So, sickness hit the Drake house this week. Tinsley (our 4-year-old) spent the first half of the week with a fever. It finally broke so that she could go to school yesterday, but her day was interrupted by an ear infection that knocked her back down. Wendy ran her across town to the doctor, got a script for an antibiotic, and she's already looking and feeling better.
About two days ago I woke up with a feeling that I was coming down with something. You know when you wake up and can't quite breathe and/or swallow normally? That was me. So I bought a bag of cough drops and have about eaten my weight in them over the course of the last three days. Yes, I know that Remedan, our Compassion child, probably doesn't have access to Hall's cough drops, but in the midst of this fast, I still have work to do, so it's best that I keep moderately healthy. So I'm downing the cough drops and water and coffee and hoping that those do the trick.
But it got me thinking about Remedan -- something I've done a whole lot more in the last week than I have in the previous six years we've sponsored him. We've learned quite a bit about his community, family, and even Compassion International through this process. We learned that we can send his family gifts, not just gifts for him. We learned that he is at a Lutheran student center in the heart of a Muslim area of Ethiopia. And we learned that his community does not have consistent access to clean water -- a problem that first grabbed our family's attention this past Advent with the work of Living Water International.
But my thoughts were, what happens when Remedan gets sick? Our family is a pretty "earthy" family -- lots of water, organic foods, chiropractic, etc. -- so it's not just that he wouldn't have access to Tylenol and antibiotics. How do you get healthy when you don't have clean water? As I said, I have been dropping cough drops like a junkie. In addition, I have been downing vitamin C in almost unhealthy quantities. And I'm still sick three days later. He has minimal access to vitamin C and to clean water. Sometimes, even, the water that he drinks has more sickness in it than is already in his body. It made me understand a little bit why things that we get sick with and get over can become really big, life-or-death deals in third world countries.
As I sit here in my chair watching my now-healthy 4-year-old play with her Disney princesses, I'm less likely to complain that her childcare center has a policy that didn't allow me to take her to school today. An infection that could have had her lying in pain for days is all but gone after one round of antibiotic. And while my scratchy throat might be an annoyance when I preach on Sunday (especially to my listeners), I think I'll be all right. As long as I don't run out of cough drops. Or clean water.
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