What goes around comes around

Well, this last week was a bit of a gong show. I got back from Europe and was desperately trying to recover from jet lag, when guess what happened! I got sick. And not just any kind of sickness. (Although I did have almost every symptom: nausea, headaches, fever, cough, cold, sore throat, fatigue, aches and pains from head to toe, etc.) The real problem was this: I lost my voice.
For some people that might not be a problem. But of course if you know me well (actually if you know me at all!) you can probably understand why losing my voice would be so devastating. My voice is my lifeline to the world. It is my mode of communication. It is the way I express myself. It is the way I make myself heard and stay on top of things and a bunch of other really important functions. I can't think very well with this headache.
But anyway, it was totally gone. Not only that, but I had driven to our church family camp where I was supposed to be..... leading worship and speaking. Ha ha. Now I am convinced God has a sense of humor.
My voice stayed gone for three days. It's back now, deeper than ever. Unfortunately it's not really a sexy sultry bedroom voice. No, it is hoarse and scratchy and it occasionally goes into falsetto. There's nothing I can do about it.
But I did manage to speak at the camp after all. A dear friend reminded me that God gives us enough words to say what he wants us to say, nothing more and nothing less. So I stood up on a bucket next to my very tall friend Christoph and whispered in his ear and he translated for me and we spoke! Actually, God spoke! It was pretty powerful, but not in the sense of loud and authoritative. (Especially since I was speaking about being weak.) The second night I was supposed to speak again, and I had been suffering from uncontrollable coughing. I couldn't stop it no matter what I did. Again I believed in that promise from God. I coughed and coughed and coughed..... and spoke for 20 wonderful minutes without a single cough..... and then immediately started coughing again!
I wish I could say that I'm better now. It's been a week and I'm still really sick. But I am learning the truth that God gives us exactly what we need to accomplish his purposes. Nothing more, nothing less. That way we stay dependent on him and his beauty and strength shine through us. When we're weak, he is strong.