I am finishing two major projects for my summer semester. In writing this post, I am hoping to sort out all the thoughts that are running through my brain!
I find it fascinating that with almost every course I have taken on this educational journey/pursuit, I have had the opportunity to live out, in my life, the subject matter. It seems this semester is not different. As I have faced each of my personal medical experiences this summer, I have been reading books concerning God, medicine/medical ethic issues and suffering. (or, literally, the theodicy problem, which attempts to answer questions like, "Is God good? If so, given the scope of suffering, can we think of God as all-powerful? (Long, p xi)) And, then the book that made visitors to my hospital room a little nervous, "The Christian Funeral." Yep, that's me--the patient that wants to live well--but required reading, none-the-less!
The first morning of my hospital stay, after receiving my delicious breakfast of ice-chips--one of the two glasses of them that I received each 'shift'--my nurse asked me if I wanted the TV on. "No," I replied, "I have some reading I want to do." She said, "You gonna read a sexy novel, then?"
I am still laughing about that one--my answer was, "no, not really, it's actually homework." Who takes their homework to the hospital with them? I guess I have been packing books in my suitcase for so long that it has become a habit!
Anyway, I have so much to learn about medical ethics and the words to use in counsel from a ministry perspective, concerning suffering and pain. What was a surprising realization for me was that the actual responsibility of medical professionals is to teach us, as patients, how to take care of our bodies, enabling us to live. If life is not an option, then they teach us how to die with dignity. Pretty sobering, isn't it?
As I prepared both, for my class work and for the days I would be in the hospital, I watched one of my most favorite movies. The very first scene is simply "A True Story." Of course, it is Hollywood, and there was probably some creative license taken, however, the real story did actually happen in history.
It is the story of the survival and leadership, in 1941-45, of the Polish Jewish Bielski brothers. This band of brothers helped around 1200 people survive, in the woods, instead of face the massacres that awaited many of their family members. The movie: Defiance. The brothers decided early on that their revenge, their act of defiance, would be to LIVE! How amazing is that?
And, no this movie is probably not on your church's list of family-friendly movies--but at a certain age, perhaps it should be! Sometimes, you have to be radical to actually LIVE in this lifetime, expressing ideas and convictions that go against what the world would think as OK. Telling the truth, for example, or living a life of fidelity with your spouse.
I cannot imagine the horror the Jewish population faced in those years, the undignified ways in which many (most) faced death...and I will not pretend to think that my recent surgical inconvenience can begin to compare.
However, my conviction remains, my heart breaks and my mind reels when I consider the ways in which many of us take this life for granted, each and every day.
Live well--in each circumstance, by the Grace of God--defy the odds and live WELL!
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