Feeling Better at Last

I'm looking a lot happier in this picture than I was really feeling...! This was two weeks ago, when I had what seemed like the twin of the swine flu, if not the real thing - fever, headache, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea for 4 days.
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Eric had already left for Gabon, so I was "alone" in my cabin in our ship off the coast of Benin, Africa. It was miserable, but at the same time I was aware that I was being loved in a remarkable way by all the people who came to take care of me. I just left my door unlocked, and friends and nursing staff would come in at any hour of the day or night to check on me, knowing that I had little strength to get up to let them in. It seemed like whenever I wasn't sleeping, someone was there. I wasn't even tempted to be lonely that week. Above is when a friendly nurse on call was giving me intravenous fluids because of dehydration. Doctor turned patient!
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Once feeling better, I seemed to recover fairly quickly and two days later even went swimming briefly at a local hotel. But that night I came down with a fever again, this time higher than before, with severe chills and sweats, a painful headache and deep productive cough. Thankfully no further gastrointestinal symptoms. But I was still weak from having been sick the previous week, and this time I couldn't sleep because of the fevers up to 102.9 F. The crew physician tested me twice for malaria, but it was negative and after some other tests, we decided I'd just managed to catch both viruses floating around the ship in a matter of a week.
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The first two days I didn't call my friends to come check on me again because I felt like after the last illness, I was abusing our friendship and also didn't want them to get sick. But I was beginning to despair and felt like the whole continent of Africa was taunting me, testing my resolve to be here at all. And I was also going on many days of missing work, feeling discouraged at not accomplishing what I had thought God wanted me to do here.
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I finally called my friends and was soundly rebuked for not calling earlier :) . I was reminded that we're the body of Christ, and we look forward to opportunities to love one another. Nobody is an "island" who never cries (for those Simon & Garfunkel fans). And this friend repeated that our identity in Christ is not dependent on our productivity. God's love for us is extravagant, abundant - and so was the love that I received from the hands and feet and heart of His Bride these last 2 weeks. After four days, the fever abated and I was on the road to recovery.
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Photo taken here, in an outdoor museum of Benin history the day before I fell ill:

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." - Jesus, John 13:34-35

"For I was...sick, and you visited Me....Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me." -Jesus, Matthew 25:35-40