When God Said, “Rest”

“Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.”

- Mark 6:31 (ESV)

By the third time I knelt over the basin that morning, I told myself it was nothing.

It was Wednesday, the fourteenth of October. A mild ache sat in my abdomen, and I blamed hyperacidity, or something I had eaten at breakfast. I straightened my shoulders and let the worry go, as one lets a leaf go on a stream. I did not know my body had already stopped listening.

At noon, we visited Ate Atoy to ask if she could host an evening worship the following Wednesday. She shook her head gently. Some of her family were sick, and she would not have us carry their illness home. So we promised to pray for them, though I had been vomiting before we even arrived, and I said nothing of it.

Before we left, she pressed into my hands lukewarm water with a Chinese medicine stirred in. It tasted like Snow Bear, sweet and milky, with a little spice that warmed my throat. I felt relieved for a moment. It did not last. By evening I ate a small meal, hoping, almost begging, that my body would keep it. Ten minutes later, it returned. Again and again, nearly five times, until the clock crept toward seven and I had nothing left to give.

When I looked up, the brethren were watching me, their faces full of fear. Dehydration, they said. Hospital, they said.

“I’m okay,” I told them, though the words had grown thin.

They would not be persuaded. Love, I learned that night, can be stubborn. The church elder and some of the brethren came with me while my partner hurried to pack my things. I grew weaker with every turn of the road. No one spoke much, and that silence told me how frightened they were. They had cancelled the midweek worship, and for us, that was never a small thing.

At the hospital, the doctor found me very weak, with signs of possible dehydration, and ordered an IV drip. The faces around me softened, and the room seemed to breathe again. But as I watched the fluid fall drop by slow drop, my own fear rose. What will happen to our mission if I have to stay here? I had no answer, so I prayed, “Lord, give me strength, comfort my heart, and grant me healing according to Your will.”

By morning, the CBC results came: my hemoglobin was low, from lack of sleep. The cause was not hard to find. A week earlier, Jaki and I had kept the wake for the baby daughter of one of our brethren. We helped facilitate through the long nights and poured ourselves into that grief and never once thought of rest. My body had simply sent the bill. I was given Aldrox for two days and Appimed multivitamins for a month, with advice to take iron. By afternoon, I was discharged, told to rest and sleep early. That night, I slept straight through.

Now, by God’s grace, I am well. With proper rest, I have returned to our house-to-house visitations. I came away from that narrow bed with one lesson: we may have plans and schedules, but He knows when we must move forward, and He knows when we must pause.

Name: Emily H. Cabiladas | 66th Batch 1000MM

Mission Field: Dawis, Bayawan City Negros Oriental