Disclaimer: This is solely my experience and it in no way invalidates (or validates) your own experience. So, when you read these words, read them as what I intend them to be — a testimony. If you must pick a lesson, pick the soul of it, not necessarily the experience. Selah!
On one occasion, I felt sanity leave my body. I could tell that I was in the middle of sanity and insanity. I could feel these two antithetical realities call for my soul. The injections I had been given went in the opposite direction (Do not laugh at my Yoruba translation). I yanked my hands off my husband’s; I banged the bed repeatedly while fighting for my sanity. I don’t know if it was a vision or a hallucination but I saw a version of me run out of the ward and onto the street, mad! That it didn’t play out is what the mercies of the Lord look like.
On another occasion, after vomiting for what seemed like the millionth time, I started to vomit blood. I got angry! Right in our living room, I held my stomach and spoke to the blood. I reminded myself that being pregnant was the blessing of God and when God blesses you, he adds no sorrow. The blood stopped immediately.
On yet another occasion, I had just taken another dose of an injection that made it impossible to know what was happening around me. But hey, it eases the abdominal pain and allows me to sleep for long hours. So, if a momentary loss of consciousness is the price that I have to pay, so be it. On this day, I opened my eyes and the first person I saw was my husband. He was sleeping vertically at the foot of my bed. From the waist down, he is suspended in the air but he manages to rest his head on the bed just so he can sneak in a few hours of sleep. Again, he had to be at work the following day.
I don’t know how but the sight of my husband stirs up faith in me. Right there, I begin to wonder how he does it. This is April and since January, not once did he lose hope and not once did he stop trusting God for the journey he was taking us through. He had applied himself so much in the situation and his joy level never tanked. Every day, he wore a smile. Every other day, he would ruffle my hair and once again assure me of a beautiful end.
If a man who has to work a 9–5 while catering to his sick pregnant wife round the clock has this level of faith and joy, I could also latch on to it. So, I began to try.
I began to see the beauty of the situation I was in. Once I was willing, God started to show me what he was doing in my life. Did it stop the pain? No! But I started to treat them as exactly what they were. Distractions!
