Emmanuel

Last September I started having some health problems that scared me. I don't know, losing Bill and being a cancer survivor myself kind of got my imagination activated and before I knew it, I was sure I was going to die. I answered a phone call from my doctor just as I was leaving a paint store and by the time I got to my car I had played it all out in my mind. The bad test results had to mean I was going to die and my children were going to be left without parents. Wow...looking back, the thinking is clearly delusional, but at the time, it seemed perfectly logical based on my history of fortune in this area.

God was no where to be found in my thinking other than to put words in his mouth. Thankfully my mom confronted me saying, "Jackie, you can only look at what you know. No speculating," for me to slow down and really evaluate what I did know. All I knew was that I needed more tests. I had to sit and wait. No running ahead.

At the time, I thought the whole thing was about this physical problem I had, but it's never just that. Is it? I ended up having what was supposed to be a minor surgical procedure. I was very resistant to it but believed I needed it done (which I did), but after what happened during the procedure, I would have rather had a tractor drive over me. My emotional reaction to it all was extremely disproportionate. I cried from the second I got on the table until twenty minutes after it was over. Something about this procedure hit a core wound and I could either respond to God's invitation to go with Him into the pain, or I could reject him and try to figure out and fix it myself. I'll tell you what I did in my next post......