My body had been sounding an alarm that something was seriously off, and my symptoms were growing increasingly strange. What began as a small rash had grown into an unsettling set of problems: numbness in my toes, tingling in my hands and feet, sharp and quick bursts of nerve pain throughout my body — it felt like my nervous system had been turned up to high. While laying down, my heart would pound and I felt like I was breathing through a filter.
I had reached a breaking point. I felt spent, desperate even. Both my body and soul were at a point of exhaustion. How much longer, Lord?, I cried within.
Winding through a maze of cinder block houses on dirt roads which followed no distinguishable order, I kept pace a small distance behind my missionary friends. As we walked through the labyrinth of multicolored homes, free-roaming cattle, burning trash, and playing children, I had a strange realization. I had made several trips to Haiti, but this was the first time I genuinely started to feel at home.
Throughout my thirties I often looked dauntingly at one day turning 40. Thinking of that approaching milestone, I would appraise where I was at in life and (try not to) anxiously think of where I wanted to be by the time that day arrived. Lord, I want so much to happen before then.
All the muscles in my upper body burned with pain as I paced the length of the airport terminal — a sleepless infant in a front carrier, a loaded backpack on my back, and a heavy diaper bag repeatedly slipping from my shoulder…
My heart should have been soaring with excitement over the adventure unfolding before me, but instead I was sinking under the oppressive weight of anxiety and fear.
I was on my way to London, England with my mum and auntie, for a few days of proper touristing before we’d make our way north to the beautiful Lake District.