Ready and Waiting

... Continued from Diagnosis Accepted.

Well, I've accepted the Physician's diagnosis.  And like any good resourceful American Christian, I try every possible way to avoid the prescribed cure.  Surely there must be some other way!  I've tried the options.  And some even seemed to work for a time.  But ultimately they all fail.  Because they are all based on the "do more, try harder" school of medicine.  And I'm left with only one choice.  And it's here, in this moment in time where I come to the end of myself, where I am so desperate for true life-change that I'm willing to do ANYTHING.  

So trembling, I return to the Physician's office.  Nervously, yet with determined resolve, I approach the receptionist's window to sign the paperwork.  The paperwork requesting ... heart surgery.  

(Our good Reverend wrote a beautiful piece describing him wrestling with the decision and filling out the paperwork for his personal diagnosis here: Prayer for the Seed of Gospel Love.  A must read.)

I'm then instructed to return to the lobby area.  To wait.  And I thought I was desperate before!  But now the waiting is becoming so unbearable that I feel like I might go crazy or die from sheer desperation.  And this is not a passive waiting.  It's active.  Cultivating the soil of my heart to make it ready for the surgery.  But still I wait.  And this is exactly where faith grows.  Because faith is being sure of what I hope for and certain of what I do not see. 

[And here is a song I re-wrote at a time of desperate waiting: Prayer to Know God Intimately.  You get brownie points if you remember the tune.  :) ]

And then ...
Just when I think my paperwork's been lost ...
He calls me back with Him to the operating room ...

It's time.

To be continued ... Heart Surgery