Why Me Lord?

It was a bit overwhelming to me, not only that so many things were happening to me back to back, but now I had a death sentence hanging over me. I began to sink into a depression and just wanted to sleep and not think about it.

They had once again taken me off of morphine and now would give me Dilaudid for pain instead. Most of my pain was now mental, but I would ask for more Dilaudid every time they would allow me to have it so that I could escape reality and sleep.

After a while, the Dilaudid effects would not last as long and I had to deal with reality during my waking hours. This was when I began to talk to God and ask him why this was happening to me. I even blamed God because I knew he could have prevented all this. After all, didn't he promise that once I became a christian that stuff like this would not happen to me? Didn't he say that he would be there for me? I was not ready to accept that this could be my fault and that I was in this condition because I didn't take care of my body. God was supposed to take care of me in spite of myself. I let anger start to control what was left of my life, not realizing the damage I was doing in the process.

Now it was time to repair the urethrae tube to stop the fluid from leaking into my abdomen at which point they could take the drainage tube out of my stomach.

The surgery was scheduled and performed quickly, but they wouldn't take the drainage tube out until they were sure the repair worked. So when they would get me out of bed and make me walk around, all my collection bags were hanging on the walker as a reminder to me that I was on the downhill slope. My anger increased. My thoughts were such that they were making me do things that I didn't want to be doing if I was just going to die anyway.

As it turned out, the repair did not work and I was forced to make the decision for the doctors to remove my left kidney. The surgeon that came to me with this decision was a pessimist and pointed out that with as little time as I had left to live, I wouldn't need both kidneys anyway. So I gave in and told them to go ahead and take the kidney. This came as good and bad news for me. The bad news was that I would lose a perfectly healthy kidney. The good news was that after the surgery would come stronger pain meds. I wanted to just sleep through it all and wake up dead.

I woke up one afternoon, from my Dilaudid induced sleep, to find the Gaither Homecoming show was on the TV. The Crabb family was singing and as I came more and more into awareness I began to pay attention. The song that they were singing was titled "Through the Fire".

I listened as the words spoke to me as though it was Jesus himself telling me that the "promises" I was blaming God for breaking, were not real. They were a false belief that I had come to that as a christian I was somewhat invulnerable to the bad stuff in this world. As I listened to the words to that song I began to realize that it just ain't so. God didn't promise anywhere that I could do whatever I wanted with my body and if I was a follower of Christ I would be protected.

The words are as follows:

He never promised the cross would not get heavy
and the hill would not be hard to climb

He never offered victory without fighting
but He said help would always come in time

Just remember when you’re standing in the valley of decision
and the adversary says give in

Just hold on, our Lord will show up
and He will take you through the fire again

I learned that afternoon that I was in a battle and that what I actually was in the process of doing was giving up. There arose in me a fighting spirit with the knowledge that God would come in time if I would just fight the battle. So that's what I determined to do.

I knew that I was not prepared yet to fight this battle, because I wasn't equipped with the knowledge I needed to fight with. I prayed to God that he would lead me to the knowledge I needed, especially since I had a decision coming up about Chemo therapy and possibly radiation.

I will deal with that decision in the next post as well as tell you about the folks God had already placed in my life to help me with the knowledge I needed.