Headaches, Weakness, Gideon

Oooh, it's been a while...

I've always liked to think of myself as a pretty healthy individual.  When I was a kid I remember hearing people say things like, "Well, if you've got your health, that's the main thing!"  I think I took that on board in all its positive meaning, i.e. that health is something we ought to appreciate, not just take for granted.  I think I probably took on board a negative assumption there too though, that ill-health has some sort of shame associated with it.  You can't really get around the fact that ill-health marks you out as weak, or at least weaker than those who are not ill, and there's a bit of a sense of failure for me sometimes when I'm ill.  As a child I was pretty healthy (apart from being overweight for a while - I can't quite remember but I may have been a 13 stone 14 year old), and generally I still am, but passing years introduced their own weaknesses.  For instance, I twisted one knee as a 17 year old when I was out running in the winter and slipped on some ice, and I twisted the other falling off my bike as an 18 year old at university.  Neither knee ever got back to being 100%, so now I can't run more than a mile at most.  You deal with that kind of thing though, particularly when there's an air of manliness about how you picked up the injuries, both were in athletic pursuits after all.

Apart from an episode of concussion brought on by a run-in with the school bully back in the day my head has always been in pretty good shape though - even if throat infections and possible tropical illnesses were ruining my 'reputation' for strength & fortitude I was assured of a head that worked pretty well and didn't give me grief, until a few years ago that is.  I was sitting in the offices at YFC one lunchtime, being a little bit anti-social and reading a newspaper, when I suddenly noticed I couldn't read very well anymore.  I was a bit confused by this experience, I'm pretty good with words and things normally!  After trying to sneak up on the newspaper for a couple of minutes I realised that I had developed a bit of a blind spot right in the centre of my vision.  I think I mentioned it at the time but neither I nor anyone else really had any response to it, probably assuming it would sort itself out shortly.  Fortunately it did sort itself out, but a short while later my face decided to get in on the act by going numb and tingly.  Not to be outdone, my left arm joined the fun by refusing to talk to the rest of my body for a while too.  At that point I thought I maybe wasn't very well so I went home and lay on the sofa until Naomi got home!

That was my first migraine, and as you might imagine it was disconcerting to have all these odd things going on with my head, but I tend to assume the best so I wasn't particularly worried about it being anything more serious.  Since then I've had migraines with varying frequency and intensity, from pretty mild ones that have happened mostly while I slept, to a little cluster of three in 7 days back in August.  A couple of weeks ago I had my most recent one, and I have to say it was flipping awful.  It started at 7:30 am as I was having a skype meeting with someone, with the usual (for me) first symptoms of visual disturbances and weird hands (I don't think that's a medical term), and developed into twelve hours of intense pain where at points I could hardly see, walk or talk.  At some point that day I realised I wasn't going to be able to do anything useful the next day, and just for fun here are the two messages I sent from my Blackberry to cancel stuff for the next day:

Hi becca,

Beace cancel than ecel ther everycent thent comorrow I have thanhs tomorrow. I'm not well

Mark

Hi Chris,

I'm everything ill, I can't today tomowwor, sorry. Thanks.

Mark

I think I spent about fifteen minutes trying to write those!


So, that was indeed what counts as 'a bad day'.  In fact I counted it as a bad week, because that happened on a Tuesday, and I only managed to do about five hours work the rest of that week.  I'd had so many things I wanted to get done that week as well, so I ended up being immensely frustrated by the whole thing.


At times like that I sometimes think, "Why am I the Director of NYFC?  Surely it would be better to have someone who wasn't randomly knocked out of action for four days at a time by these uncontrollable events?" Honestly, there's not any room for pratting about for charities at the moment.  I have a clear idea of what I want NYFC to do, the job we have to do is enormous, (as a generalisation) people are not giving like they used too, and so we can ill-afford to have people (even me) going off-sick at inconvenient moments.  Or at least that's what would be logical...


Here's the thing though, it seems to me that God is often not logical.

“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”

Gideon, one of my favourite characters of the Old Testament, appears in Judges 6.  We see a chap who has a clear idea of what's wrong in the world, and how things should really be, but for any number of reasons is not really a great person to do something about it all.  In fact, when we first meet him he is pretty much hiding in a cupboard.  He's not a natural born leader, he's scared, he's weak, he's more of a cooker than a fighter, and he's not particularly full of faith in himself or God.


And yet, as we read on in the story we discover that God is quite happy to take this weak character and appoint him as leader over Israel.  Despite all the contrary indications, God seems relaxed about putting this guy in charge.  It doesn't make a lot of sense from a logic point of view.




I have a clear idea of how things should be in terms of NYFC's work, but I have to say there's all sorts of reasons why someone else might make a better director.  Sure, I get these migraines that knock me out for days at a time, but actually it's worse than that!  I don't pray enough, I'm not spiritual enough, I can't come up with a plan to solve our financial issues, I'm quite often flummoxed by the challenges of leading people, I lack formal training and have a natural desire not to make plans!


Gideon and the migraines teach me something though - it seems God is relaxed about me not being perfect.  In fact he seems remarkably chilled about all my infirmities and inadequacies.  It's almost as if it doesn't actually depend on me or something!  I'm convinced that although there might be lots of better qualified and more skilful and  experienced people out there, actually God has asked me to do this for now, and he asked me knowing that I don't pray enough, and I get migraines, and I'm a bit of a slacker.  If he's alright with that, then I'm much more than alright with it, I'm ecstatic about it!  God calls ordinary people, not asking them to be superstars, but just asking them to be obedient, just to do what he asks and let him handle the results.  I think I can do that.