Healing and Snacking

It's the holidays, and that just makes you pause, look back on the past year, and conclude.

That was f'ing weird.

In the past year, I've been hospitalized, shed a kidney stone, taken more morphine than a baroque poet, become a wellness vegan, become a moral vegan, been cut open at 3 in the morning, talked to a deer eating from my waste bins at 6 AM, and vomited more than I ever thought was possible for anybody to do. Ever.

I also became a gospel singer, a private chef, styled a fashion show, moved across the country, and programmed for MIT. Huh.

C.S. Lewis warns that finding God is like telling your mother your tooth hurts. All you want is some aspirin to survive the night, but you know that if you tell her, she'll give you the aspirin, but the next day she'll cart you to the dentist who will not only remove the tooth in question, but will begin fiddling around with all sorts of other teeth that were apparently unrelated to the original problem.

Right now I'm stressing about what I'm going to do to make money and where I'm going to live in the next few months as I try to live a macrobiotic life and live by the principles that have become important to me, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't holding my breath until the next drug-resistant infection or kidney stone or whatever lands me in the hospital again, but the same health problems that I'm paying for, that I'm waiting for, are answered prayers.

For me, the definition of "low point" was probably being pulled out of a cab by paramedics as I threw up on myself from pain. It's excusing yourself from a business meeting because you have to spend the rest of the day vomiting. It was vomiting up the nausea medication. File that one under "irony."

I am having trouble concluding this, because to say that "your illness is a blessing" is to trivialize the pain, fear, and loss that my friends and readers have experienced. May told me that contrary to popular belief, it can sometimes actually harmful to refer to veterans "heroes" because it simplifies and glosses over the pain, doubt, and hard choices they've had to make and can make them feel isolated and alone. There is nothing glorious and redeeming about sickness, just as there's nothing glorious and redeeming about war.

That being said, I can only speak for myself, and I believe not only that this illness was sent as a blessing, but as Lewis said above, it's part of the larger dental appointment. I am overwhelmed with the love and support of all the friends I've met in the last two years, and I hope that God speaks to the hearts of the suffering to replace fear with joy. I am joyful for the pain and the fear, because God wanted to teach me what it means to be happy. I am thankful for my friends through Ginny and the macrobiotic community who are just now beginning the journey to health, because they are about to see how God is going to change their lives and make them new. I have no idea what I'll be doing next month, next year, and my four-year plan could fit on half a post-it note (it looks kind of like "get famous, write books"), but I had no idea that any of this would happen to me, so I have no idea what's going to happen next.

Today is the day the LORD has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.