Vital signs...

This has been an adventuresome week in Crested Butte. I'm here with some of my life long friends. Alot of unexpected things have happened this week, I won't get into all of them but they seem to have a deeper significance to me than i could initially see.

Yesterday we took one friend down to the local medical clinic. She hasn't felt well the last couple of days, we were wondering how much the altitude was effecting her. Having landed in the hospital myself last year due to altitude related blood pressure problems made me somewhat more concerned for her heath.

The doctor at the clinic discovered her vital signs were not good, with very low oxygen levels and possibly a collapsed lung, he sent her immediatly down to Gunnison hospital since the clinic was not equipped to give her proper treatment. She's currently at the hospital and they say she'll be fine. I'm praying she will recover quickly.

Sitting here I'm thinking how important our vital signs are. We usually don't know how to read our own vital signs, we just know when we're not feeling right. Seems to me that spiritually we sometimes experience the same, we feel something's not quite right, just can't see exactly what it is. I'm sitting here wondering what my spiritual vital signs look like at the moment, and how critical they are...

I have to admit that over the past couple of years I have felt spiritually about the same as my friend looked like physically yesterday. Completely tired and weary and sick. I realize this is mostly due to my life being overburdened by many factors (some factors i had no control over), which inevitably effected both my physical and spiritual health. Even as i've removed myself from theses factors to take time to recover, the progress is slow which sometimes makes me wonder if there's any way this path of recovery could be quicker?

As altitude in an unexplained way affected my friend's health, i can also see many of the factors that have in unexpected ways effected me. In both cases there is no question of what got us here, the critical question is why we responded the way we did and how best to restore our vital signs? What is the treatment we really need?

They will keep her in the hospital for a second night because they do not want her coming up to altitude until she's recovered. Hmm, i wonder how often do we get pushed on or run on burdening our lives again without properly recovering. I don't know the answer to that, but i'm sure many times we neglect our need for rest, and neglect to ask for help thinking we can manage our recovery on our own. But the truth is we often are too frail to recover properly on our own.

I'm beginning to understand how fragile beings we are. It seems The Creator has designed us to need help and be helped. I'm just sitting here picturing the complete beauty of what God has provided though friends and physicians, homes and hospitals. Caring friends, caring strangers, all helping us on our road to recovery.