Assumptions

I was dying. Slowly. Secretly. Subtly. Dying. I found myself in a hospital bed in San Antonio, Texas weighing less than 100 pounds (which is not good for a 5 foot 6 inch woman!)  Our daughter was about three and our son was still in diapers and without me knowing it, I was starving. Forgive me if I am being too graphic, but I would eat and it would immediately come out. 

There was a gastroenterologist in our church and I began to see him early on….when the symptoms first started and long before I was down to less than 100 pounds.  He could find nothing wrong.  Nothing!  I was ‘fine’.  The diagnosis?  Are you ready for this girl?  Here is what he said to me.  “You are a minister’s wife.  That is what is wrong with you.  This hospital is full of beds with ministers wives in it.  Stress is doing this to your body just like it is doing it to all of the other ministers wives in this hospital.”

I was dumbfounded!  What?  Are you telling me that all of this is in my head?  That being a minister’s wife is killing me?  Ladies…to this day it brings me to tears as I contemplate all that this means.  The fact that there are hospital beds full of ministers wives who are under so much pressure and stress that they have to be hospitalized!!  The fact that my ‘issues’ were being dismissed so easily just because my husband is a minister!  My heart hurts thinking about it.

That doctor finally came to his senses when he realized that I was doing really, really badly.  He admitted me to the hospital so he could run some tests and keep an eye on what was going in and what was going out of me J. 

It was during one of those tests that he discovered the problem.  I was laying up-side-down on some torturous table and he was looking in my intestines (crazy huh?) and he saw something he (nor anyone else in the hospital) had ever seen before.  They had read about it, but never seen it in person—giardia! 

Giardia is a small parasite that eats away at the lining of the intestines and those little guys had been feasting for so long that there was no lining to my intestines….the food went in and went out….no finger-like fibers to grab the food and digest it.  My husband and I were so grateful to know what was causing me to waste away and that it was not because of ministry!!

As a ministers wife we are often “misdiagnosed” and “put into a box” and people make lots of “assumptions” about us.  And it hurts.  And it is hard.  But it happens!  We must not become angry or frustrated or put barriers up around us.  And we must be sure to NOT do the same things to other people!  Perhaps if we look at ourselves really hard…..we might see that we, too, often “misdiagnose” others intentions and motives—maybe, just maybe they ARE pure!  And maybe, just maybe we also put those trouble makers “into a box”.  And maybe we also make lots of “assumptions” about people.

Grace, my friend!  We must give and receive lots of grace!!