God inhabits the praises of His people
Reflections from my hospital bed – Part 1

As you all know I’ve been out of hospital a number of weeks now and my health thankfully continues to improve. The last few weeks have given me time to reflect on a multitude of things and I’ve taken much learning from it. Being ill is a terrible thing and as I enter the phase of my life known as "middle aged" my guess is that I will have a growing awareness of how important my health is. The feeling of being invincible that my youth gave me has left and I am far more aware of how fragile a thing health can be.

As I lay on my hospital bed I have to confess that the thought of death did cross my head a few times. It’s an uncool thing to say as a Christian but death has always been a thing that has terrified me. Starring at the ceiling was often the only thing I could do. Whilst lying down my head felt like it was about to explode as the grip of a vice tightened. When I stood up it felt like someone was standing on my shoulders with a sledge hammer and was trying to hammer my head into my chest. My eyes were often sore and if I moved them at any speed at all a sharp pain would move across them in the same direction. It felt like I had run a ground and was stuck in the mud with no option of help. Reading was out of the question and so was writing.

In between the visits of my friends and family the only two things I had was the ceiling and my thoughts. The worst time of day was either when I first woke up or when I received my antibiotics via a drip; this was three times a day for an hour each time. This terrified me as I often felt worse for it. It often felt like I was being poisoned. In fact early on in the treatment it was so potent that it burnt its way out of my vein and travelled to my skin logging itself in nasty deep blisters.

(I hate long posts and rarely read them myself but I thought it important to set the scene – I’ve left out the heavy vomiting, desperate food and the wild waves of emotion)

Point of learning
As I lay and stared at the ceiling I tried to remember the words of hymns and sing them into myself. It was now down to me and God. My memory is very poor as most of you will testify to and at times I grew frustrated with the little that was coming to mind. Interestingly the hymns that often came to mind were those I’ve listened to Johnny Cash sing. In fact I often heard his voice and the accompanying music. It gave me hope and my heavenly father kept me company as I sang my way through them. So the next time you hear someone say "God inhabits the praises of His people" take it literally trust me its true.