Seeing Beyond Current Medical Options

On Monday Mom called and told me Grandpa was in the hospital again because he wasn't eating. We were talking and she thought that he wouldn't do any better on a feeding tube, but half the family thinks he will. It was bothering me because I was discouraged; I thought he was getting better because he moved into a rehab place, but he is still struggling with appetite.

That led me to go on an early walk on Tuesday. I didn't get a ride to prayer, so I ended up walking around campus. I ended up sitting on a concrete ledge in front of the Yates building. I started praying about Grandpa and whining to God about how nothing seemed to be working. The song 'Indescribable' came into my head. I said, "Ok, God, since You're so amazing, You heal him." I said it rather sarcastically. Then I paused. Did I really think that He could heal Pa or was I trusting in the medical field for everything and forgetting that I had learned that Jesus identified as The Great Physician. (I had learned that on Monday.)

I thought of the story of the blind man and the story of the paralytic. The blind man was a beggar, but if he could afford it, I'm sure he went to the healers that had whatever medical knowledge or medical ideas they had at the time in 33AD. However, when he knew Jesus was there, he trusted in Him to heal his sight. He was trusting in something beyond the medical field. Same with the paralytic. He was at that pond where people went to get miraculously healed. It would be like someone today flying out to Johns Hopkins University Medical School to get treatment for something. That was the best thing out there at the time for him, but again, he reached beyond that for Jesus.

Could I do that now in this current medical climate? Or was I too wrapped up in the medical field giving me all the ansswers? Maybe it's harder today because the medical field seems like it does have all the answers. We have gene therapy, some stem cell therapy, insane amounts of pharmecuticals, advanced neuological imaging, laproscopic surgery... you name it, we have it or someone's thinking of it. Was I falling into that trap or could I reach beyond the medical world to the Great Physician?

I thought about physcicians themselves since I for so long was and still am wanting to follow in their footsteps. They say, "Take this or do this and then you'll be healed." I think a lot of them may think, "Take this or do this and then I would've healed you ." As I thought about it more, the medicial field revels in the glory of human achievement. To say you are a doctor says you achieved one of the most challenging things. To be pre - med is to build your life around one achievement after another and be able to look back on a string of things to say, "I did it. I got myself here." Not that trying is wrong, but it's the kind of pride that can make people forget that God gave them grace to do that (Deut 8). I realized my family and I, with our curent situation can have two options: Our decisions and the doctors we choose can make Pa better, or placing our trust in God and saying that He will guide the physicians that work with Pa and / or He can miraculously heal Pa if that is His will. Would we fall into the trap of what I like to call medical idealism or can we still have faith?

God reminded me of a memory I had about Pa that I don't think of that often. Pa is a devout Catholic who says the rosary every night. One day when I was 10, he told me how he prayed for God to heal my eyes and after my ear surgery, to heal my ears. I told him I appreciated it, but seceretly I was doubtful. How could God do it, when every physician I talked to said my eyes were massively messed up? I told Mom and she, being a nurse, blew off the idea as crazy. We didn't have the faith Pa did partially because we knew too much about 'what medicine really is. It was the use of chemicals and / or procedures done to alter one's anatomy / physiology to correct things damaged by disease or trauma. It wasn't saying a few prayers hoping the problem will go away.

But then I remembered reading stories out of Luke shortly after I became Christian. I read the story about Jesus healing a boy from epilepsy and a man from schizophrenia. I was blown away because of what I knew about those conditions. I knew they were very hard to treat even to this day and they could be caused by so many differetnt factors. To realize Jesus fixed people's brain biochemistry or possibly structural features just by speaking amazed me.

I saw how opposite those two memories were: I went from scoffing at true faith of Pa to being amazed at the power Jesus had to heal. What happened to that faith? Where was that awe I had when I first believed? Had I forgotten that God was powerful because Pa's current situation seemed discouraging? Possibly. Was it because I had prayed for so long last year about my uncle only to have his cancer come back? Maybe. But I had to remember God's ways were not my ways, and He chooses to do miracles when He wants to to bring glory to Himself.

Knowing that and recalling the faith Pa had, I prayed, this time in earnest for God, the Great Physician to heal Pa. I prayed that He would reveal Himself to my family so they wouldn't doubt His power anymore, and I prayed for Him to heal Pa so Pa could see that God answered the prayer of someone who had the kind of faith that he had modeled for so long.