Help and hospitality.

One of the most scary pregnancy moments was not being in the hospital or anywhere near there. I just remember having returned from work and I was laying on the floor in my bedroom. I think it was on a small mattress. Why on the floor? Because I had given my bed to someone else. Why was I still working? Because I had to.

So, I was laying there tired beyond belief. And all I could do is think. No energy left for anything else.

“I have to eat,” I thought. Yes, but how will I do that? I can’t get up. I am too exhausted. I can’t even walk to my car to drive someplace to get something to eat. But I have to eat, I haven’t eaten for hours. I felt a bit of numbness come over me. I was slipping into a lethargy and had to think my way out before it overtook me.

I thought to myself, “Better I call my sister and ask her to come cook some food for me.”

I rarely called on anyone for help. I was putting all my energy into putting up a good front and I couldn’t buckle under the pressure of the toll my pregnancy was taking on my body. I remember in the last week of pregnancy. My slacks felt much more loose. I was losing significant body fat. The twins were sucking every bit of nutrition out of me. But I wouldn’t allow myself to dwell much on how poorly I was feeling nor on the toll it was taking on my body. I had to fake it till I made it.

My sister came over and cooked. She asked me if I needed to go to the hospital. I told her that I didn’t need to go to the hospital but rather, I needed to eat so I wouldn't end up there.

Since then, I have come to realize with a greater awareness, that the number of people who are helped by dramatic rescue is small in comparison to the number of people who only require small mundane acts of help. Dramatic rescues happen when things have gone wrong for too long.

As in the story of a foreign national. He had been going to university and had been rooming with a bunch of average American guys. It was winter and he had somehow caught an illness that was making it very difficult for him to breathe. He stumbled home from class in the cold, collapsed on his bed and asked his roommates if they could bring him to the doctor. They heard him but somehow ignored him and continued with their Friday night revelry. So he called a friend and the friend decided with him that he should go to the emergency room. He called the ambulance from his bed and when they came to the door the roommates couldn’t figure out who had called an ambulance to their address. He was in the hospital for a week recovering from a respiratory infection.

Please remember to help people in little ways this week.