Some of you know that this past school year has taken its toll on me. Soon after school started, I began experiencing some health problems...chest pains, shortness of breath, goofy vision stuff, ringing in my ears...basically feeling like I was falling apart. In the past three months, I have had a heart catheterization, an MRI of my brain, and an ultrasound of my carotid arteries. The good news...I have a heart and a brain...and they are both fine! (And the arteries of a nineteen-year-old, according to my cardiologist.) The bad news is that the doctors cannot explain the problems, except to say maybe it is stress. So, what do I do about that??? There is no surgery to fix that problem!! Or is there? This is where the confessions start...
...The surgery I need for this problem is an Attitude Transplant. Yes, my pains and symptoms have been real. And, yes, the doctors may still decide there is a medical answer for some of it. However, having these physical ailments should not have caused the mental despair that I have felt. What happened to my joy and hope? The devil is real and he has really been working on me! I am not sure how my family and friends have put up with "Woe-is-Me" over the past few months. So, I have decided that I am going to get out the scalpel (or maybe the sword of the Word) and cut out the dead, decaying, rotten stuff. I am removing negative thoughts and stitching in some positive. I still want to explore new employment ideas, while operating on my eyes to make them see the job I have as a blessing for now. But I know I cannot do this surgery. I am praying that the Great Physician will operate on me and heal my tired and tangled spirit.
After surgery comes recovery. For my recovery, I am self-prescribing a huge helping of HOPE! We had a wonderful Sunday School lesson today on the subject. First Peter 3:15 says to, "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer to every man that ask you a reason of the hope that is in you..." The question was asked in class if we are living out our faith in a way that even shows others we have hope? Pay attention here...more confession! I have certainly not been living in a way that would make someone want to know about my hope. Rather, most people would ask me why I am so hope-LESS. So, when the job gets the best of me and there is too much month at the end of the money or the blocks on the calendar are too small to fit in everything I need to do...I am going to stop for some recovery time. I will remind myself of what hope really means. It is the promise that something better is coming after I go through all the stuff this world wants to dish out. God has my back. He knows the plans that only He can have for me. And that plan ends with Heaven! So, nothing else should really matter.
