Sunday, May 31, 2009

Getting answers?

If you have been reading here for a long time you may remember my talking about struggling with finding where I belong in the whole scheme of being religious.

It's not that I'm an atheist or even an agnostic. I was raised with Christian values. I have been a member of several churches.

No, the struggle has been with squaring up what other people say (ie: "God talks to me and tells me what to do") with my own personal experience of these things.

It has never seemed that simple -- would that it were!

In fact, I have felt for some time that whatever it was I was asking for must not have been the right thing because there either seemed to be no answer or the answer was no.

This week has been odd.

I'm struggling with the medical issues and the big scare factor involved there and the stresses of minimal health insurance and the worries about how I will ever pay all of the bills that will follow.

And I'm not good about asking for help --- physically or emotionally. My life experience has been that I'm the one that must deal with it, and I better just "buck up" and deal.

So, there have been several really odd experiences this week.

For one thing, when my husband had his doctor's appointment on Friday, he talked to her about my issues, and when we were leaving she took my hand and said "it's going to be okay".

A couple of days ago I got an email from a cousin that I have not heard from for about 10 years, full of encouragement and newsy updates on her life --- and I'm not even sure how she got my email address.

Then when someone I have known only a short time found out what was going on she offered to bring us a meal when I need it, and her husband will come and give me a blessing before I have the Wednesday procedure done.

And yesterday I opened my mail box to find a letter from a friend that I have known for 26 years and we are admittedly bad at corresponding except at Christmas, but there it was, a 3 page letter.

Ok.

I'm up for admitting that maybe I just haven't been aware enough before to see the answers.

A while back I asked all of you to say a prayer for me. It seems you've all been doing that, because I'm being surrounded with support and love.

Thank you --- and could you please continue to do so? Even if I get good news after the biopsy, there will still be those pesky medical bills to deal with.

Thanks again to you all.

1 comment:

Alison said...

I think that God nudges people to do things for others when they need them and how they need them as a way of discovering happiness amid the hardship. Sometimes, we think afterwards, oh, that's why I felt like I should have...! And sometimes, to our joy, we find out, oh that's why it felt good to go do that!

Can you just imagine how each of those people would feel at knowing they were there for you when they didn't even know yet that you needed it?

Meantime, my prayer just went up wishing you the best of luck with the biopsy results. Sometimes the lack of hearing about it just means that the news matters most to you and to you it is not a job detail. An important job detail, but.

--AlisonH at spindyeknit.com (Blogger won't link to my blog here.)