Seems almost too good to be true. After three months of a continual headache, I've risen today for the third day in a row without one.
I had inwardly begun to accept and resign myself to the fact that this problem was going to endure. Even for the first two months, I was honestly rather surprised to wake up each day and find the headache still there. Third month I wasn't so surprised, but was still expecting it to get better. Then the new CAT scan revealing my again fully infected skull, ten days of being hooked up to an IV every twelve hours... It wasn't looking good. I began to expect the headache to be there when I woke up each morning, for quite some time longer.
Strange sensation, sitting on my front porch and just feeling the breeze blowing on my face. The wind almost always blows here atop Zion hill. But yesterday morning I experienced it anew. And I thought of Elijah...
God once spoke to Elijah in the whisper of a breeze -- announcing His presence amid that prophet's distress. I love that passage, because was not in the terrible and destructive forces at work in the world where God was pleased to be known. Rather with a whisper came the word to the preacherman of old, ready to give up. He had, in fact, begged God just to put an end to him and be done with it.
Thankfully, I was nowhere near that end of my rope. And even more thankfully, I started my third day pain-free.
Throughout this time being laid up, I've thought often of my people at the Nursing Home and prayed for them. The physical challenges some of them face are considerably more immense than mine, to be sure. It has been hard sometimes to taste, and to be brought to know more intimately the mental and spiritual strain that comes along with the ailing body.
I'm hoping to go see them again tonight, sing with them and pray with them. I've missed them, and know that they've missed me too.
