I’m Going to be Okay - Cambodia blog entry #14

Give your worries to the Lord, and he will take care of you. He will never let good people down. (Psalm 55:22, New Century Version)

  After we got off of Bokor Mountain, with its miserable weather, K took us to a mangrove forest. 

It was a totally unexpected side trip, so we didn’t know what to expect. But it was a fun boat ride out to the forest on the edge of the ocean and fascinating to walk among the mangroves. 

The next morning, Friday, September 20, we took the van back to Phnom Penh where we could relax for the afternoon and get ready for the long bus ride the next day to Seim Reap. From there, on Sunday, we were scheduled to see the temples of Angkor Wat.  

My left hip was starting to hurt and was really bad by the time we got back to the volunteer house. The pain was bad enough that I was limping and wished I had a cane. I wondered if I'd make it to the bus the next day or if my dream of Angkor Wat was over and I would be stuck at the volunteer house all week, while the others had adventures in Siem Reap.

For the past year, when one of my hips gets all bound up and achy, the pain usually lasts two days. Then I wake up the third day and pain is in the other hip for two more days. I tried not to panic, but I knew how these things went.

D and I walked the two blocks to 7-11 for a snack. Walking usually helps. Sure, it loosened up while walking but tightened right back up when I stopped. And we had a six-hour bus ride scheduled for the next day.

I popped a Vicodin, hooked up my TENS unit, and then laid down while D packed for the trip. When she was done and turned her half-filled suitcase over to me, I slowly started setting my clothes and other necessities in it, feeling this was a waste of my already limited energy.

I gimped downstairs for supper and then back up. Brushed my teeth and crawled in bed with a pain patch on, topping off my meal with a half of a pain pill, a muscle relaxant, and a prednisone. None of these efforts had ever cured the pain on other occasions, but I had to try it all.

I said my prayers, thanked God for letting me have the trip thus far. I wanted to beg and bargain, tell Him that as long as I was already in Cambodia, why can’t He let me be pain-free and make it to the temple I’d been dreaming about for fifty years.

Instead, I released a long sigh and turned my heart over to Jesus, shared my thoughts and feelings, not just about this trip, but about my life over the past eighteen months, all the pain I’d been living with and how just when I thought I was coming out on the other side and was going to live pain-free, some miserable ache would pop up. And I told Jesus that I just didn’t understand it and I really did not understand God’s will for my life. I apologized for having had this fascination with a Buddhist temple complex for so long. I told Him that I was willing to accept His will, would always be His child and would never have any hard feelings.

Even though I had finally made it to Cambodia, maybe my dream of seeing Angkor Wat really wasn’t meant to be. And I was going to be okay with that.