“Troubled Seas”

Veteran boat captains call it a “troubled sea”. Currents coming from entirely different directions than the wind collide together creating unpredictable, exceedingly rough and often violent wave action coming first from one direction only to change in a heartbeat. Troubled seas are often coupled with deep water currents hammering underground obstacles and welling up to the surface to add to the washing machine effect of the sea. These can also be combined with methane gas from deep within the earth. These gases escape through fissures in the earth’s crust. Their awesome force is savage and turns the ocean’s waves into a raging, churning, bubbling, frothy, stinking force of evil. A sage old mariner long ago coined the phrase, “When caught in troubled seas, you best get down on your knees”; (Well maybe this was not coined all that long ago, as I just made it up, but it is still a very valid point).

My wife and I have just personally experienced “troubled seas” in our stomach and entire gastro-intestinal tracts. What is described above is mild compared to what I have just been through. Sick is a four letter word entirely inadequate to describe what I have been through. I have thrown up hundreds of times over four days now, and diarrhea you do not even want to know; (four rolls of toilet paper in one night). I have lost fourteen pounds since Friday.


I have thrown up so often and so hard that I have wrenched my neck to the point that I cannot even turn it side to side without excruciating pain and would have gone to the emergency room thinking I might have encephalitis, had I not talked to an ER physician friend of mine on the phone just as I was preparing to leave my house. He told me that I either pulled a muscle while retching, or the virus may have invaded and inflamed my neck muscles; he said my symptoms were not right for deadly encephalitis. Get this he told me to take a couple of Aleve twice a day and call him if I wasn’t better in “three” days. I WILL BE DEAD IN THREE DAYS IF SOMETHING DOES NOT CHANGE; where am I failing in my communication effort? Do I need to talk in a foreign tongue or what?

This evil force living inside my wife and me subsided enough to allow us to fly home today. (I told her I wanted to die in Florida.) We contracted this sickness from our twins, who got it from their father, who also gave it to their mother. I firmly told my wife to stay away from the little darlings until it was safe, and she promptly ignored my advice. I have not been sick in two years due to being careful, but that is history now. (Yes I remind her every fifteen minutes of her blunder.)

Where am I going with this? Well I was sitting on the “throne” with a garbage can in one hand to catch my vomit and toilet paper in the other. I began praying to the Lord to allow me to escape this torture. It would be nice to report that God stopped everything “stone cold” and that “prayer worked” and the “troubled seas” slicked out dead calm; they did not. They intensified.

As I sat on my throne, between the retching and other events I wondered why God allows such evil and suffering to beset His children. There is no answer that I can find in the Bible. We know that sin caused it, but why God continues to allow pain and suffering is incomprehensible. I wondered about this same thing when I broke my right femur in a car accident and suffered pain like I have never known. (Largest bone in your body; I don’t recommend breaking that bad boy.) People experience worse including chemo therapy, surgery, chronic back pain, the list is serious and it is unfortunately long.

As I sat on my throne pouting and well maybe being a little mad that I had been struck down. (You know, the “why me?” syndrome.) I recalled Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed for hours and prayed so hard and intensely that blood was coming through His forehead. Jesus told God something like, Lord if I can escape this cup please allow it to be so. In other words, He said, “Lord if I can escape the horror to come, please allow it to be so”. Jesus then stated, “Nevertheless Lord, not My will be done, but Yours” and He willingly and faithfully went to the cross and endured all of the excruciating pain that went with it without the first complaint. Wait a minute. If Jesus did not escape, how can we? We cannot! Jesus did not escape the cup and nor will we on many issues.

This is not to say that prayer does not work. It does and we are assured of that repeatedly in the Bible; however sometimes the answer is “no” and we will need to be a good soldier and endure. It does not hurt to ask that we be spared and by all means we should give it all we have; however we should use the example that Jesus used. He deferred to God’s eternal wisdom. When going through it, time will be better spent asking God to be with us and comfort us every minute of every hour of every day and to strengthen us for what is to come He has promised to comfort us, but there are no guarantees of how long we must endure. We do know that it will be worth it in the end. Right now, I am looking forward to that

Psalm 23:4
Yea though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
Your rod and staff comfort me
All the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of
the Lord.
Forever.