Bloody Knuckles
on God's presence in suffering & an announcement for Tolkien fans.
“Do you need me to take you to the emergency room?”
A year ago this past weekend, my husband asked me this question while watching me double over and writhe in pain in the passenger seat of our van.
I had woken up that Friday morning with what I thought were early period cramps. By 2:30pm on Friday, I could barely walk from pain as intense as when I birthed my two children. We went straight to the ER.
It wasn’t my period.
Today’s post is one for paid subscribers. I send these out every Monday morning. Below you’ll find an exclusive essay as well as an announcement about a special project I’ve been working on for Tolkien fans (+ details about the 50% off code to access it for anyone who’s already a paid subscriber to The Redemptive).
After a series of excruciating tests and a hours-long anxiety attack induced by pain meds, they discovered a 5mm kidney stone in my urinary tract. I was admitted to a hospital on a different campus because the one I was at didn’t have beds available. I took an ambulance ride I barely remember, slept after finding a pain regimen that didn’t send my body into overdrive and received a stent procedure the following morning.
One day I was perfectly fine, working out consistently for the first time in my life, getting my body into a healthy place, preparing to announce the launch of this Substack, The Redemptive.
The next, I was laying flat on my back in a hospital alone with a mounting stack of hospital bills we’re still trying to pay off.
It’s been a year since everything got upended by that (mercifully small) medical emergency. My life was never in any danger and, thankfully, we were able to access the healthcare I needed in time. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t awful to experience or hard to look at the medical debt now and not ask, “What was that God?”