth, including my saliva. I literally threw up every time I swallowed. I think I slept more in the hospital than I did in my own bed. I finally had to have a PICC line surgically inserted in my arm that "fed" me through a vein that carries blood to the heart. I literally carried around a milkshake-looking substance in a backpack (talk about stylish). Home health nurses visited constantly. I was on a drug called Zofran, which is used for chemotherapy patients to stop nausea, and it wasn't helping! I rarely showered, cried often and every time I threw up I'd scream, "HELP ME!" Needless to say, Vince was a wreck. Forefront was 6 months old and we were a mess.

After people hear our nightmare they ask, "What about the ministries you were involved in? What about Forefront? What happened?" My answer is, "I dropped out of existence for 16 weeks. Vince almost had a nervous breakdown. And Forefront was fine."

I think we put way too much pressure on ourselves as leaders. We think that everything will stop or fall apart without us. Maybe it's pride or our insatiable need to be needed. I'm not sure. But one thing I learned is that God can continue to be God and work and move without me. I'm an important part of the equation, but I'm not the end-all-be-all. Forefront is God's. We are just servants, washing feet on a daily basis. God provides and God fills voids. Sometimes it takes our world collapsing to see this Truth. It sure did for me!

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