A TRYING WEEK

It was a rough week for about half our household - Melissa and I and our littlest one.  I've been fighting a sinus infection (again!) and an all night rain moved it down into my lungs last Sunday night.  By 1:00 am on Monday morning, my breathing was so labored it woke me up - and then kept me awake until it was time to push the family out the door to school.  I taught throughout the day on Monday, but you'd have to ask my students if any of it made sense.  
By Monday night, Sarah was running a temperature.  That was the beginning of three days of spiking fevers, irritability, headaches, and finding ALL of Daddy's jokes entirely unamusing. 

Melissa and I took turns staying home from school with her throughout the week.  The low point came when I was subjected to a "Spy Kids" marathon: the original and three sequels.  

(The "Spy Kids" movies ARE educational - if you want to learn how to make mind-numbingly stupid children's movies.)

I'm exaggerating. The actual low point came in the last 24 hours when Melissa and I saw Sarah go through a complete loss of appetite for food AND drink, repeated vomiting when Mommy and Daddy tried to force the issue - losing three and a half pounds in the process.  (Which for this little girl represents about 10% of her body weight.)  The only things that brought her any comfort were several loooooong showers, seated on a lawn chair and letting the warm water run over her.  

In the midst of all of our anxieties Wednesday night over Sarah's health, we called in our resident nurse and then our doctor for consultation and reassurance.  (Both are such a blessing to us!) Dr, Rodney followed me up in the dark after I knocked on his front door at 9:30.  He told us that if Sarah continued to throw up, she would need an IV.  He gave her some anti-nausea medication and he waited with us the 20 minutes for it to take effect.  Then Melissa fed Sarah some crackers and water.  

And it all promptly came right back up.  

All the while, Sarah was begging to go to sleep.  We told Dr. Rodney that we would be seeing him in the morning if we couldn't get liquid into her overnight.  

Sarah woke in the middle of the night crying and babbling about being afraid of the "people who are trying to take our house back" and, a few minutes later, a concern over some "meanness in her own heart."  We took it to be the leftovers of a bad dream and/or the justifiable incoherence of a feverish 7 year old at 2:00 am. 

When morning finally came, Melissa and I kept dragging our feet on getting an IV started because the whole thought made Sarah so anxious.  And yet, she still couldn't keep anything down in general - although Melissa did get a dose of an antibiotic into her in case the illness was bacterial.  Otherwise, every little sip of juice and every crumb of food resulted in stomach pain and, ultimately, rejection.  

In the afternoon, Sarah was once again in the lawn chair soaking under the shower head when she turned and announced, "Satan has been torturing me."

Now, please understand that I've never heard anything even close to this phrasing coming out of any of our children's mouths, and certainly not my little blond second grader with the two missing front teeth.  Like the rational western church culture we were raised in, we're not a family that talks much about the devil and demons and such.  

So I asked, "By that do you mean that you feel so bad that it must be the devil's fault?"

Nope.  It was a "mean voice" in her head that would now and then "yell" things at her, she explained. It had started the previous day, often speaking specifically whenever she held something in her hands.

Melissa and I figured we were dealing with either dehydration-related hallucinations or spiritual warfare.  Maybe both - who knows how these things work?  Either way, it was a matter for family prayer.  Before bedtime on Thursday evening, the six of us held hands in the living room and looked to the Lord for guidance and healing and protection.  

Whatever the root causes of the fever and headaches and grouchiness and mean voices, Sarah turned the corner that evening, so happy to have avoided the dreaded IV.  There was one more incident in the middle of the night where she cried out and when I came running to her bedside she told me that the voice was "torturing" her again.  But she quickly fell back to sleep and by morning, she was 100% her old self, to God's glory!

Her brothers and sister were happy to have the old Sarah back. Mom and Dad were flat out RELIEVED.

It was a long week, but it was a good reminder for us as a family to be vigilant in prayer.  We KNOW that so many of you are praying for us as we serve here in Haiti - some on a daily basis even.  We are SO thankful!  We can never have too many prayers!


P.S. - My sinus infection continues - entering its third week now!  It's a nuisance that saps my strength and makes me grumpy.  My family would appreciate you lifting my health in prayer. ;-)