S2- Day 11: God in the Hospital

 

Two years ago, I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, screaming. 

Every part of my body was in agonizing pain – I had strange convulsions, my heart felt like it was going to be ripped out of my chest, and every touch felt like it would break me. 

I was 22 and undergoing chemotherapy for Lupus (SLE) which had caused acute kidney damage and several other complications. Lupus is an incurable autoimmune disease, without any known cause, that affects almost every part of the body including skin, blood, joints, kidneys, heart, brain, liver, lungs, etc. 

My symptoms had been going on for more than a year even though I looked perfectly “normal”; I had hopped across several hospitals, endlessly examined and (unsuccessfully) treated. I used to feel like I was slowly dying but nobody could help me. 

*** 

Inside the ambulance, I asked my mom to call a man whom I knew to be a person of great faith. Instead of praying for me, he told her “She needs to suffer now for the glory of God to be revealed.” This confounded me. But it also gave me a strange acceptance. The words of Jesus’s prayer on the cross resounded in me, My God, why have you forsaken me? 

Those days in the hospital were excruciating. My diet was also highly restricted. I had to be taken around in a wheelchair (a very embarrassing experience for a young person), my mom needed to bathe me and sometimes, I had to urinate on a bed pan, and someone else had to throw it away. 

On the second day, the doctors decided to stop my painkillers since they feared I would overdose. I cried in my heart, Father, if you are willing; please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet your will be done, not mine. 

But on the third day, my episodes stopped, and the pain was gone. I felt like I had descended into hell and risen again. I felt Jesus waking me up by the hand saying Talitha Koum. 

For the first time in my life, God was palpable and speaking to me directly, and I could feel a presence. Faith became real. AP Nirmal, a Dalit theologian, says “the sufferer knows God” and to me, pain became a doorway to experience God’s mystery and clarity, both at the same time! 

This new found Grace gave me such peace I never had before. It taught me how to pray without asking for miracles. It made me reach out to fellow Lupus patients – it seemed like the more compassion I had for other people’s pain, the better I felt! A few months later, my doctor marveled at my progress and exclaimed, “You are healing by God’s Grace!” 

We must ask ourselves, for those afflicted with serious illnesses, is being cured the only way of experiencing God’s healing? Or is it the life affirming actions we take through love and compassion that truly fulfill God’s purpose in us? 

Prayer

Dear God, we pray that you may be revealed more deeply with every pain and weakness in our lives – physical, emotional and mental. Walk with us and speak to us in the darkest places where no other human being can accompany. Teach us how to seek you. Fill us with your love and peace – and give us the gift of enduring faith. Amen. 

**********

Author: Suzanne Sangi 

About the Author: Suzanne is a writer, author of a fiction novel, and a music lover-singer-songwriter. She loves to engage with religious, political, cultural themes and issues. Since her diagnosis in 2018, she has played an active role in Lupus awareness, and organised the first Lupus awareness walk in the state of Karnataka (Bangalore).She currently works as a Content Marketer at a tech start-up.