My plan/His Plan

As I sit here in the huge hospital complex of MD Anderson, 6 days after major surgery to reconstruct my cancer-ridden femur, I have been contemplating how good God has been in bringing me through surgery with no complications.  The pain is tolerable, the staff caring and several humorous situations have been thrown in to make me laugh and/or sigh.  I am very grateful to have a sister who has taken time to come to Houston to cater to my every whim.   This would have been very difficult to manage without her.  I am incredibly thankful for my family and their love and support in so many ways, though it seems they are far too young to have to share this path.   I am also grateful, among many things for a wonderful church family who has blessed my family while I am gone.  In other answers to prayer requests which I made in the last blog, the children’s finals are done, Chris, Bethany and Tegan are off to California, and my Mother has been stable though she still struggles with her health issues.  God has been good!  I am “blessed” with a brace, invented by someone specializing in torture, around my hips and thigh that will need to be left on for six weeks!  This, along with my not using the left leg in months has made it very difficult to get from bed to chair and back…ok, doesn’t help that I was out of shape to begin with.  I do, however, see progress every day despite my impatience.   I hope to leave here mid week and be taken to  a rehab facility in Tyler to be closer to home as I will have to have more therapy to be able to do some more things myself.

My particular current prayer requests are that rehab will continue to be effective and speedy, that I will be spared from injury, that my family would continue to do well and my Mother improve in her health.

A good friend and her brother, both of whom I went to high school with, came to visit the other day.  It was such a joy!  My friend Betty, left me with a book called A Dying Man’s Regrets by Adolphe Monod which I have been enjoying.  I am sure some of you are asking what kind of a friend would leave a book with such a title for someone recuperating from major surgery, and some of you are wondering if I am severely depressed to read it!  Well, my friend, who knows me well, brought the perfect book to read.  We initially read it in high school and since we are all in the dying process at one stage or another, it is a good booklet to read anytime.  Since I am not up to lengthy blogging I will just pass on some snippets.

The author was a well know preacher in France who was struck by a severe terminal illness at the age of fifty-three.  His grave concern was that God was taking him before his work was finished.  Instead, God used him in greater ways through what he was able to share through his suffering.    He speaks of regretting having regulated his life by his own plans, even seemingly good ones, instead of focusing on the plan of God as it unfolds.  As he says, none of our plans will be successful unless they are part of God’s plan, for then God undertakes to guide us.   Jesus is the perfect One to imitate in following the Father’s plan as His only desire in life was to focus on that plan.  As our lives seek to be in harmony with the will of God, Man’s action then becomes divine action, and life becomes, as it were, divine life, throbbing in the heart of man, in which something is accomplished by the power of God.  We have no idea of what we might do if we were completely swallowed up in this perfect harmony with God;   if we sought no other will than His;  if every word of our mouth, every beat of our heart, every thought of our intellect, every movement of our body and of our spirit were drawn towards Him, to wait on Him with the spirit of Samuel: “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth”.  There are some men—like Luther, Calvin, St. Paul, Moses—who have shown what a man can do when he seeks only the will of God.  Jesus Christ has done much more, because in Him alone was conformity to the will of God perfect.  The wonderful thing is that God does not demand more than we are capable of doing by His grace. 

So as Pastor Monod instructs, I will try to settle my impatience by realizing that even in the suffering that God has given me to go through now and by the hope of life eternal He is accomplishing His purposes.  I also will try to remember to commit my days and work into His hands knowing He will not take me from His work until He deems it done!