First of all, I apologize for the hiatus! Life has been a bit cray cray recently. Since the school year is coming to an end, with Thanksgiving and Christmas break just over the horizon, work has just been piling up.
This past week was an especially important week for me. I had a gov midterm Monday, persuasive presentation Tuesday, and multiple interviews for a video project throughout the week. It was one of those weeks that I had to detail in my planner, writing out a very precise to-do list each day to reach my goals. I was honestly feeling really stressed but at the same time, I felt I had everything under control because I had planned out everything.
Come Sunday morning though, I had a bad feeling this week was not going to pan out the way I wanted it to. I woke up with a sore throat and the first thought in my mind was, Oh no. This cannot be happening to me. I CANNOT get sick this week. Even though it felt like nails going down my throat every time I swallowed, I tried to ignore it and hoped it would just get better by the end of the day. Buuuuut it didn't. It only got worse. In my planner, I had blocked off my whole Sunday evening to study for gov but I just couldn't do it because the fatigue was hitting me hard. So I made the difficult decision to forfeit my study time and go to bed early. My reasoning was if I go to bed early, I'll wake up early refreshed and ready for my gov exam despite not studying... right?
If this was a perfect world, it would have happened exactly as I had imagined it. But the fact is, it's not a perfect world, and things didn't go the way I wanted. I woke up Monday feeling and looking like death. (I even scared myself when I looked in the mirror yikes!) Being the good student I am, I still went to all my classes and by the time the gov exam rolled around, I was EXHAUSTED. Needless to say, the exam did NOT go well... at all. The whole time I felt so faint and I skipped over so many questions because I had no idea what the answer was. Looking at all those empty bubbles on my scantron made my head hurt.
After gov, I went back to my dorm room and just CRASHED. I cancelled all my afternoon activities so I could sleep. I wanted to just sleep for the rest of the day but knew I couldn't because I still had to prep for my speech I was giving the next morning. I had to drag myself out of bed for an hour so I could practice.
It's honestly a miracle that I even got through my speech. I was the very first one to go so I was pretty nervous. And on top of that, I felt faint the entire time I was up there, but somehow I managed to remember everything I wanted to say and even managed to do really really well. But then, after that I just CRASHED again and had to cancel all my activities for that day as well.
If you know me, you know that I am someone who likes to have every aspect of my life planned out and I absolutely despise interruptions/changes to my schedule. So getting sick is honestly kind of like the end of the world for me. Oftentimes I even push past the pain of being sick so I can carry through with all my tasks. (I once went to school an entire week with pneumonia.) But I realize that these instances are necessary for me because it forces me to rely on God. It forces me to realize that not everything can be in my control. When life doesn't go as planned, the only thing I can be confident of is God's plan.
I've gotten sick many times before, but this time was different because I didn't have my parents to take care of me and tell me what to do. This time, it was truly just me and God. As I laid in my bed feeling like death, I spent lots of time talking to God and pleading with Him to help me, to be my comfort. (Lemme tell ya, being sick makes for some real good bonding time with God.) Of course, I wasn't healed right away, that's not how God works. But the more I talked to Him, the more I was reassured that He was protecting me and would pull through in the end. And like always, He did. After three days, I felt well enough to interact with the world again. (Being sick also makes you realize how much you enjoy being around people.)
So yeah, this wasn't the most pleasant experience but honestly, it's something that NEEDED to happen. It was once again, another good reminder that God and only God holds my life in His hands. No DayQuil or Advil could ever match His healing power. And He never gives us pain for no reason. He ALWAYS pulls through. Remember that gov exam I talked about? Well, I was right when I said I didn't do well. But my professor, out of the kindness of his heart, gave us all a gracious curve that made it seem like I didn't do too bad! I'm 110% certain that was a gift from God. So in the end, I still did pretty well in all my tasks for the week, despite being sick.
So thank you God. Thank you for being my conversation buddy as I laid in my bed. Thank you for enduring through all my cries. Thank you for drawing close to me when nobody else physically could. Thank you for being a healer. Thank you for being a provider. Thank you for always sticking with me. Thank you for being YOU! I love you always. <3
~jo