Day seventy four

I was right about yesterday being a tiring day. I remember reading many years ago that significant sleep loss produces the same effects as an LSD trip. I had some weird sights yesterday!

I didn't get my blood test. They booked me in for 8:24am this morning. I had a phlebotomist I have had before. The last time I had this one she told me it was my fault she couldn't find the vein because I hadn't drunk enough. Today she found the vein, but it kept moving, so she was jiggling the needle around in my arm until she gave up and then stabbed me a second time. So my urgent blood test will be making it's way to be checked.

As I was down there yesterday I called in at the medical centre to see if they had any results from my CT scan. They didn't. Then as I was walking out of the door the hospital phoned to tell me they had a cancellation, so I have an appointment at 1: 15 this afternoon for an ultrasound. I feel like a full-time hypochondriac. I have been to the medical centre more than I have been to church just lately.

But it got me thinking about waiting again. I have had a few emails from people telling me how stressful it is (remember what I wrote about projection - just because you would be stressed, that doesn't mean I am).

I have looked at waiting philosophically. I have seen the advertisements on TV about people worrying about the results they are waiting for. It's advertising, so it always turns out to be good news. No one makes adverts like they used to in Northern Ireland. They had some wonderfully grim ones about Drink-Driving. I don't think the Advertising Standards Agency would allow an ad where someone received bad news.

But we can be funny about anticipation - like not opening the envelope on a bill we are dreading, because "ignorance is bliss". Like the child who covers his/her face because if I can't see you, you can't see me.

If I have something seriously wrong with me, then it doesn't matter how long I have to wait - it will still be seriously wrong.

If there is nothing seriously wrong with me, then I will need an explanation for the pain I have had for the last 15 months. Hearing won't make the pain stop.

After a good proportion of my ministry involving healing: physical as well as psychological/emotional, it is a strange feeling to be the ill person.

I suppose the only way I could understand it fully is to experience it.

And isn't that what God was thinking when He sent Jesus to live as a man?

"he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God" (Hebrews 2: 17); "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin. (Hebrews 4: 15)

I have done the incarnation thing before (not easy in circuit ministry, but successful with one church). It seems that now I'm in the position of feeling sympathy (or is that empathy) for all those people who sit in coffee mornings talking about their illnesses and tablets. I am become one of them!

So if I survive this, who knows what I will be able to do with the experience! We will have to wait and see!