Ain’t no party like a pity party….

I have been dealing with cancer for 19 years. My anniversary of diagnosis was thanksgiving week. During that week, I found several more spots of cancer. As if that isn’t enough, I’m also dealing with bone spurs growing into my joints (hip, knee, and ankle) which causes tremendous pain. So, it’s not surprising that I have recently been a bit down…

Oh, who am I kidding…I have been throwing myself a full-on pity party.

When describing this condition to a friend of mine (Ann), I told her one of my frustrations was not being able to get out and about very easily to be around people who may need encouragement because I hurt terribly when walking or standing. She challenged me to pray for a young woman who has been struggling with infertility, had IVF recently, found she was pregnant, and was having complications.

I did as Ann suggested and prayed for the young woman. God gave me words to give her and I trepidatiously sent a text explaining that I had prayed, and God had given me words for her.

Now I didn’t know this person very well. I’m in Ann’s bible study with her, but I hadn’t ever talked with her privately, so she didn’t know me. It is a scary thing, sending off that type of text message, not knowing if the person on the receiving end will think you are a complete nutter, but I obeyed and sent it anyway.

I’m very thankful that I did….

At the next bible study, this amazingly strong young woman talked about how she lost the baby and how the message that I sent her helped her through that.

I was stunned….

Here I was, wallowing in my own pity party, and this person just lost her baby and thanked God and ME for helping her through it. Good grief! All I did was pray and send the message!

To say I cried when she was talking is an understatement….

 I UGLY cried.

Ya know, the kind of cry that makes snot run out of your nose. This poor woman at my table, whom I didn’t know, pushed a tissue over at me because I was gross. That made me chuckle as I assured her while reaching into my purse, that I ALWAYS carry Kleenex in case spontaneous crying breaks out.

You see, while I had my head firmly up my A and was celebrating my angst, God STILL used me to help someone else. How humbling is that?! I explained to the group that I had been pity-partying (and why) and that If Ann wouldn’t have encouraged me to pray for someone else, I would have still been wallowing in my own self-pity.

Armed with this new attitude, I asked God to send me more people to help. I SHOULD have been more specific with my prayer because what I was sent next was a very sick husband.

As many of us know, husbands are extraordinarily needy when they are ill. This gets compounded with my husband because he developed vasovagal syncope (passes out due to the trigger of a high fever) 7 years ago. The first time it happened, I called an ambulance because I thought he was having a stroke.

Needless to say, I had to supervise him very closely to try and prevent him passing out. I plied him with liquids to keep him from dehydrating. I gave him fever reducing meds. I even tried to get his sweatshirt and pants off of him so he could cool down easier.

At this point, I knew I was in trouble, because he growled at me and wouldn’t let me take off his pants.  I wasn’t in any kind of condition to fight with a grown man to get his pants off. Now that I think about it, it’s probably illegal, though I doubt I would be convicted, seeing as he’s my husband and I was just trying to help.

At 3 in the morning, the first night he was sick, he woke up with a high fever. I helped him to the bathroom, got him back into bed, gave him his water, meds, and crackers to sooth his stomach with the meds and thought I was safe to run to the bathroom myself.

Boy was I wrong!

In the few minutes it took me to get down the hall, pee, wash my hands, and return. Jeff had somehow made it out of bed and was standing in our bedroom holding his cup. I asked him, “what are you doing?” and he replied, “passing out” and then did. He literally fell straight back, barely missing the corner of the tv stand. I’ve never seen anything like it. He fell STRAIGHT BACK….

I don’t know how I got to the floor so quickly, but I did. Normally it takes 5 minutes to ease myself down with all of the pain but not that night. I was beside him like a shot, checking his head to see if he hit it on anything. By the grace of God, he didn’t.

He was out cold, but not with concussion. He was snoring! I turned him on his side, in case he got sick and waited for a few minutes. He woke up and said “how did I get here?” I replied, “you passed out”, to which he said “I did?” and promptly fell asleep again. A few minutes later he woke up again and we started the charade all over again: “how did I get here?”; “You passed out”; “I did?”; then snoring.

We did this little routine FIVE TIMES before I had enough and demanded that he crawl into bed.

I then had to search the room to see if he dropped his meds because he couldn’t tell me if he had actually taken them. He hadn’t. When he fell, he flung them against the wall. A discovery I made when crawling all over looking for them just in case….

If you think this sounds like a farce, you would be correct…It was….

I made him take his meds, eat a cracker, and then let him sleep. I, however, did NOT sleep. I was absolutely traumatized. He could have died! My best friend, the love of my life, could have died because he wouldn’t follow my simple instructions. I now knew that I couldn’t trust him to take care of himself in this condition, so I had to be on guard 24-7 until the fever was completely defeated.

The next 2 days, I stuck to him like glue. We made quite the comical pair as I had to have him crawl to the bathroom in case he passed out again because I am not steady enough on my feet, even with my cane, to hold him up.

He tried to convince me he was fine, but I knew better. The one time I trusted him to wait for me to get on the toilet, so I could run to the bathroom, he got up against my wishes, and passed out on the toilet. At that point, my cherub like demeanor was lost. I told him he was certainly testing the “for worse” and “sickness” part of our marriage vows and that if he kept it up, I was going to enforce the “til death do us part” portion….

I think he got the message because he didn’t try THAT again….

He’s all better now, and I didn’t even maim him, though in the future when he gets sick, I may need a strait jacket or duct tape to keep him from getting up when he shouldn’t.

Nothing like adding a bit of trauma to a pity party….

I have decided that I am tired of this particular party. It’s no fun. I much prefer to celebrate life instead of feeling sorry for myself. I told my pastor last night, who asked how I was doing, that I was hanging on by a thread.

I realize now that isn’t strictly the case, I am hanging on by Jesus’ thread and that’s a much better place to be. I am going to keep grasping His hem, like the woman in Mark 5:25-34.  At some point, I WILL be healed, but until then I am choosing to leave my pity party and I am going to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior.  

He deserves my focus…it’s time to leave the party and join the choir of angels singing of His birth while remembering His death and resurrection. It’s time to make Jesus the reason for the season….