I have always been a believer and have had faith that there is some high being out there that watches over us and guides us. In this day and age, it has become very hard to maintain that belief.
A lot of people, though, have a hard time admitting it, but I’ll come out and say it: I do. There are a lot of reasons for disbelief, but for me, I don’t understand why people who have always been kind and caring toward one another get stricken with vicious illnesses. Why do I have such a strong opinion on this? Because I have gone through and am still going through this.
On December 3, 2008, at about 3:30 in the morning I started to violently purge blood. My mother, frantic, rushed me to the hospital. In my mind, I was dying and it was over.
By the time they got me stable, I had three IVs and a tube coming out of my nose that was constantly draining out my stomach of all the blood. And it was about four to five hours later.
By the time I was in my own room, I was silent because of the tube in my throat. All that was going through my head was, “I’m dead or close to it.”
My mother was trying so hard to keep it together, but I knew we were thinking the same thing. An hour or so later, after my grandparents had shown up, so did Father Emil. He sat and talked with us for awhile and gave me a blessing which by that point, I was game for anything.
As he was doing it, a few phrases kept coming to mind, like, “Why me?” and “How could they abandon me like this?” A kid who has been pretty much nothing but kind, now out of nowhere has a tube down his throat pumping out blood, and the doctors still aren’t telling me what’s wrong.
You would think that with the amount of blood I’ve given, they would have solved it by now. Well, the prayer helped our spirits lighten up a little, but deep down, I was terrified.
Father Emil finished by saying The Lord’s Prayer. Up until now, I had been holding it in quite well. But as soon as I heard that, tears almost instantly began to roll out. Because of the sleep deprivation, a lot of this time is just a large blur. But there was one thing I hear and has stuck with me.
He said, “The Lord is with you.” This wasn’t the first time I had heard this, but it was the first time I did not believe it.
He left and everyone flocked over to calm me down. Right after that I had a tickle in my throat and basically got rid of the tube (LOL!). After about four and a half days, they released me.
And big shocker — four days later ended back up in the same exact room on the third floor. By now the nurses were coming to say hi. Now that I was back here, I just didn’t care anymore.
I wasn’t eating very much and when I did, I wanted to be sick. I was bleeding all the time; I hurt all the time. I was done … DONE. I kept mumbling under my breath, “Lord, take me now — please.” And I continued to sit there and suffer.
I didn’t have to stay there very long. This time around, the doctors told me that I had just had a relapse from the first time. I went home two days later, and was starting to feel a little better. It lasted about a week.
Then one morning, I woke up with a funny feeling. Not a sick feeling; I just didn’t feel right and knew something was wrong. And I was craving water, which was weird as well, so I downed a bottle of cold water and I felt great. As soon as that water hit my stomach, the sick feeling kicked in, and my body rejected it. After I calmed down, I tried to drink some more water, and yet again, I repeated the same process.
By this point, we called the hospital, my body was rejecting anything I put in it. My whole body was going pale and gray. I was cold and shaking. I was dehydrated and my health was going downhill very quickly. Now I really thought this was it.
I had thought my body was shutting down. Now, sometime in the car, I started to pass out. I was barely coherent and don’t remember a whole lot. From what I was told, I yelled and cursed and they had to have about four nurses hold me down so they could get an IV into me to get me hydrated. All I remember is the pain from getting poked with needles.
For those who don’t know, it’s extremely hard to give someone an IV when they are dehydrated because without the water in your veins, they shrink and are hard to hit.
By the time I woke up and had been rehydrated, I had four different holes in me from where they had missed the veins. All I could think was, “Damn, the suffering goes on.” In my mind, I had been abandoned, left on this planet to fend for myself. By this point, I was losing faith quick, but still holding on.
I kept praying and hoping it would be loud enough to hear. This trip to the hospital was one of the longest. They had to make sure I could eat and keep in fluids. When I finally got out and got back to my life, I was just counting down the days till it happened again.
I knew I would get sick again. In front of me, my mom would deny it, but I knew she thought so, too.
Well, another week had gone by and still no hospital visit. I thought things were getting better until one Friday. It was after school and my girlfriend, who was on the swim team, had a swim meet she was competing in. I was so excited and so was she because I kept missing them due to the hospital. (By now, you all should know what’s going to happen.)
I was sitting in the stands when out of nowhere, I started to hurt, but because I was focused on watching her, I just ignored how I felt. I didn’t want to leave.
It finally came to the point my mom had to rush me to the hospital because I felt as if I was going to pop. Turns out that I had picked up a virus from the previous hospital trip. So for the next week and a half, I had to give myself medicine through a small line inserted in my body.
It has been about a year now since I have gotten sick. Since then, I have pretty much lost faith in God. I still go to church hoping that one day, He’ll show me that He’s there helping me. I have yet to see that day.
But I am starting to think He doesn’t show Himself. I think He has somewhat already given me a sign.
The strange feeling inside that keeps me coming back is His sign. Maybe I have been looking too hard. I have been looking for a sign that I can see, when the real sign is in my heart.
Belief isn’t something you can see. Crosses, the Bible, wine, priests — these things and people aren’t belief. They are here to help you understand and see what can’t be seen — to help show you the path to God.
A lot of people say, “Well, I believe but there must be something more.” There isn’t. God is belief. Even when we’ve lost all hope, we still keep going to church, praying for help, hoping He will come back to us.
He never has left. The moment when we are weak, we are actually pulling away from Him. The challenges we go through are His way of pulling us back to Him.
Just like the famous poem, “Footprints,” says, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”
So I try to remember this: When you are going through hardship, just hang on and belief, and He will carry you back into the light.
I have always been a believer and have had faith that there is some high being out there that watches over us and guides us. In this day and age, it has become very hard to maintain that belief.