When Suffering Became Personal: Part 1

A few things before I get started:
1) This blog is not my theology
2) This is real life.

I am not here to answer why people suffer or why bad things happen to good people. I am just going to share my story. This story will take several posts. It is long, but will have a good ending (hopefully, this summer!).  For all of this to make sense, I thought that it was neccessary to give a little background.

I attended Ouachita Baptist University from 2007-2010. During the spring of 2008, the first thing that I had to get up for was chapel. If you have been to OBU, you know that this is the absolute worst reason to get out of bed! However, it is required for graduation. Deep down, I think the school is trying to teach endurance or perseverance or patience or something, because Lord knows that the sketchy, at best, theology that generally happens between the hours of 10 and 11 on Tuesday morning is not something we are actually going to use in our life. (Disclaimer: There have been a few good chapels out there, but the majority are pretty rough!)

Bottom Line: It is hard to get  up for chapel, but with only four excused skips, it is a neccessary evil.

On this particular Tuesday morning, something terrible happened when my alarm went off. I had the worst stomach pain I have ever experienced in my entire life. I thought maybe something had just gone terribly wrong with the cafe food, so I headed to the bathroom. However, the pain only got worse and before I realized that I should attempt to save some dignity, I was screaming for anyone to come and help me because I was stuck... with... my... ummm... pants............down... on... the... toilet. I could not get up because the pain was excruciating. Finally, I crawled bare-bottomed to my room and managed to put my pants on and call my mom. My mother told me to go to the hospital because we were both pretty convinced that something was about to burst inside my stomach. I called a friend who graciously gave up one of her coveted chapel skips to take me to the emergency room.

A menagerie of tests took place while my mom was making the 5 hour trip in 3.5 hours. They determined that my appendix was not bursting and they could not see anything wrong with me at all. I was a medical anomaly. They did put me on a clear liquid diet, which made eating a Cracker Barrel extremely difficult. My mom kept me in a hotel room overnight for observation and since the pain was not entirely gone the next morning, we went to a bigger hospital. At this hospital, all they could determine was that there was something wrong with my female plumbing, but I should go to my own doctor to figure out what was wrong. My mom made an appointment for later that week and I returned to class in wonder concerning my mysterious pain that was now gone.

To be continued...