I couldn’t sleep. I stared ahead into the darkness of the hospital room, lit dimly by the machines monitoring my vital signs. Earlier the IV in my arm had infiltrated, and the doctors stuck me three times to start a new one. I’d had blood drawn three times too. My pain medication was too weak to soothe me. “God,” I spoke aloud, “I’m tired. I can’t do this hospital stuff anymore.” After 46 hospitalizations in 19 years, I was ready to give up.
I have a rare illness called acute intermittent porphyria, a sister disease of multiple sclerosis and lupus. It causes pain and muscle weakness, and I’m confined to a wheelchair. But I’d been doing so much better lately with my health. This latest setback just crushed me. In my conversations with God, he urged me to go on, but every day I became more discouraged.
If I can’t sleep, I’ll watch some TV, I thought. I fumbled for the remote and turned the TV on. Channel 30, the info on the screen displayed. A program was already in progress.
Ocean waves rippled onto a sandy beach, lit by a brightening sunrise. As the waves flowed, a song played softly. “Oh, love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee,” a voice sang. “I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow, may richer fuller be…”
Then a soprano voice sang out, “Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father. There is no shadow of turning with thee.”
The whole room filled with the music and the calmly crashing waves. It felt like God was saying, “Marcia, I love you and will never let you go. I will give you patience and courage.” I felt at peace. I’d lived through 46 hospitalizations, I could survive more down the line. As long as I was alive, there was always hope for a better tomorrow. Finally, I slept.
The next morning, I turned on the TV again. But it was nothing but blurry static. I double-checked the channel. Channel 30. I pressed the call button.
A nurse came in. “This channel’s all blurry now,” I told her, “Can you fix it?”
“I’m sorry ma’am,” the nurse responded. “But we don’t get channel 30. Never have.”
