Saturday: Blanked Out

It’s Saturday morning, 8:34am, and I’m writing this before breakfast, after which I will head over to the hospital, where my mother continues to reside.  In reading The Faith Rest Life, I came across a warning of sorts:

It is easy to trust the Lord when everything is going right. It is easy to trust the Lord when you have been stirred up emotionally. It is easy to trust the Lord when everything is going your way. But, do you trust the Lord when the picture is black? If you get to the place where you think you do, then take heed, for God is going to test that position! There are believers who this very week have been tested. God has said, “Do you really trust Me? Do you really believe My Word?” And just as you begin to think you do, and the situation is clearing God says, “Now I am going to blank out this situation; I am going to make it look hopeless and black. Do you still believe Me?”

Emphasis there at the end is mine. Because that’s exactly what happened. The ultrasound of the liver came back showing multiple lesions on the liver and a mass on the pancreas, but no fluid in the “belly”.  Furthermore, when I arrived it was to learn that she had been unable to eat her dinner or her breakfast because after about two bites it felt as if the food got stuck halfway down her esophagus. The problem wasn’t with her swallowing, so the hospitalist had requested a GI doc to come and do an endoscopy. That was supposed to happen sometime that day, probably late in the afternoon or evening.

Well, the day passed, my mother ate nothing, complained of increasing pain in her stomach and continued burping. When I left late in the afternoon the GI doc still hadn’t arrived.

When I came in Friday morning it was to discover that he had come late, sometime after 7:30 or 8, had talked to my mother for a while, then postponed the endoscopy til Saturday (today).  The hospitalist didn’t know why the procedure was postponed but suspected scheduling conflicts. Meantime, since most of her symptoms seemed to point to acid reflux he began treating her for that. So yesterday was pretty much devoted to trying to get the drugs into her.  Some could be injected via IV others had to be swallowed, which, of course, was very difficult for her, but eventually all was done.

I left exhausted and as happened more often than not, uncertain what tomorrow will bring. The medications they gave her should have taken effect by now and yesterday the hospitalist said that if he could just get the eating problems solved he could discharge her.  I’ve been trying to imagine how I will handle that — can she even walk? She’s not been out of bed for close to three days, her legs are still swollen and weeping from edema, she’s eaten nothing for probably two days. On the other hand, I’m not sure a skilled nursing facility would do any better. There is sooo much waiting in these places. I understand it, but it’s still hard.

All week the neurology floor my mother is on was about half full — most of the private rooms were empty; yesterday they had an influx of patients and now every bed is taken. And also yesterday, as Mother’s nurse tried to get her pain under control and the meds and/or water down her, one of her other patients had an emergency that required transferral to ICU.

In any case if Mother is discharged today, I will have to stay with her and will be MIA again, since she has no internet access at her house.

And yet… again from The Faith Rest Life…

He is waiting for us to trust Him. Actually, He is waiting for us to wait on Him, so that He no longer has to wait to bless us. So He puts up the hopeless picture for us where everything is black and despairing, yet on the other side of the picture is the same faithful lord. And He says, “Trust Me through this. Trust Me in the midst of this! Believe Me! Believe the Word!”

And last night in live class, Pastor Bob continued his teaching on patience as a result of enduring.

“Consider it all joy, my brethren when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”  ~ James 1:2,3

The greek word for endurance, says Pastor Bob,

 “…comes to mean the ability to trust without wavering under the most adverse of circumstances and even for prolonged periods of time. “

So I felt very spoken to, not by PB personally, since he knows nothing about all this and is thousands of miles away, but by God, who knows every detail of my situation and “is a very present help in time of trouble.”

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