Tina's Perspective

(This special entry comes from Tina, as she processes her experience of getting sick and returning home.)

I write this post to you from my home in Minnesota. I wanted to share with everyone my perspective of my journey with the ICS trip. I returned home safely late last night after some tough weather in Philadelphia where my connecting flight was. It was a huge relief to be home in Minnesota with my family and friends.

Before all this, though, God sent me on a new journey with Him.

Two weeks before I left on the ICS trip, I had beginning symptoms of mono: a weeklong headache followed by a sore throat and fatigue. I figured it was due to all the stress of final projects and so I remained spirited and positive about going on the trip despite a bit of illness. Any ICS-er will tell you how crazy it gets the few weeks before departure!

As many of you know from other updates, my first days in Portugal were spent in different hospitals and clinics trying to get answers to my incredibly swollen lymph nodes and fatigue. When I received a final diagnosis of mono, there was a sense of relief and dread. I knew what I was dealing with now, but I didn’t know what this meant for the rest of the trip.

As the first week went on, I began to realize the gravity of my situation. Waves of anger and bitterness swept over me one afternoon and I wept with the Lord. The last 8 months of my life were spent preparing for this internship, only for me to be sick and go home? Why God? I haven’t even seen Portugal, except for the airport and the hospital! Why don’t I get to go to pastry shops and churches and learn about ministries here? What about all of the people who gave me financial support? Why is this happening to me?

I felt so alone.

And indeed, mono really isolates you! No one wants to be around you because you’re contagious, and you can’t be around people because you’re so tired all the time.

I started thinking through the meaning of being alone.

God gently whispered truth into my life about coming to Him with my hurts instead of running to other people and things. “What do you treasure most?” Now that I really was alone, I realized my gaping pain was because I was lacking deeper intimacy with God and was using people and things to get by in life. Though God did not cause my mono, He has used it to teach me the importance of treasuring Christ over anything. I was selfishly and sinfully treasuring this trip, among so many other things, more than Christ. These things were my comfort and treasure, not Christ. I felt so much guilt and cried out to God for forgiveness and wisdom as to what to do.

Be still.

“Be still and know I am God.” I don’t need to run. I can be still and know the Lord will fight my battles, and that he has forgiven me. I can have peace and liberation if I choose to be still and trust in God’s sovereignty despite any situation. I can have joy because of Christ’s love for me. Ironic. With mono, you are forced into stillness and rest. And so, I am learning the ways of stillness so that God can work in my life. Truly, I have been able to give over my bitterness and anger to God and I now have peace that is past understanding. I have such rest in the goodness, the treasure of fellowship with God.

I am reminded of Romans 8: 35; 37-39

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? … No, in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height or depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And so, this blog ends with a question for all its readers: what do you treasure most?

-Tina