{"id":782,"date":"2019-10-23T13:43:37","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T11:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glendawarburton.com\/?p=782"},"modified":"2022-10-12T10:28:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T08:28:37","slug":"a-dark-and-scary-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glendawarburton.com\/?p=782","title":{"rendered":"A Dark and scary place"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The hours of the night blurred in the dark, the glow of\nhospital lights a faint beacon in the miasma of pain and nausea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I couldn\u2019t focus in the mists that swirled in this foreign place. Five nights I thought. Five nights of agony. It\u2019s supposed to be over now, the procedure\u2019s been done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Lord,\u2019 I cry soundlessly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier I had thrown my toys, demanding my pain be attended to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a ten,\u201d I kept telling them. I couldn\u2019t read their\nthoughts as they watched me, unmoving. At last a doctor. \u201cYou have to give me\nsomething for the pain. It\u2019s a ten.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was more focused on telling off the nurse. \u201cIt\u2019s a ten,\u201d I told him again. \u201cAnd if you aren\u2019t going to give me anything to relieve it, then bring a bullet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That got his attention. But nothing helped. The pain drilled on. And on. The nausea overwhelmed. I asked for a bucket. The only way I could find some measure of relief was standing against the wall, my elbows resting on a high windowsill, my companion a bucket that boasted the scant evidence of a lunch I had tried to eat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The misery continued. I had to refuse one of the pain meds\nbecause that was causing me to heave fruitlessly at the swill that mocked at me\nfrom the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where was my Lord, my Father, my God?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was so knocked on my back by this physical attack that I really was not sure I would come back from it. I was more scared than I had ever been, sad beyond words, wandering in no man\u2019s land, feeling utterly abandoned by God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future was as huge a wilderness as any tract of\nuninhabited land and I had no idea how I was going to live in it, what my Lord\nwanted from me, or for me. In all the dark places that I have been in my life I\nhave always seen a shimmer of the path I am to follow, but not this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pain finally abated, but not the nausea. That continued for another four days. Days in which the thought of food, let alone the sight or smell of it, had my stomach in total revolt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you live the aftermath of a chronic attack? When you\nhave looked death in the eye and not been able to stand and fight as I have\ndone for 65 years? Too wracked by pain and nausea to want to live \u2013 where to\nfrom here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, in that barren desert, far in the distance I heard His\nwhispers. I knew it would take faith such as I had never experienced to creep\nclose to the place where I could hear the words of those whispers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found these words in my journal: I can\u2019t walk this next part of my journey. If I am to do it, I need some answers and assurances that I am unlikely to get, knowing God as I do. It has to be by faith, blind faith. That\u2019s all. *\u201cThough the Fig tree may not blossom<\/em>\u201d kind of faith. And I don\u2019t know if I have enough energy left for that. Maybe that is my answer? It is not energy that is needed, but simply resting in the knowledge that troubles will come, no amount of prayer or \u201cright living\u201d will keep them at bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lord is never silent for long, and one of those mornings as I opened my bible the marker was in 1 Samuel 2. I had not put the ribbon there. I hadn\u2019t been in 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, in fact anywhere before Psalms for many months. It is the story of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, of her need for a child, a need which the Lord finally met. Hannah then returns her son to the Lord, and she prays her release. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first gem came in verse 1: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI smile at my\nenemies, <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I rejoice in Your salvation.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter what the enemy does, how afflicted we are, how desperately lost and abandoned we may feel,\u00a0 we are secure in Christ\u2019s salvation. I wondered if I had really grasped that fact. I read on, and then came the big diamond, the rock of many carats:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe will guard the\nfeet of His saint, <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

but the wicked\nshall be silent in darkness<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For by strength no man shall prevail.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had tried and failed to deal with my illness in my own strength. It is what I had always done. Brave, tough Glenda! So I got up, sick as I was in the face of amazed opposition from my son, and blurred off to do a job I was totally unfit for, and fell hard. In that falling I did exactly what I was trying to circumvent, causing great inconvenience to those who had to cover for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are you seeing what I finally saw? The pride? The \u2018Look at\nme! No matter how sick I am I will get up and do whatever\u2019 kind of pride? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh the mortification of that realisation! Of my arrogance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n