I Love Staying in a Hotel

As weird as it sounds I do enjoy staying in the hospital every once in awhile. I also love staying in hotels! But the reasons for loving my stays at these places is not the same, in fact quite the opposite. I love staying in a hotel because it is so relaxing! Your surroundings are completely different, you don't have any thoughts or memories associated with a temporary new room to sleep in. You are able to let go of all of the worries in the world, it is like taking a break from life for a night. It's like you are in a bubble for a time, its a release and a comfort, a protection from the world. Ahhh I love staying in hotels, haha. 

Now my love of staying in the hospital is very different. Worries from the world and more new ones follow you into the hospital, haha. When you are there you suffer emotional, physical, spiritual, and sometimes social pain. Physical for obvious reasons. Normally you are in the hospital because something physically is wrong with you. Emotional because things that worry you or bother you emotionally are multiplied when you are in physical pain. I would love to learn more about that at some point, but when my body is hurting physically, emotionally it is just as bad. My brain just starts thinking about things that make me feel bad and the two pains just feed off of each other spreading pain like a wildfire in a dry forest. Social pain because sometimes you are not able to see friends and loved ones as often. You don't see your family members and those you live with, children aren't allowed to visit and sometimes you are just too sick to have people visit. It is too exhausting and you feel like you just don't have enough in you to put on a smile. So you prefer to have a limited number of visitors. That was my experience recently. And the final way is Spiritually. You just don't have the energy to read your scriptures and stretch your mind into thinking and learning gospel truths. Even praying is a challenge. It is very difficult to stay in the hospital. Perhaps that's what makes me love staying in them so much. Yes this sounds like I have either lost my mind or fallen off my rocker! Haha 

But it is because being in the hospital provides the perfect setting for what Elder Holland calls, a prison temple, "you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experience with the Lord in any situation you are in. Indeed, let me say that even a little stronger: You can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experience with the Lord in the most miserable experiences of your life—in the worst settings, while enduring the most painful injustices, when facing the most insurmountable odds and opposition you have ever faced." 

Because it is so physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually difficult, it allows us to become closer to our Heavenly Father. We have the opportune privilege of obtaining a temple like experience that otherwise isn't available to us when things are easy for us. The spirit has a perfect opportunity to speak to us. And we are in a perfect position to learn and listen. At least for me I am less distracted. I want to feel the love of my Heavenly Father. I want to feel His warm and gentle hand on my shoulder comforting me as I go through these troublesome moments. I need him there. I need it know that He is there and He isn't going to leave while am right in the middle of getting an MRI and feeling claustrophobic and trapped. I need to feel His love all around me. I have also had so many awesome opportunities to share my testimony and to help others to feel the Individual love that He has for each of them. There is nothing that brings the spirit in the room faster than testifying of the things I know to be true. These experiences make staying in the hospital all worth it. 

And although I love staying in a hotel room occasionally, staying in the hospital isn't as bad as its made up to be. :) I am so thankful for the moments in my life when I could take a night off and relax and be able to let all my cares go for a time. I am however eternally grateful for those prison-temple experiences that have provided the spiritual strengths that I needed at those exact moments to remind me that He is always here for ME! And that He is in control!