May 5th Remembered

Two years ago, I woke up feeling strange. Physically weird. As the morning wore on, the feeling only intensified. I had never felt this way before—bloated, light-headed, nauseous. I finally had to excuse myself to the restroom because I felt like I was going to be sick. Turns out, I almost fainted instead. The school nurse came to check me out. BP was normal. No fever. Had eaten a good breakfast so blood sugar shouldn’t have been low. Hmmm? Could I perhaps be pregnant she inquired? I admitted that yes, I guess I could be, but it was doubtful. Her advice was to sit with my feet up for a few more minutes and then see how I felt. I had my class downstairs (short-staffed) and knew I had to get back. It was only a short time after I had returned when I almost passed out again and knew I wouldn’t be able to make it through the day. I left late that morning…little did I know that I would be taking the rest of the school year off due to medical leave.

After I got home, I continued to feel awful. The bloating feeling just kept intensifying and by this point, my stomach was getting distended. I decided to just head to bed and hopefully I’d feel better later on. J periodically called to check in to see how I was doing, but by 3 pm, I told him he needed to get home so that we could go to the hospital. Something was obviously NOT right, and this certainly wasn’t presenting like a pregnancy. When J got home, he tried to help me out of bed but the pain in my abdomen was so intense, that I couldn’t even move into a seated position. When I finally managed to sit up, I promptly blacked out. With that, he called 9-1-1.

Long story short, I ended up having an ectopic pregnancy. Blood was leaking into my abdomen cavity (why I kept passing out and the increasing bloating feeling) due to the ruptured tube. They wheeled me into the OR for emergency surgery and removed the tube and patched me up.

6 days later it was Mother’s Day. As you can imagine, it wasn’t a very happy one. We cried, held each other and somehow made it through, as we had done in the past.

As I slowly began to physically heal and grow stronger, I decided to use my time to really come before the Lord, pray and seek Him. When you can’t drive, there’s no one else at home and you don’t have cable TV you might as well spend some time praying!

I felt the Lord was calling me to read and meditate on Psalm 40. A few years prior, our small group had done a bible study focusing on U2. Their song “40” was discussed and resonated with me then, but it took on an even greater meaning during this season.

“40:1 I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord.”

Looking back, I know that God was present with me every step of the way. He understood my anger, frustration, sadness, confusion and questioning. He accepted it and loved me through it. How would I respond? I basically had 2 choices: Continue to ask the un-answerable question “Why me?” (why not me?) or step out in faith that God’s plan was bigger than my comprehension and to trust that He would carry me through. I decided to trust and 2 months later, was rewarded with the phone call that would change our lives. Our 6 year quest for a child was over.

He certainly did lift me up out of the bog and set me on firm footing. Now it is my turn to sing praises to God and proclaim to all what He has done.