All Things Tough and Testing

I've got a new line for the old hymn "All Things Bright and Beautiful"! Now it begins "All things Tough and Testing".. It doesn't work musically but boy does it fit my recent experience! I won't bore you with the details save to say that I am facing 3 operations in the next few weeks and am in desperate levels of pain. Apparently I am sitting on a time-bomb with stones and a stricture in my pancreatic duct, and the £30,000 worth of electronic gadgetry inside me has failed (again) and requires me to go through the whole July surgery once more! Add to that some decidedly unpleasant personal plumbing and you have a mixture fit for the 'dunghill' to wax all King James Version.

When I can think clearly through the fog of opiates and the sharp sense that there must surely be a spear right through my upper abdomen - and doesn't it stick out at the back too? - I startle myself with a sense of well-being. Before you call the men in white coats there are reasons for this state of calm that are not just drug induced. I have found special help this week in certain obscure (but not pointless!) Bible verses. One is found in Ephesians 4:6 where it says that my God and Father is "over all and through all and in all". I had not considered that before but it has sealed my soul in a firm compost of comfort this week while I try to bear fruit in a barren environment. God is in charge - not the doctors, nor the devil and thankfully not me!

Another came at me sideways from the good old book of Psalms - ancient Israel's national songbook. Reading almost like a medical report it says: "You couldn’t stand the sight of food, so miserable you thought you’d be better off dead.Then you called out to GOD in your desperate condition; he got you out in the nick of time. He spoke the word that healed you, that pulled you back from the brink of death." (Ps 107:18-20 The Message) Wow!  Now that gave me hope.  Of course I realise that wishful thinking may be at work here, but actually choosing to trust in God's promises and his words is proving to be a powerful steadying force in this trying time.

So although I am messing about with the first line of the old hymn, perhaps the ending can still stand?  "The Lord God made them all" And if that's true then I'll be OK, even if the time-bomb does go off.

That's a Relief!

At last - a few days of pain relief after months of the most appalling pancreatic agony!  Diane and I travelled last week to University College London Hospital for a procedure called a 'coeliac plexus block' which is done under heavy sedation in the endoscopy unit there. A large amount of steroids and narcotics are injected directly into a bundle of nerves right near the pancreas in an attempt to interrupt the pain - and voila - a pain free Easter pour moi!

Years ago I had a series of six such blocks and they gave me varying degrees of effect, ranging from nothing at all (twice) to six weeks of glorious freedom. I don't know how long this one will last, but it is such a pleasure to experience life like so many do without the nerve tearing, burning, intensity of pancreatic pain.

In all these 18 years of battling this condition we have found it essential to take hold of something someone reminded us of in church this morning. Jenny stood at the front of the building and said that she has come to understand, through her many years of sorrow and struggle in different ways to mine, that our sufferings are there for a reason. 'They are', she said, 'allowed by God so as to make us more Christ-like'. Now I wish that God had other ways to make more Christ-like - in fact I'll bet Jesus Himself would have preferred other methods to that when he heaved the cross to his shoulder that first Easter, but he knew I needed him so he went to an unimaginable place of pain for me (and for you).

Jenny was right.  The bible actually says so. There may be many other reasons why we battle, some our own fault and some the fault of others, but God has not finished with us yet and we need to trust him even when we cannot trace his ways.

Meanwhile I'll just be grateful for a few days off and pray it lasts a long long time!