Last week my husband and I had planned to have a ‘date night’ on Friday evening. That afternoon our youngest daughter started complaining of a stomach ache and a head ache. I could tell that she didn’t feel great, but figured that she could rest at grandma’s until we went to dinner. By the time we got back, she had been vomiting and started running a fever.
My husband carried her home (grandma lives next door), and we put her to bed after giving her a dose of Tylenol. She continued to vomit throughout the night and complained that her head was pounding. She was getting dizzy every time she would stand up, and so naturally, she rested all day on Saturday. I figured rest would be the best thing for her because she looked and felt so terrible. In the middle of the night on Saturday, her fever reached a very high 104.4* temperature, and she was completely lethargic. She would hardly respond and she had lost all color in her face. Her body was very limp, her face a pasty pale, and her skin extremely hot. We decided that we needed to take her to the Emergency Room right away.
We arrived at the E.R. and they checked her vitals, her temperature, and swabbed her to test for the flu. The Doctor came in to tell us that the flu test came back negative, but that the test wasn’t accurate for every strand of the flu, and that our daughter was visibly very sick, and therefore they believed that she did have some strand of the flu. Her heart rate was elevated, and according to the blood work, her kidney function was also a bit elevated because she was very dehydrated. What was most concerning to the Doc was that Aubrey was very “dry”, she said.
They did a quick finger poke to check her glucose levels and then called for the nurse to come start an IV. The most important thing was getting fluids into her body.
We had tried getting her to drink at home, but with all of the vomiting and feeling so miserable, she just couldn’t bring herself to.
The nurse got the IV in and started the fluids. As the bag began to empty drop by drop into her little body, we could visibly see a difference in her face. Color began to come back into her pale cheeks. By the time the bag was half empty and her body half full of the fluid, she sat up in the bed and smiled at us. It was amazing to see how much the fluids were helping!
We watched as our very sick little girl was getting rehydrated and the results were literally mind blowing to me. She was barely responding hours earlier and now she was talking to us and even sipping on a cup of sprite that the nurse had brought her.
I was so stunned at the results of this that when I got home, I “googled” it…
Here is what google says – “The human body needs food and water to survive. A human can go for more than 3 weeks without food, but water is a different story. At least 60% of the adult body is made of it and every living cell in the body needs it to keep functioning.
I started thinking….wow, I’ve always known that water was important…but, it’s not just that it’s important, it is VITAL… we NEED water, it isn’t just something that we should drink, but it’s something we NEED to drink….and then it hit me….
is it any surprise then… that Jesus is the Well of Living Water!
Yes, our bodies NEED water to live…..and our souls NEED Jesus to live!
In the Book of John, Jesus offers the woman at the well water that only He gives, and He offers all of us the same water that He offered her that day.
So many days we go without drinking from the Well that He has provided for us, and then we wonder why we start feeling so miserable.
We drink from every other “well” ….Television, Social Media, and even Other People….and it’s not that these things are bad in and of themselves, but when we spend all of our time “drinking” down these things, and not near as much of our time drinking down His Life Giving Water, it’s no wonder our souls get dehydrated.
We feel weak in the faith because our heads pound with discouragement, and our bellies hurt from being full from other “wells”, and so we find it hard to drink from THE WELL. We get lethargic spiritually, and even confused on which direction to go in our lives because we aren’t communicating with Him in prayer and can’t get clear direction. We stumble around trying to find our own way. We get dazed and dizzy by the blur that we live in because we are no longer hydrated with His presence….His Life Giving Water!
We walk in and out of church services with dehydrated souls, hoping to drink just enough to sustain us until the next service….but friends, this is not the way God has designed the Christian life to be, and church is not the only place that the Well is located.
Jesus, Himself – He is the Well!
The Well is available for you on a Monday morning when it’s hard to get out of bed and start another week. He’s there on a Wednesday afternoon when the week already feels long, and you need strength to keep going. He’s there on a Friday evening when all is well, and you just want a refill of this precious water that only He gives. On the good days and the bad ones, He is there waiting for you and me to come draw Water for another day.
We don’t only physically drink water once or twice a week, our bodies could never survive that way.
So….what makes us think that our souls are going to stay spiritually hydrated on a couple of drinks of water from this Never-ending Well each week?
We’ll never survive that way!
We need Him, oh how we NEED HIM!
If your soul is dehydrated today, I encourage you to run to the Well…get rehydrated and drink as much as you can every single day because He’ll never run dry!
❤
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. ~ Isaiah 12:3
Keep your souls hydrated, my friends ~ The Well is Always Full!
Life Is A Beautiful Mess 