One night not long ago after a late night family movie, my little boy Adam crawled in bed with me wanting a bedtime story. I was just a few pages into “Beauty and the Beast” when all of a sudden a pain hit me in the back and began to intensify. Within moments it was so bad I couldn’t breath. When I sat up, it felt as though someone had stuck a knife in my back. I knew what it was; I’d heard of it before: kidney stones.

My wife and daughters got me to the hospital, and I have to tell you I’ve known pain in my life, but I have never known pain like that! The hospital hooked me up to I-Vs and began to pump me full of painkillers. Oh, they were wonderful! – I still remember that feeling. One of these was called “Toradol.”

Now, if I had known what this drug would do to me, I would never have gotten within a hundred yards of it. Now, while I languished in the hospital, the kidney stone refused to move. So the hospital naturally increased the fluid drip into my body in an attempt to flush the stone out. I don’t know how many bottles of that stuff went into me.

By late Sunday night the stone was still there, as was the pain, and something was definitely wrong with my body. None of the fluid going in was coming out. The drug Toradol had shut down my kidneys. By the time I left the hospital for home, I resembled the Pillsbury Doe-Boy, and that stone was still there!

The words “retaining water” – they took on a completely new meaning. None of my clothes would fit. It was so bad that even sweat pants were tight. I lost sight of my feet for the first time in my life; I couldn’t even bend over. For the next several days whenever I lay down to sleep, I felt as though I was being hung upside down. When I climbed on the scales, I discovered that in my 36 hours in the hospital, I had gained over 30 pounds, and I only weigh 150 pounds dripping wet!

At one point I came downstairs utterly appalled at my awful appearance. I said to my wife and my oldest daughter, “Look at this!”

I pulled up my sweatshirt and grabbed my more than ample stomach and shook it! It giggled and rolled like a giant bowl of unset Jell-O. It was disgusting! They thought it was hilarious; they still do.

My wife having born 7 children made some comment in the midst of her gales of laughter like, “Well, now you know what pregnancy feels like, don’t you?”

I don’t recall I ever really wanted to know what pregnancy felt like.

Well, I went to my doctor who’s a good friend. He was a little surprised at what had happened to me; I guess Toradol was not supposed to do that. And he said, “Well, we need to get your kidneys going again.”

He gave me some pills and – oh, did they work! Over the next 4 days I lost all of the 30 pounds plus more, underwent surgery for the stone, and painfully passed 2 more stones. When it was over, my body felt like it had spent a week in a washer – on the spin cycle!

Now, why do I tell you all of that? – because knowledge is power. What we don’t know can hurt us, just like what I didn’t know hurt me. Our agency is only as good as our knowledge. The more we know of truth, the stronger our agency, the more choices we have, and thus the more power we have over our lives.

What we don’t know – what you don’t know limits your ability to chose and allows you to be deceived. If only I had known that my troubles could likely have been prevented by a few extra ounces of water each day, most of our troubles in life could be solved by a few extra minutes of living water – the Word of the Lord studied and applied.

Again, experience taught me that taking Toradol and guzzling I-V fluid has terrible consequences – if only I had known.

Don’t let experience teach you about guilt, pain, and hell. Remember, knowledge is power. Ignorance and stupidity are not bliss, they’re bondage! May we stand in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ and never be moved.