Friday, December 25, 2009

Feelings and Faith

We (Lucy and I) have been talking a lot lately about faith and our feelings about the future. If I had my preferences, this impending hospitalization would not happen or occur way in the future. Sometimes I get no vote. We are in full agreement that now is the right time.

The doctor detailed three types of things that can happen. The first group was a list of things that will most likely happen, how they would monitor them, and how they plan on responding. My first reaction was that this guy is not Flemish. Flemish, on average, have a great preference for maintaining the status quo. That makes change something that does not come easily. When something crops up, careful reflection and prudent procedure is usually the plan. This guy was almost talking about being proactive! It does give a level of comfort that things in group one will not get out of hand before they do something about them.

Group two was not comforting. Most of these are serious and usually ended in death. Even though it may only occur in one patient in 1,000 or 10,000+ if you are the patient it is 100% of your experience. We know these risks and take the next step with them in mind.

Group three only had one item, Multiple Myeloma. This is not a cure and the cancer will return in the future. We move ahead hoping that this treatment will bring about a long-term remission and when the cancer returns there will be a cure available. There are some promising things in the research phase.

Do we have a level of fear? Surprisingly there is little. Does that come from great faith or extreme ignorance? No idea? The result is that we believe God has known about this and called us here knowing it would happen. We have seen His hand in the treatment so far and have no reason to doubt He will step out of the plan in the future.

A movie theme song used the line, "Who ye gonna call?" Their response was Ghostbusters. We are choosing another source of help, God and allowing Him to work through doctors, nurses and medicine if He so chooses.

Can we control our feelings? It think not. I do believe we can control our responses to the feelings. So we are choosing to live in faith and not fear. All throughout the Bible God instructed people to fear not. He realized there would be fear since He gave us the ability to feel. What He instructed was to not live in fear but in trust/faith. That is the choice we make for now. It has served us well in the past and we expect it to in the future.

Stay tuned to see how it works.