I found myself incarcerated yet again in the hospital last week, and as soon as I settled in I realized that I was once again in hospital mode.

When I'm in hospital mode, I fall into a routine that is only designed for hospitals. One of them is watching Animal Planet. I get obsessed with "Big Cat Diaries" to the point that I wonder how I'm going to survive without it when I go home and am not watching it any more. But let's face it ― would I really get up at 7:00 a.m. to watch a television show about the big cats of Africa? I think not.

Another hospital tradition is that I stop eating ― period. I was able to go for three months without consuming a full meal earlier this year, but on the third day last week I was seduced by an offer of bacon for breakfast and ate a slice of that. I am so used to not eating in hospitals that I no longer get hungry when I'm in a hospital. Food is reserved for restaurants or home.

My other hospital routine is the discovery that people who actually sleep at night are wasting a whole lot of valuable time. My 2:15 a.m. appearance by a nurse Friday morning was for her to shake me awake and ask, "Do you know your blood pressure is high?" At that particular moment, she was probably right.

At 3:00 a.m., the technician came in to take my vital signs. At 6:00 a.m. a stranger who may or may not have been Dracula drew my blood. Who wants to be awakened by someone who wants to stick a needle in you?

I think the patient would respond a whole lot better to these middle-of-the-night visits if something good happened occasionally. At no time has anyone awakened me to scratch my back for example. Nobody has ever knocked on my door and given me a $1,000,000 check from Publisher Clearing House, either.

People would be a lot happier about being awakened from a deep sleep after midnight if there was a chance that, just occasionally, the surprise would be something good,

God really knows exactly how to do it. Sometimes really bad things happen to us. But before you even have time to get properly depressed about it, we are distracted by interesting hospital people we would otherwise have never met, or a great sunrise, or a strong and happy reminder that even though we may have lost a loved one, we live again after death.

The longer I live, the more strongly I know that God loves us greatly. There is never a night that isn't followed by the brightness of day. There is never a trial that isn't eventually over. The good things, though, outnumber the bad ones. And our post-Earth existence will be one of never-ending joy and happiness.