Tag: illness

May God Have My Jewel In His Keeping

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God keep my jewel this day from danger;
From tinker and pooka and black-hearted stranger.
From harm of the water, from hurt of the fire.
From the horns of the cows going home to the byre.
From the sight of the fairies that maybe might change her.
From teasing the ass when he’s tied to the manger.
From stones that would bruise her, from thorns of the briar.
From evil red berries that wake her desire.
From hunting the gander and vexing the goat.
From the depths o’ sea water by Danny’s old boat.
From cut and from tumble, from sickness and weeping;
May God have my jewel this day in his keeping.
~Winifred Lett (1882-1973) Prayer for a Child

This prayer has hung in our home for almost three decades, purchased when I was pregnant with our first child.  When I first saw it with its drawing of the praying mother watching her toddler leave the safety of the home to explore the wide world, I knew it addressed most of my worries as a new mother, in language that helped me smile at my often irrational fears.  I would glance at it dozens of time a day, and it would remind me of God’s care for our children through every scary thing, real or imagined.

When our eight year old daughter was hospitalized with a life threatening E.Coli 0157 infection, this prayer comforted me when she was so sick, as I knew only God’s care and keeping would make the difference in a condition where there was no proven medical treatment other than watching and waiting with intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration.

And now this poem is in my mind once again, prayed fervently for two children separated by a vast ocean, but united through God’s church family.  One is our little neighbor Faye, turning two in three days, who also has E.Coli 0157 infection and is at Children’s Hospital in Seattle.  Her life and her family are incredibly precious to us at Wiser Lake Chapel.  Please pray with us that God will protect her through this awful illness, and give her parents endurance through long days and nights and an extra strength of faith and assurance of His love.

In Tokyo, Japan, we pray with our sister church Grace Harbor for their pastor’s son, Towa, age fourteen, who this week sustained a serious neck injury causing paralysis of his arms and legs.  His healing and recovery will take much time and his long term outcome uncertain.  He and his family too are having to depend on God’s power to help heal his body, and to prepare their hearts and minds for the unknowns and potential of life long challenges.

In addition to the two whose names we know, there are so many thousands of children hurting now in Nepal and other parts of the world, whose names we do not know, but who desperately need this prayer:

From cut and from tumble, from sickness and weeping;
May God have my jewel this day in his keeping….

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Faye

Prepare for Joy: Repairer and Restorer

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Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and he will say: here am I.

11 The Lord will guide you always;
    he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
    and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
    like a spring whose waters never fail.
12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
    and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
    Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
Isaiah 58: 8-9, 11-12

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Medical science is realizing there is less benefit (and possible potential for harm) in healthy people requesting an “annual physical”  than previously believed.  Too many people hold off on very real problems, hoping they are insignificant, and expect the doctor might discover what’s wrong during a cursory physical exam.

As healers, we are tempted to look too hard for “something wrong” to fix, at the risk of creating illness where there is none, all at a hefty price tag.

Give us the sick and tired and we doctors feel right at home, with problems to solve and a job to do.

Jesus, as the Great Physician, understood there is “something wrong” with each of us needing His unique healing art.  He hangs out His shingle as the place to come, triaging the most troubled and distressed to move first in line.   When we cry out for help, He is on call full time, a certified, licensed and bonded Strengthener, Rebuilder, Restorer and Repairer.

No more waiting for the annual check up.  The time has come to cry out our brokenness, our desperate need of restoration.

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are ill.
Luke 5: 31

Final Flood of Color

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photo by Harry Rodenberger

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable.
You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact.
When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colors will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.
~Clive James (who is terminally ill)  from this week’s New Yorker

vinemapleharry2
photo by Harry Rodenberger

Listening to Lent — In the Morning When I Rise

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In the morning, when I rise
In the morning, when I rise
In the morning, when I rise, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus

When I am alone
When I am alone
When I am alone, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus

When I come to die
When I come to die
When I come to die, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus
~Jeremy Camp

Those who know me well
know I fret and worry
better than most.
Medical training makes it worse.
It teaches you to think catastrophically.That I do, for a living,
to always be ready for the worse case scenario.

When it comes to my own aging body,
it isn’t hard to come up with worse cases.

When I rise, sleepless,
to face a day of uncertainty
as we all do at times,
I reach for the certainty I know
to comfort me
body and soul
when I am afraid~
give me Jesus.

When the Wind Blows Hard

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photo by Starla Smit
photo by Starla Smit

Let us not be surprised when we have to face difficulties.
When the wind blows hard on a tree,
the roots stretch and grow the stronger,
Let it be so with us.
Let us not be weaklings,
yielding to every wind that blows,
but strong in spirit to resist.
~Amy Carmichael

And so the government and its people are at an impasse–the winds of change are pummeling us all and everyone has entrenched more deeply in order to stay upright.

As a U.S. health care provider who has worked for over 30 years as a salaried physician, in non-fee-for-service health care settings providing patient care that meets the need when need arises without profit motive, I am flummoxed by this impasse.  Policy makers could not come up with a more simplistic solution than what is contained in 2000+ pages of complex regulations that are already creating bureaucratic havoc in all health care settings, distracting health care providers with electronic and telephone paperwork that pulls us away from the bedside. The patient and the provider no longer partner together without a dozen other entities dictating the choreography of their dance.

A potential solution to the problem of affordable access to all who need it already exists in the form of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps with incentive scholarships for medical and nursing training in exchange for work in under-served areas.   An expansion of such a system, requiring funding at a much lower cost than the billions of dollars required by the current health care reform act,  would address the challenges of the uninsured and the uninsurable.

As a medical student in training, I  spent many months providing patient care in Seattle’s exemplary Public Health Hospital and its associated clinics.  Patients traveled hundreds of miles to see the specialists who worked there; the best and the brightest clinicians saw the poorest of the poor inside those walls, but there were a number of physicians and their families I knew who received their care there as well because they knew the people who worked there were devoted to the patient, not to profit.

When the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches of government refuse themselves to participate in a health care system they have constructed for the people, then it is not created of the people, by the people, for the people for they are people who get sick and injured just like the rest of us.  What is best for them must be best for us all.

All citizens, and non-citizens inside our borders for whatever reason, should have easy access to affordable health care.   All health care providers should have opportunity to work off the costs of their training to keep the debt load from crushing them for decades to come.

I am grieved that health care has come to this impasse, with government now in a take-no-prisoners mode that clear-cuts us all down to the bare roots.
We need to lean in together for support and quit the fighting that only creates more injury.

We need look no farther than our own commissioned corps of health care officers.  It is an idea whose time has come.

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My Own Usefulness

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Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
~Julie Kasdorf from “What I Learned From My Mother”
When my clinical responsibilities top out at 14 hours a day and there is still more to do,  when I’m weary and grumbling about work load, I need reminding that my usefulness is completely dependent on others’ suffering.
No illness, no misery, no suffering and I’m out of a job.
If only. What bliss that would be.
If I’d known it could help you, I’d have baked a cake…

Definitely chocolate.

Startling Joy

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photo by Nate Gibson


Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.
~Madeleine L’Engle

It was another day of a virus with fever that kept me down and atypically quiet on a summer day.  There are peas to harvest in the garden, a barn to clean, a new puppy to train, flower gardens to water–not to mention the usual needs at work.  I could do none of it, not even the requisite two hours at the Dept of Motor Vehicles to get my drivers’ license renewed before my birthday next week.  It all must wait for another healthier day.

Amid my own chills and aches, and with just a little dose of self-pity, tonight I witnessed an expanding fever rise across the horizon in the western sky, exploding in intense red-orange light, coloring and covering everything. Then, having reached its peak,  it backed off. as a fever will do, gradually fading to gray, all once again returned to normal.

And so my fever will relent at some point and fade in my memory.

Tonight, the fever in the sky,  like faith that touches and colors everything in the rough times, was the sudden startling joy that has made everything bearable.

photo by Nate Gibson

Stretched Thin

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“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien

It is not supposed to happen while taking vacation days from work.  I’m supposed to be well-rested, eager to return to work and ready for the next challenge.  Instead, some viral crud has collided with my immune system and won;  I’ve spent the last 24 hours with chills, fever, muscle aches and no appetite.   I was thinking my strange dreams and overwhelming laziness over the previous two days was just the real “me” coming out while on vacation, but now I know it was the real virus instead.

I try to go at 100 miles per hour in my professional and personal life to get everything done, rarely taking breaks as I feel I’ll never regain the momentum needed.  I’m finding that approach to life can’t be sustained, either because my body can’t do it any longer, or more likely, my brain doesn’t easily stretch that thin any longer.    I’m realizing there may a steady pace that is sustainable and I need to find it.  Right now that pace is from bed to bathroom to computer and back to bed.  I hope to aim for a little more adventure tomorrow.

When I am stretched too thin–when tears flow easy–it is time to slow down and taste the bread and not worry about buttering it.

It is time for the body to be restored by the Body.