"Momma, I Don't Feel Good"

July 3, 2014

Dear Ones,

“As one whom his mother comforts,

So I will comfort you:”

Isaiah 66:13a

  “Momma, I don’t feel good.”  I could hear the grogginess in her voice on the other end of the line it was clearing quickly but I knew I had awakened her but I also knew that it was OK.  In the wee hours of her morning, it was OK.  I had only been in Beijing for a couple of days, it was a quick temporary transition to provide nursing coverage to the unit here and now I was alone away from familiar and I had spent the past couple of hours on the floor in the bathroom vomiting.  I was exhausted and all there was left was a miserable sick feeling and the occasional dry heaving.  I needed my momma, so here I was calling her not because she could hold me physically from the other side of the globe but simply because that is what you do when you know that Momma’s soothing voice even over skype will help make some of the yuckiness of it all go away.  There were the gentle quiet questions, “How many times have you thrown up, is there any Sprite in the fridge where you are staying, do you have any medicine you can take, are you running a fever?”  I am a nurse and an adult but no matter how old I get I still find comfort in hearing her ask me all of these questions.  I know that Daddy couldn’t run to the store to get me Ginger Ale and sherbet or stand guard to see if there was more he could do or messes he could help clean up, and I knew that Momma couldn’t sit on the floor by me wiping my head with a cool wet cloth and tell me it would be over soon like she did so many times as I was growing up but still waking them and having the response be the same somehow in the vomiting of it all made me feel better.  There really was no one else I could call, no one else was here.  After spending a good amount of time watching me by skype, praying over me and waiting to make sure I could find a can a sprite somewhere in the strange surroundings we said goodbye, with the promise that they were going to call back in a bit to check on me.

   I pulled myself upright,  and went to finish my duties, I double checked everything afraid that in my fog I would miss something all the while praying hard that God would take special care of each of us tonight , me and my little ones.  As I lay back down in the little room I was staying in hot and flushed, I began to ponder the moment I found myself in and a tear slipped down my cheek- just for reference it is never good to mix tears with nausea and vomiting as it usually ends in a worse headache than you started with but there it was.  I thought of the story of Elisha and the Shunammite woman and how when her promised little boy was out in the field with his father and began to complain of not feeling well that his father instructed the servants to carry him to his mother.  How when they brought him to her she sat him in her lap, because that is where sick little children should be. I began thinking about each of my little ones and praying that by God’s grace they will have the chance to lay on the floor of a bathroom, sick and vomiting and call their Mommas, what an incredible blessing I have been graced with.   The tears fell as I prayed once again that God would send them each Mommy’s who will teach them what it is to be comforted.  I want them to know what it is to have a mother’s hand rub their back and wipe tears and sweat from their feverish faces.   To know the safety and relief that comes from a trot down the hallway in the dark of the night to a mother’s bedroom where at the sound of your voice she is awake and ready to take action…”Momma I don’t feel good.” 

Grace Alone,

Mariah

PS:  Just so none of you are worried about me I am all better, very grateful that whatever hit my system only lasted about 18 hours.