Wednesday, September 2, 2009

it is well

"Your son needs an MRI stat." I can assure you this is not particularly something you want to hear. But hear it today I did.

I was stunned but calm. I was perplexed but calm. I was thankful to the medical community for their quick action, but yet again calm.

Whereas I have no assured certainty that what it is we are searching for is, in fact, not there, above all, remarkably enough, I have calm.

Frankly, I can't give myself credit for this. I know every good and perfect thing comes from God. Here, right now, my good and perfect thing is calm. And it ain't comin' from me, baby. So I'm the last one to be taking credit for it.

My apologies for being so vague. What we're dealing with here is my guy Dave and his recurring headaches. As it so happens, Dave had what I'm calling a migraine last Thursday. It was so bad he puked. He instantly felt better, crumpled in my arms and fell asleep for the night.

I can count on one hand the number of times I think he's had a migraine. This, by far, was the worst. He in his ashen, o'erwrought state. Yet in his four years, he's been plagued with scads of other headaches I've attributed to allergies or sinus pressure. His daddy has the same vexing plague, so I find myself not too terribly alarmed.

Although his daddy never pukes from the pain. Or maybe to relieve it. My baby. My four year-old baby did and has. Something about this doesn't seem right.

This whole headache and puking thing, although it has only happened thrice, is assuredly what the doctors simply do not want to see. I feel their pain. So tomorrow, what the radiologists are looking for is a tumor. I pray they search feverishly for naught.

Honestly though, I think they will. Find nothing, that is. There goes that calm again. Although I have some reason to believe I may be wrong, I'm chalking this up to heredity. Bad genes, you know. Happens to the best of us. Apparently.

I could be wrong. I pray I am not. And there goes that calm again.

Call it denial if you want. I really don't think that's it. And I don't presume to be some faithful giant. But I do know Whose I am. And Who sees me through. And Who despite my sobbing fear, brings me encompassing, controlling calm.

Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
- Horatio G. Spafford, 1873
link: james 1:17, philippians 4:7