I am going to jump forward a little over 7 years from my previous post, or jump back a little over 7 years from today, depending on how you look at things.

In April of 2007, I got off the plane outside the Cochabamba airport in Bolivia.  I had wanted to be a missionary for about as long as I had been a Christian.  I felt the Holy Spirit burning in me when a man by the name of Bill Clemmer came to speak to the youth group at the church I was going to in 1999.  Ever since then, I couldn't see myself doing anything but overseas mission work.  The year-long trip to Bolivia was to be the first of many, until I would eventually live overseas; at least, that is what I had thought at the time.  God had other plans.

Bolivia is the first time I can recall feeling the healing hands of the Lord cover me.  I had moments before where I could feel His presence, but this was different.  

This new feeling was like being covered by unseen hands, and it brought me to new depths that I couldn't have reached had I stayed home.  It also sprang from a lot of physical weakness and illness, which were two things I was not accustomed to.

Lesson 1: Learn to eat meat again.

Lesson 2: Learn to be thankful for food again.

Lesson 3: Learn what it feels like to be hungry again.

I tried explaining to Mario, the missionary whose family was gracious enough to open their home to a complete stranger like me, that I was a vegetarian.  The first meal I ate at their house was chicken soup.   :) Oh, the joys of being put in my place!

Not one to put up much of a fight in the name of people pleasing (where is people pleasing in the Bible again? Oh, right.), I decided, hey God, you brought me here, so I will eat what I am given.

It may have been the altitude sickness, the unlabled water I drank, the new surroundings, or any number of things, but I got violently ill that afternoon. Violently. As in I had not vomitted that much since probably 7th grade when I would get so worked up that my stomach couldn't hold anything in.  The difference was that now I was praying to keep it in.  Please let me stop puking. Please, Lord.  Please!!! I tried laying completely motionless on my bed, convinced that if I so much as breathed too deeply, the residual acid would come up again.

Carmen, the housekeeper/my new best friend, brought me some coca tea.  

It helped a little.  By the end of the evening, a doctor from the church made a house call to check on me.  I was given some meds and started to get better.  After a few follow up visits to the doctor and Mario driving me (what felt like) all over South America, even though it was just all around Cochabamba, I was back to normal.

This is where the healing began.  I remember thinking while I was in Bolivia that it would be the perfect place for a recovery center!  I had never felt so loved and like everything would be okay.  Things might get bad, but everything would be okay.

By then, I had been at a healthy weight for about 6.5 years.  No one had the slightest clue there was any mental health diagnosis in my past.  Who am I kidding though, most people could probably tell there where quirks and oddities, but I doubt they knew the severity.  However, even though my body looked fine on the outside, and the right words came out of my mouth, my mind was far from being healed.  I wanted to be healed so badly, thoughts of it consumed me.  I didn't want the torment anymore with the constant dread in the back of my mind.  I wanted to know what it was like to just live the life God intended me to live.