I was privileged to receive a commentary from a lady in Texas. This happened after I made mention of the past couple of weeks having been more of a trial than a blessing. My correspondent was afraid I’d caught the Flu or some such indignity making me miserable. In fact the situation is worse than that and you’ll understand my fears and uncertainty for the future.
First, I must say I’m in very good health. My Type 2 Diabetes is controlled more by diet than injections (which I’ve stopped taking with my doctor’s permission) and I’ve lost thirty pounds. So; you can see I’m okay, thank God.
But, I have a very dear friend, an elderly, occasionally crotchety and verbally intemperate old gal who was a cancer survivor. Key word: was. Now the remission’s ended and she’s ill again.
She and her circumstances are why the past couple of weeks have been a trial. It’s never fun to see somebody you respect and care for in such dire circumstances. But, she’s a fighter and as I said, a crotchety old gal of over 75 accumulated years of formerly youthful vim, vigor, vitality. Vim is usually accepted as from the Latin meaning “strength, force, power and energy”. (I used the term but never knew what the heck it meant. Online Etymology Dictionary 2010
Now her fear and illness are laying her low. For a while before the symptoms were correlated and developed into a photo showing the negative, she said she wouldn’t go through Chemo and Radiation again. She was tired of all of the indignities suffered as a result of the treatment. And it’s appreciable the term fatigue can’t really define the depths of weariness a person experiences after standing at death’s door and luckily finding out it’s not your time: yet.
That was then. This is about now.
The reason things are different is because of the miracle of faith.
One of my friend’s daughters has prayed daily for the chance to have a child of her own to love and care for; to teach and empower with her faith in her God and her love for her family. She was blessed with a pregnancy. As a matter of fact she’s carrying twins. It doesn’t really get better than that I’d say.
Now the grandmother’s becoming the lioness she was once noted to be. She’s stopped the foolishness of giving up before finding out what God’s mission is for her and us. She’s actually sought spiritual guidance from a minister even though she’s rejected that counsel for many years. She asked for the help while hallucinatory from the pharmaceutical cauldron spilled into her system without understanding what the concoction might do to her normally lucid mind. She’s been fighting just to stay conscious, but at a time when she was least capable of making cogent thoughts and questions articulable; she instinctively called for the word of God.
That’s powerful. That’s important and it’s a necessity in this case. After walking through a medicinally induced hallucination her inner self accepted her need to gain assurances of something more important in the program we call life. She turned back toward the God she’d turned away from. She understood she’s not alone in her struggle. There’s a power and strength to be drawn from based on faith in something or someone more powerful than we.
Her doctors started weaning her from some of her medications. She’s started her Chemotherapy. She’s fighting because she wants to see her newest grandchildren in the next eight months. She wants to be a part of life again and it’s all because of her rediscovering her need for God.
America needs to stop, turn and recognize God is waiting to help. All America must do is slide away from her ego and slip into the coat of many colors showing God’s love and caring for us. It doesn’t remove us from the trials of life but it does show his love and caring. It shows his appreciation for what we can do and what we can become if we’ll just stop, turn and recognize it’s time to get back to basics.
Agnostic, atheists and unbelievers will say this is superstitious mythology meant to act as a balm to quell the fears of children and the elderly. Well, we’re all God’s children and one day we’ll recognize ourselves as elderly. What’s wrong with not feeling alone in those conditions? America needs to recognize we can’t do it alone.
It’s time to understand our need to turn back to God.
Thanks for listening
