Trinity Sunday – June 16, 2019
Eighteen years ago this month, I was attending Annual Conference in Virginia Beach and excited about reaching my final level of ordination as an elder in the United Methodist Church. Yet at dinner on the first night, I began to have severe abdominal pain that, as I lay alone in my hotel room, became unbearable. I would later describe it as “like being sawed in half.” I called the hotel’s front desk to ask the location of the nearest emergency room, only to be told by the person on the other end of the line that he “was not from here and had no idea.”
I was somehow able to drive myself to Virginia Beach General Hospital where I was admitted to the emergency room, where doctors would mistakenly diagnose me with a kidney stone. I remember writhing on the gurney, waiting for the Demerol to kick in, waiting for Tracy to arrive from Newport News, trying to make sense of what was happening to me.