Eve’s Daughter

I finished my last ‘Stepping Into A New Life’ post with this -  

“…our lives went even more pearshaped as what we know now to be spiritual warfare kicked itself into gear and put us in its sights…”

a bit frustrating I know, but I only had limited time so I did what I could. Anyway, we pick the story up 2 weeks after my vision and stepping into our new life -

On the Friday before we’d had our senior leader come over and pray for us, Xavier and Kael both had colds (Kael had already had his since the start of the week and I’d cancelled Xavier’s immunisation appointment due to his cold) and there were a few other things going on, so we had a great time with our leader as we discussed things and prayed and dealt with at least one issue. All three kids are sick, coughs, colds and runny noses and Brydon’s ears are hurting. Brydon’s not very good with pain anyway, so I’m really not sure if he’s in lots of pain or just a bit of pain as his reaction is the same whether it’s a little or a lot. I manage to get a Dr’s appointment sometime that day. Brydon has an ear infection in both ears and Kael has a chest infection. At this stage Xavier just has a cold. And things just went down hill from there.

By Wednesday Kael had deteriorated further and was distinctly unwell. I couldn’t get into our regular doctor so I went elsewhere and that doctor suspected pneumonia and sent us to the Royal Children’s Hospital. He went in with a raging fever and lethargy and it turned out he was rather dehydrated as well. Tim stayed overnight with him and had a rotten night - I couldn’t stay because of having Xavier who was at that stage only 6 months old and still breast feeding. We took Kael home the next day, he was improving and overall it was the best thing we could do at the time - there was no way Tim could stay another night, he was really sick by then too and ended up with a chest infection and an eye infection.

We were back again on Friday afternoon as Kael had detoriated again and we just couldn’t get him to drink enough water. I came home with him on Sunday and he was much improved but still unwell and yes, he did have pneumonia. Aunty Sharon stayed with him on Friday night (at that stage he was too sick to care that it wasn’t me) and Aunty Bridget stayed on Saturday night (by then he was well enough to care). I was in there most of Saturday and Sunday with him and Xavier who spent a lot of time in my arms screaming because he was unwell too and I couldn’t get him to settle (he ended up going hoarse and losing his voice).

While all this was going on Brydon got to stay at two different friends’ houses over the weekend - one of the doctors suggested it would be wise to get him out of a house full of sickies for a couple of days and Tim spent most of the time flaked out on the couch. By the time our hospitatl fiasco was over I had lost my voice and was suffering with a bit of a cold, mostly I think, due to lack of sleep; but I was the least sick and remained very positive during the whole thing and trusting in God. By Sunday Xavier had come down with bronchiolitis! So while we were in the hospital waiting to find out whether Kael would be discharged or not, he was checked out too.

And so it continued. For the next three months we pretty much had the full gammut of illnesses, well, not really - it could have been much, much worse - but we never had more than about four or five days where everyone was well, and that was only occasionally. It started with colds, coughs, pneumonia, chest infections, ear infections, an eye infection, laryngitis and bronchiolitis, and then we got various bouts of vomiting (there was at least one child throwing up about once a week), miagraines (which I hadn’t had for years) they were the sort that only seemed to ease once I’d thrown up, sore throats, more colds, and then there was chicken pox, which all three boys got. 

Brydon was first, he had a nice mild case of it, with about 30 spots! We then kinda expected Kael and Xavier to also only get it mildly. Boy were we wrong! Xavier and Kael got it at the same time (which was good in that we got over it all relatively quickly, and bad because I had to be in two places at once) and both of them were truly miserable - feverish, itchy and very, very unhappy. Xav had about 130 spots on his head alone! Both of them had spots all over,  and I mean all over! It was horrible. And then we were on tenderhooks waiting to see if I broke out in spots as I’d never ever had it. Amazingly enough, considering everything else we’d managed to get, I didn’t! Phew!! And then while all this is going on my mum discovers she has disturbing growths on her insides and we were unable to come down and visit as we still didn’t know if I was going to break out in spots!

By the start of November the “worst” of the illnesses were over. It was hard, very hard; we felt like we’d been hit by a bus, which then reversed and run us over again a few more times for good measure. For most of it we hung onto God, we clung to him for dear life. There was one moment though, one moment when I had just had enough and couldn’t handle it any more. I just wanted to pack it all in - that was around 2am one morning after giving Xavier his night feed during one of my miagrane episodes. 

After putting Xav back to bed, I just sat on the couch sobbing. I told God that if this is what it meant to be a Christian; if it was going to be this hard all the time, a constant struggle, a constant battle every moment of every day and night, then I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a Christian anymore! I punched a few pillows and would have screamed except I didn’t want to wake anyone up. I ranted away for a good half hour, venting all my frustration, heartache and confusion - what was going on? We’d just stepped into this new life and we’d been railroaded, knocked sideways and every time we started to get back up we were knocked down, again and again and again. 

But despite wanting to give up, to let it all just wash over me and become a glutinous blob of self pity, I knew that I just couldn’t give up and walk out, walk away (aside from having a family who wouldn’t let me even if I wanted to) but I knew the truth, I know the truth and the reality of God. There’s just no way I could return to a life without God, a superficial “happy” life with no meaning and no depth, where you don’t look too deeply ‘coz you’ll know you’ll see stuff you don’t want to. So despite an almost overwhelming urge to pack it all in and run away, I didn’t and I’m very grateful our God wants me to be honest with him and to let it all out rather than holding it all in and pretending it’s all okay when it isn’t.

Okay, this post is getting huge, so it looks like this new life post is in three parts! Stay tuned for ‘Stepping Into A New Life - The Battle Rages Still!’

Post a comment

Name: (required)

Email Address: (will not be published) (required)

URL:

Comments: