Monday, November 30, 2015

against House odds

         Did you ever watch the TV show House?
         If you’ve never seen it, it’s about a grouchy but brilliant diagnostic doctor (I emphasize for some reason, but I digress).
         Each week they would have a practically unsolvable mystery – at least for 50 minutes of the show -- of a disease or at least the cause of the disease and each week it would start out kind of good and it would get progressively worse till death was imminent because it was as I said an unsolvable mystery. Then House would have some sort of epiphany and would diagnose the disease and viola it would be treatable.
         At this point, I would love to tell you they’ve figured out everything wrong with me, but at this point as I write this, no, they haven’t. I think, just think now, they’re closer. But I thought that before.
         I did a search and found 22 references in previous blogs to pneumonia in six years, and still, here I am.
         I want to be well, and do what I do and be who I was, or will be, but so far it just isn’t happening this time particularly. I’ve had heart issues that apparently will leave the hospital with me and still, still I have lung problems that might or might not be reason to be on a inhaler for the rest of my life, if not worse. We’ll leave worse where it is the for moment.
         I must tell you reader who might have missed these blogs the past week, tens of those that your are, I have been frightened for the first time I can remember, at least not during a Saints game.
         Oh, I’ve been serious, which for me is someone who can at least try to make losing a limb both funny and/or at least brighter, when the kidneys nearly failed three weeks ago, but when you can’t breathe (which has improved immeasurably) and then your heart is doing all kinds of whipping and nae nae’ng, and your blood pressure is as high as Saints are low, you get to thinking that maybe you can’t do what you do anymore.
         I’m not frightened of death though the thought of a stroke sends me into a great deal of consternation. Christ died so I didn’t have to be worried about death. I’m serious. To be with Christ is gain. I’m good, well, okay with it.
         But what if I can’t pick up the kids and play with them? What if I can’t travel and such with Mary? What about the trip planned in January to Israel? Do they have Wal-Mart in Jehrico?
         And what if I can’t do my work? What if I can’t minister? What if I can’t plan and pray and visit and all the things that mean so much to me in terms of what my call is?
         The what-ifs can cloud everything. And they add nothing. Nothing.
         So, let’s go to what we do know.
         Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear? Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life.”
         These words are famous, Biblical, and a touch on the corny side, which might drive some nuts. But they are true, as true as breath is to life.
         Now, it’s easy to worry when they come in the door and start talking about biopsies. It’s extremely worrisome when you can’t breathe, and all they can do is rub your back and say, “breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth,” over and over. It’s extremely, extremely worrisome when there are things in your lungs they don’t know about when the worse case is exactly what killed your parents.
         But the strength of faith is to reach, hard as it might be, to the best case scenario. That what found to be wrong with me is fixable. I choose to believe, hear that, choose to believe that God is in control and I’m good with what comes, that the great physician is on call.

         Just send in House. Now.

1 comment:

Curtis Coghlan said...

The good news is, whatever is ailing you hasn't affected your sense of humor, your faith or your writing. All are just as strong as ever. I'm praying for you and Mary.