Five days in the Hospital (Once Again) Makes You Appreciate The Blessing of a Home to Lay Your Head

As if getting Covid-19 for the first time wasn’t stressful enough, I ended up in the hospital last Friday with another bowel obstruction. Another round of nose tubes and nothing by mouth for days at a time depressed me and left me feeling lost and nearly hopeless. I never lost hope because I trust God, El Shaddai, wholeheartedly.

But, this time, there were no rooms available at the hospital, so I spent the first two days in the Emergency Room cubicle, and then I was moved to what served as an isolation ward in the height of the pandemic, a room without windows, and being sick and unable to see the day transition into the night and back again was disorienting. I started using the change in the nurses as a sign of moving forward, for they worked 12-hour days, from 7:00 in the evening until 7:00 in the morning. I thought of them as hardy souls; the care was amazing and caring.

The room had no mirrors and was open to the nurses’ station, and people had to be buzzed in. It felt like when I spent 28 days in an in-patient mental health facility over thirty years ago. Claustrophobia started setting in, and when I spoke to the nurse, she showed me how to open the blinds, and that was so helpful.

Then, I started to hear my ill neighbors cough or cry or moan, and I realized that I needed to be praying for others and to remove the focus from myself. I needed to ask God to bless them and send His healing power through this place that seemed too sterile and isolated to make people feel connected to the outside world. But we were connected to each other, too sick to help each other, of course, but not too sick to realize that we were not alone.

So, I am home, and I find that each time I come from a stay in the hospital, I love my little home more. It has many windows, and it backs up to what looks like a forest full of birds and squirrels. Oh, the joy of walking through the doors. My husband has rebound COVID-19, and he could not visit me, although he came to bring me a charger so I could keep my phone working. He didn’t come near me. Instead, he connected the phone to the charger and went home.

And now, I am home, too. I thank God we are together, staring at each other like teenagers in love after twenty-one wonderful years together, nearly twenty as a married couple. Douglas is the best husband a woman could hope for, and I thank God for the blessing of sharing this wonderful little house with him and in the embrace of a love that I never thought I would experience.

So, thank you, O Lord, Most High God, that when our hair turns grey, you are still with us. You never leave us or forsake us, no matter where we find ourselves. You give us reason to hope.