Something inside of me is dying, and I feel like death. These were the exact thoughts, exact words running through my mind. I was restless in my tent at night, rolling around on my sleeping bag. I had never felt quite like this before. I wasn’t in pain, for there wasn’t any sharpness of feeling. But there was this subtle aching, and even more so than a feeling, it was a knowledge that stirred within me. I was not well. I couldn’t get comfortable. My body was in utter forthright rebellion. Inflammation was raging on. The body was winning in this battle despite my will. I wanted to be well. I wanted to relax. The body wasn’t having it. Therefore my sleep was interrupted, shallow, brief, and before I knew it was morning.

The day before I had traveled from Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area in Washington here to West Glacier, Montana. I had traveled nearly six hours, around Spokane, through the panhandle of Idaho, past St. Regis, Montana, and up the west side of Flathead Lake. In St. Regis I made one of my more notable stops of the day at the St. Regis Travel Center. Right off highway 90, just across the Idaho border in Montana. This gas station establishment boasts “restaurant, casino, Montana’s largest gift shop, expresso” and “free live trout aquarium.” I just pulled over to go to the bathroom. I didn’t need all this, but I’ll take it! (minus the casino). ! It was like the Montana version of Buccees. Here I was greeted by a bag of free popcorn and a near endless supply of Montana t-shirts, huckleberry everything; and every Montana, grizzly bear, and Western knick-knack and patty whack you could imagine. Many items were boasting common Montana mottos and phrases: “The Treasure State,” “Big-Sky Country,” “The Montana way,” “Grab life by the horns”…  I browsed around and didn’t purchase anything but was impressed by the inventory. In later summers working in Montana, I’d be back here a couple of times. 

Shortly I found myself traveling upside Flathead Lake. I didn’t know that was its name. All the places I’d see in the next few days I’d have much more experience, knowledge, and memories with in the future with my subsequent summers working in Montana, but now it was all new. When I write about my adventures I like to talk about my experiences and observations at that time. As difficult as it is, I make a conscious effort to restrict myself from injecting later knowledge and experiences of these places. So although now I know it was Flathead Lake, then it was just some big lake I was traveling by. I was impressed by such an immense lake. Why hadn’t I heard of this before? It is the largest lake in the U.S. outside of the Great Lakes. I stopped in the community of Lakeside. I was very hungry and found a little cafe right off the road. I went inside, but after seeing the prices, I decided to continue on. I wasn’t used to the tourist prices in the Flathead Valley.

Atop the lake lies the biggest city in the valley, Kalispell. My hunger was so ravenous. I stopped at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. It genuinely sounded so good to me. I know it was not the best choice for my gut, but I was in need of some comfort food. This solo traveler from Kentucky, a little bit weary and beaten down by health issues, needed a bit of comfort from back home. Now it is humorous, because I know of way better and nourishing choices in the valley for food. 

Leaving Kalispell, more and more tall pines filled in the landscape, and the road just seemed to roll along these wooded hills, swooping up and down with the great Rocky Mountains of Glacier National Park standing in the distance. Although the woods were everywhere, I did not feel nestled in the woods because the road was wide and beside it was a path for bikers and snowmobiles. Everything around me just seemed so big with the land and forest just so immense. I passed by a few tourist traps: “The Huckleberry Patch” and “Huckleberry Haven” boasting their huckleberry pie, and a western ranch style building called “ The Montana Fur Company” with a tipi and Native American relics outfront. Most prominent was this place called the “Ten Commandments Park,” with a dozen or so billboards situated together in a half circle, each loudly displaying a religious or political message. This seemed like something I’d see in Texas. Is Montana the Texas of the North? This I certainly thought.

Some National Parks have no real build up, not much of a tourist economy around it. Others, such as the Great Smoky Mountains, have an extreme excess. Glacier seemed to have a moderate amount of tourist build-up. The place seemed touristy, but not in an obnoxious way. Its quantity and quality was of such a way that it served the park well in building up just the right level of excitement and anticipation without being obnoxious or tacky. 

I wouldn’t make it into the park this evening but according to plan I would stay at the West Glacier KOA. I had read this was the flagship KOA. I’d stayed at many Kampgrounds Of America and had become a big fan, so to stay at the allegedly best of all KOAs was an exciting thing for me. I had noticed, while booking my stay online, that this KOA was also the one featured on the front cover of the KOA directory. This was big stuff! Rolling along wide wooded highway 2, suddenly to my right stood the big bold beautiful KOA sign made of rich dark wood with black letter insignia, and it didn’t say “Kampground” as most are identified, It read “KOA Resort.” Oooh, fancy!

I checked in at the office, where I also was given a free KOA koozie. I don’t drink, but I was still glad to have a KOA souvenir. The campground was enormous. I had a standard tent pad which backed up to some woods at the junction between where the cabin guests stayed and the RV area. I quickly set up my tent, because I was on a mission: I wanted to enjoy the hot tub, which I did. It was small and busy, but I enjoyed a nice warm soak. I then finished setting up my camp, blowing up my air mattress, and throwing my pillow and sleeping bags in the tent. I felt calm and relaxed walking around the campground and getting familiar with the place. There was a vibrant energy, a positive one of happy families on vacation and kids on their bicycles. I kept having to make frequent trips to the bathroom. Although I felt relaxed in many ways, my gut was not happy. 

I noticed on the resort map there were some little hiking trails in the woods just behind my site. I went on a stroll through the woods and there I decided to call my parents and let them know of my sickness. I had procrastinated telling them. I guess I was hopeful it’d just go away as suddenly as it seemed to come upon me, and therefore be a non issue. But I felt like now I was in for a long haul. I should let them know. Just talking about it and my experience with it so far was draining. I didn’t want to really talk about it. I wanted to ignore it, but I couldn’t.

Soon, after I settled in my tent for the night, and this was the night things took a major turn for the worse: Something inside of me is dying, and I feel like death. These feelings. After tonight, the illness would not just bother me but rage on. 

In the morning I ate at the KOA resort. It had a restaurant, with a nice outdoor patio. I ordered the Montana Breakfast of eggs, potatoes, and thick sausage patties. I was impressed by the quality here. In the subsequent days I’d learn this trio is the standard Montana breakfast almost everywhere. After breakfast, I was driving, for the first time ever, into Glacier National Park with great excitement. I was going to hike the famous Skyline Trail, which in my present state of health, would not be easy.  

As I was driving I thought back to what I would consider my greatest thoughts and reflections on this trip so far. I thought about Nurse Logs and the life-enriching ability one leaves behind after they have died. I considered  my previous thoughts on the colors of my sunset and the qualities of one’s life that can be evident and seen when a life comes to completion, or to put it more bluntly, one dies. There was so much thought about death, but not in any dark way, but in an inspiring way, thinking more about the quality of a life truly lived before time naturally runs out. I was only twenty-eight, not an age one normally contemplates what they leave behind upon their passing, but these were my thoughts. It was curious to me that shortly after these thoughts came to me unexpectedly my health had been taken from me to the point my mind spoke: “I feel like death.” 

Were my deepest thoughts and personal revelations preparing me for this, preparing for the end? It sounds very dramatic in retrospect, but in the moment it was quite sincere. The only other time my body was under this attack with ulcerative colitis brutally flaring was when I was in college and it was severe. There were the restless nights of rolling around the floor in pain, the hospitalization, the intense pain, the blood loss, the anemia, my body not digesting food, the malabsorption, the withering away, the affected eyes, the suffering teeth, the weakness, the fatigue, the fainting, the crying. The option of surgically taking out my colon wasn’t on the table, because the doctor believed I was too weak to survive the surgery. I look back and marvel how despite everything I continued onward. 

At that time of the first onset I was a student in education, and I was due for student teaching the next semester. With my current state of health I felt I just couldn’t do it. I informed my parents I was coming home. I notified the education department at my school, telling them I had to postpone my student teaching because of my health. Then, this decision sat horribly with me. I didn’t feel at peace about it at all. Although now officially unenrolled, I called a meeting with the dean of education. I knew how rigid and firm to policies and procedures the whole institution was. I felt embarrassed, but I was going to plead and beg them to let me back in the program. I wanted  to proceed with student teaching despite my health and weakness. I told the dean “I am very sick, but I may not get better. I may be like this for the rest of my life, so I don’t want to let this sickness stop me. I must learn to live with it.” 

I’ll never forget what the dean told me. Somewhat surprised looking at me square in the eyes, she said “Well, that says an awful lot about your character.” I was back in!  God gave me an inner strength and fierce resistance to face my illness while moving forward in life. . 

In the struggle I clung on with a tight grip to a harmony of Bible verses I felt God spoke directly to me, 1 Peter 5:10 and Phillipians 4:7 together: “After you have suffered a while, the God of grace Himself, whose knowledge surpasses all understanding, will restore you and make you strong in Christ Jesus.” 

It’s just for, “a while,” I thought. That helped me persevere. God will “restore” me and make me “strong.” That gave me hope. However, I was struggling with this. I wanted to believe it. I held the word of God to be true. It had proved itself over and over again to be so, but this night was exceptionally long, and there was no improvement in my health whatsoever. I felt myself slowly dying. What does this promise and these verses really mean?

One evening in my quiet time, alone in a little study nook in my university, in my sickly state with increasing complexity of illness, I was journaling and thinking over this promise of God. Then it dawned on me: I think I know what it means. The first part about “suffering a while,” well I was there, no doubt. I knew that to be true. The second part, “I will restore you and make you strong.” I struggled with that because I was not seeing it as I expected it to be, in this life. Maybe, that is the part God will accomplish when he calls me home. When I die. In his eternal presence I will be restored and he will make me strong. So maybe God is telling me, “After you have suffered a while, I will bring you home to restore you and make you strong.”

 It was profound to me and haunting in some ways. I didn’t want to die so young, but at the same time the notion was comforting in knowing that whether it be in life or be in death God restores me and makes me strong. I am victorious through Him, either way! I took a deep breath as though accepting my fate, not sure I felt ready for the responsibility set before me, to proceed into death with faith, resting on His promise. I zipped up my backpack, tucked away my journal and Bible, and carried on with life’s demand. Live strong and fiercely to the end. But oh what an ache it was still to my soul! This was a silent disease. Few would know. I’d be here and then I wouldn’t. 

God’s promise did hold entirely true, as it always does, and to my own heart’s desire, for God is good! I was restored and made strong in this life shortly after. 

When I look back at this period of sickness in my life, it doesn’t seem so dark, and actually never felt dark in the moment either, though it may seem so from the casual observer. Actually, I am extremely grateful for that time of sickness and for the wrestles with faith. These were times of some of the greatest spiritual intimacy and dependency on God in my life. His promise held so much more, too, than what I even thought at the time. When God promised to restore me and make me strong, I considered that just in the physical sense. God did mean that, but He also meant it in a spiritual sense. God would strengthen me spiritually beyond what I could see in the moment. To go through such an experience of facing a prospect of death so young and doing so walking hand in hand with God, I think produces a level of wisdom and maturity that I am eternally grateful for and has become an integral part of my character and outlook on life and death. I would never want to go back and relive those days, but I’d also never wish they didn’t happen. Dolly Parton captures the sentiment in her song The Good Olde Days When Times Were Bad: “No amount of money could buy from me, the memories that I have of then, No amount of money could pay me, To go back and live through it again.”

But now, what was happening to my body here on this journey out West, here at Glacier, with the return of this great grave sickness? My thoughts went back to this previous era of life, to the promises, to the pain, to the prospects. I didn’t want to have to face and reconsider everything, but here it was again, in my face (or in my gut rather). There was a bit of initial panic and I felt overwhelmed. What do I believe again? I saw how God’s promises applied back then, but how do they apply now? I thought I had closed that chapter and had moved on, but it was back. Was it the same chapter of life? No. This was chapter 2. I was more prepared in the spiritual sense. Something was about to go down (or come down rather).  That would soon become evident.

If you enjoyed reading this, check out my book “Still, Calm, and Quiet“

Check out my previous entry here: “Lake Roosevelt and the Conservationist vs. the Preservationist”

Visit www.joshhodge.com