Stomach flu is my lifetime nemesis. I haven’t gotten it for five years (maybe I built up an immunity to food poisoning during my dorm years), but it’s always the same. I wake up feeling weak and confused early in the morning. Around three in the morning it starts, and then I’m owned.
So this morning I must have upchucked on seventeen different trips. Trips and not times – I did not count the multiples. Which they all were. I could not fall back asleep, because fifteen minutes later, like clockwork, I’m hovering over the commode.
My body shook, and I had to hold in a hernia tear and everything. I wasn’t sure if my stomach lining or a lung or my heart would go first. Today was fun. But around two in the afternoon I started to hold down Sprite, and then I graduated to a few corn flakes, just so I wouldn’t pass out.
I cried out to the Lord many times. I want to share a couple stories: One about when I was weak, and one about when I was strong.
During my Junior year of high school, the conference meet for track and field was going to be the highlight of my year. I had already busted open so many different records, and finally I would be able to stick it to that Waubonsie hurdler and my Nequa and St. Charles East rivals. And my family and girlfriend would be there and everything was going to be glorious.
But I got this here stomach flu on Friday, and conference was on the following Monday. Plus, because of district rules, I had to go to practice on Saturday or I would not be able to run. My flu started to fall apart, and degenerated into a nasty fever and cold, and I was completely miserable for a long time.
I ran on fumes during Saturday’s practice, handkerchief in one hand and praying with my other that the Advil would stay down, and Monday finally came.
I won three individual events and ran a leg in our second-place 4×400 team. I made personal records in two of the individual events and my split for the relay. Then I went home and died.
The second story, where I feel strong, was rather recent and I’m hesitant to share because (a) nobody will believe me and (b) it can be pretty self-glorifying.
When I was a leader on my church’s West Virginia mission trip, I worked at this shelter/food pantry/goodwill store. Oddly, the task of the week was to take 80lb bales of clothing and put them into a larger, industrial baler. It was ridiculous.
The guy I worked with must have been sixty. He was a heavy smoker named Harry who would occasionally slice the clothing with his razor blade while opening the smaller bales. He reminded me of my Grandfather (not just because his name was Harry, but he was a tough, blue collar guy). Anyway, we opened the small bales, loaded the larger baler with anywhere from fifteen to twenty two small bales, wrapped them in long pieces of wire, compacted the large bale, slip-knotted the wires, and then rolled the finished product onto a pallet (as much as you could roll a cube). He told me never to go behind this pallet, because if the momentum we used to roll the cube of clothing happened to continue, I could very well be crushed.
Harry and I worked our butts off the first day, and we did pretty well considering he was just showing me the ropes. I got a few compliments because I caught on quickly and refused to take a break (even though it must have been ninety-five degrees outside). The second day, Harry’s normal help was back (another older man, perhaps fifty), along with a few new recruits that were much bigger than me. Like a hundred fatty pounds heavier and a couple inches taller. They were local guys who were unemployed and wanted to do something good with their spare time.
So while Harry’s normal help was taking a break, Harry deferred to the larger guys. A logical choice, considering they had longer volunteer spans than I. My job became to throw out waste and reload the wires. Once in a while, I got to load the smaller bales onto our human-powered assembly line.
Anyway, the younger guys were going at the small bales real quick, and we all worked up a sweat, but then the time came to again roll the larger bale about three quarters of a turn onto the pallet. One of the larger guys fumbled the pass coming out of the baler, and all of a sudden the crew lost all forward progress, and the bale started coming back down. The local guys freaked and dropped it, perhaps afraid because Harry had given them the same warning he told me.
Harry got pinned. His knee twisted in on itself, and he started to go down. I was in the position to hand off the smaller bales to the big guys, so I was close, and I jumped in under the middle of the bale and put it on my shoulders, compacting myself into the fetal position. I screamed like I had never screamed before, and I flat-out raised the one half ton bale of clothing until Harry could get out, and rolled it the final turn onto the pallet.
Harry took the rest of the day off, and he came back the next day with absolutely zero damage to his knee.
God did three extraordinary things: He put me at the right place and time, blessing my instincts to get in before Harry’s leg was completely under; He used a man with torn ligaments in his knee to roll that bale; and He healed Harry’s knee.
I think God is great; take it or leave it