Emilio Is in the Hospital

A couple days ago Emilio sent me a message and said he was in the hospital. The end.

I asked him what was wrong. Was he hurt? Is he sick? Does he need help? But I got no response–until today.

I don’t feel I understand exactly what happened. He doesn’t use punctuation or capitalization regularly, and his spelling isn’t great. And he uses more colloquial or shorthand manner of talking. I can get by with that in English, but Spanish is another animal.

But what I think happened is that Emilio was walking down the street and somehow fell and injured his spine. He is now in therapy to get to walk again.

He says that his waist tendons are pulled. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know my anatomy well enough to know there even are tendons in the waist.

I offered him help, but he says he just has to be in the hospital until the therapy is over. He says his job is guaranteed because this is a medical emergency, so he plans to return to work in some weeks.

But he asks that we pray for his healing and for his pain. His life has been a series of unfortunate events over the past number of months. One tragedy upon another. He says his heart is ready to give up.

I am reminded of one of my favorite poems, “The Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson. We can’t see everything, but it could certainly seem that God may be trying to get Emilio’s attention. How much lower can he go?

Pray that God can use these events to help Emilio find his way home.