A severe bout of food poisoning led to me getting viscerally brutally sick in a sacred church tucked high in the mountains of Lebanon. And I want to share this strange spiritual experience because it was… well, read on.
If you know anything about me, you know that I get sick. A lot. I’m very careful with food when I travel but when my family returned to Lebanon after 15 years apart… I went nuts.
All the food. All the produce. 6 course dinners. Nom nom nom.
Within 3 days, I’d eaten my weight in food and Shaun, my Kiwi partner in Lebanon for the first time, doubled my consumption. Oh, what fun.
Then it began.
Here’s how I ended up in a church with food poisoning in the far reaches of Lebanon.
How Do You Know You Have Food Poisoning?
It’s simple. Your body purges. Any way it can get rid of whatever shitstack you fed it. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Fever. Weakness. Tears. All of it. Violently.
It started on a bright sunny morning. I drank tea and crunched on a piece of kaak, enjoying the rolling hills beyond our apartment terrace. Bees played in the flowers. Birds chirped a happy tune. A rooster announced sunrise for the umpteenth time.
And I said, “Mom, something is wrong.”
I graced the toilet without a second to spare and my mother sighed.
That’s right. Me getting sick is such a common occurrence that my mom had no more to offer than a sigh. Which I understand. No one is more tired of my shit than me (pun intended).
And guess what? No one else in my family got sick. Just me. Story of my fucking life.
Bring on the Gory Details… And Was it Actually Food Poisoning?
I’ll have you know that being in Lebanon and not being able to eat is like going to Disney World and avoiding anything Disney-related.
Lebanon is a lush verdant country with looming mountains and towering forests, lined with the cobalt waters of the Meditteranean. It’s dazzling to the eye BUT… food is everything.
It’s ingrained in our culture. It’s how we greet and communicate with each other. You learn a lot about a household from the type, amount and manner in which they serve you food.
Dinner is a social event. A meal will last hours and the food keeps coming.
And I. Couldn’t. Eat.
I couldn’t hold a single morsel down. I shook with chills, fever, and everything hurt. As it persisted, my mother sought council from the 17 pharmacists in our family. On day 2, I was prescribed an NSAID and antibiotic. Day 4, a stronger antibiotic. Day 7, an antiparasitic.
The sickness raged on. The fever made me delirious. Diarrhea turned into bloody diarrhea. And having lived this hell before, I have a thing about bloody diarrhea. It’s my worst nightmare. I had a panic attack in Shaun’s lap.
So was it actually food poisoning? Or did some trauma awaken in my body after returning to the country of my childhood? Hard to tell.
Food poisoning or not, my Lebanon trip was down the shitter (pun intended again) and our pilgrimage to the mountain church loomed.
The Church… And Why I Went
Above the clouds, perched high in the sky, is the monastery of Saint Charbel.
15 years ago, after fleeing Lebanon, my mother made a promise to someday return to that place and spend the night to give thanks for our safe passage. And sick or not, I refused to miss it.
Ironically, Saint Charbel is known for his miracles of healing. Thousands of Lebanese gather there every year to pray for their sick or injured.
So off we went, winding far into the wild of the mountains. I breathed through the pain, scanning every bush and field where my body could purge in hiding.
We arrived on time for a stunning sunset. A single orange ball suspended over a sea of fluffy clouds, showcasing our height in the world aglow.
Though many gathered there, the monastery was hushed. People swept the old halls and gathered in alcoves, admiring the Saint’s artifacts and robes behind glass. Deep within the monastery, they knelt and prayed before his tomb.
My mother lit a candle and I followed suit. I’m not particularly religious anymore. But my heart squeezed when she placed a hand on my arm and whispered “Pray Pamela, and maybe he can heal you from these strange illnesses.”
I flashed back to years of mysterious pain, avoiding food, and days spent in bed. With a shy nod, I sent a prayer out.
The Worst Night of My Life
Later in the night, my fever flared and Shaun led me back to our assigned room, bare of any luxury. But it contained two holy grails – a bed and a toilet.
I don’t know what cosmic forces were at play that made me the sickest I’d ever been on the exact night of fulfilling a 15-year old promise in the house of a miracle healer.
But it was indeed the worst night of my life, and that’s saying something.
The fever raged and everything hurt. My joints felt inflamed, my head pounding from dehydration, my hair slick with sweat, my skin pimpled from chills.
I caught sleep in short moments between violent purges in the toilet. How could my body hold so many fluids? How was there anything left?
Exhaustion set in deep as my bones dragged me from bed to toilet to bed to toilet, begging for sleep and getting none.
Shaun checked on me a few times but even he passed out in the late hours, and there wasn’t much he could do anyway.
Contrast to my misery, the monastery was silent in the blackness of mountain night. Call me delirious but I felt a presence around me, a sense of holiness like… I was exactly where I was meant to be. Like I should allow my body to do this… shed some great entrenched burden.
Around 5am, my fever broke. I felt it happen, an ease in my muscles, a darkness ebbing. The pale blue dawn filtered through the window and birds chirped into the quiet.
I slept, haggard and grateful.
So Was I Miraculously Healed?
Now… I know what everyone wants. The happy ending, that I never got sick again after that night.
Nope. But I did get another gift, one I deeply pondered as I stumbled into the sunlight that morning, pale and tattered.
Lebanon is a deeply spiritual place. You can feel it in the air. The reverence was infectious, and it colored my soul.
This experience was strange enough that it awakened my spirituality… a belief that there are factors at play we don’t understand. It restored a sense of wonder and enchantment, which I thought was gone forever.
It felt like returning home to myself.
I got better eventually. And the experience left its mark.
I won’t lie, I felt cradled by Saint Charbel that night. I knew he didn’t mind me getting so sick in his home. It was perhaps the perfect place to hold my vulnerability, another soul passing through seeking healing and inner peace.
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