Morning.

The next morning I woke up to one eye being swollen shut. “That was weird. Did I poke myself in the night? I hadn’t been outside in months, so it couldn’t be poison ivy.”

I dreaded going to bed at night. Not for fear of the night but for fear of the morning. Mornings were when I would wake back up. Mornings were when I would feel everything all over again. Mornings were when I would notice new and unwelcome symptoms. I hated mornings.

Pain surged through me, so much so that my walking ability had changed. I didn’t notice it at first. But I was hunched over while walking from one room to the next. Standing up straight just took too much strength. I was short of breath walking to the bathroom. I had to heave myself up and down out of chairs. My weakness was worsening at a pace that made me uneasy.

The next morning I woke up to the familiar pain. I couldn’t spread my fingers open due to the pain. A simple tap on my knuckle would send a knife like pain through me. I tried my best to sleep without moving in the night. Any sudden movement or tap of my hand on the wall would elicit intense aching.

That morning I also woke up to the feeling of several large nodules in my neck. Later that day I noticed them in my armpits as well. I knew they had to be lymph nodes. But they were so big. I knew they worked together with the spleen, the spleen that was already so oversized. I knew I was getting worse by the day.

The tears came. And with them came a lot of questions and a lot of fear.

That night I remember sitting on the couch in the living room. My parents had gone to bed hours ago. I couldn’t sleep. So I just sat on the couch in the dark in the living room. I looked out the large glass window at the dark night sky with big tears rolling down my face and whispered “God where are you? What are you doing?”. The silence of the house mocked me. More tears came down.

The God I knew, the God I thought I knew, He wouldn’t leave me. He would let me be afraid. All I wanted to do was help. All I wanted to do was make a difference. “How could this happen to me? What was happening to me?”.

I was so tired.

A few moments later a familiar song came to mind. It was a song that we had sung during worship services at my college church in Rochester. It was the church where all of my friends attended. It was led by a South African Pastor, a man full of energy and spirit.

My shaky off pitch voice began to quietly sing, “Thank you for loving me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for loving me.”

That’s all I could say. That’s all I could muster. I knew one thing. I knew I was loved.

The rest, the rest scared me to my core.