It’s not just the holidays, it’s not the usual Christmas activities, it’s not all that.  I haven’t posted anything substantial for a while and I apologize. I haven’t been feeling well.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise.  I have monthly pain.  This time, though, I underwent my usual ultrasound and I have some good news: the cysts in the fallopian tubes are gone.  The cysts and the myoma have not increased in size, either.  I have more good news:  I had an abdominal ultrasound and everything looked normal.

My husband hasn’t been feeling well either.  His gastric complaints have come back after two months of being asymptomatic.  The internist did say that it will recur.  So, more tests. His cardiologist also ordered him to submit himself to another 2D-echo (a cardiac ultrasound).  We had to go to the Heart Center for that.

During the appointment with his cardiologist two weeks ago, we were stunned when the cardiologist asked us to consider an angioplasty.  We were in shock.  Last time I checked, an angioplasty would cost around half a million pesos.  There is considerable risk because the hardened blood vessels might just tear during the procedure.  There is no guarantee that the angioplasty would work. So, we prayed about it. We prayed for guidance: we needed to know what God wanted us to do.

I had already written a blog that our 18^th wedding anniversary was spent at the doctor’s office.  A week after that, we were waiting at the Heart Center and a week after that, there we were, waiting at the doctor’s office once more. We were there for a follow-up, to give the doctor the results of the 2D echo and to hear what he had to say: whether an angioplasty is medically inevitable.

When we got the results last Friday, I read it and I couldn’t make sense of it.  But I did tell my husband that it was weird because I kept seeing the word “normal” in the impression and in the conclusion. I didn’t think anything of it. My husband didn’t even look at the results.  Dogged determination was what pushed us to go back to the cardiologist: we just had to know what our options are so we can pray about it.

When the cardiologist read the results he said: ”If we can believe these results as accurate, I think we might just have witnessed a miracle. “  He took out all my husband’s records. He read the initial diagnosis. He checked the results from 2008.  He compared it with the results from this year.  There was a total reversal, he said.  In 2008, three quarters of his heart was abnormal and enlarged.  This year, three quarters of his heart was normal and only one quarter was slightly thickened.

I heard him.  I heard his explanation. My brain registered the information but the rest of me was wooden.  I saw the cardiologist’s excited face and I saw his big smile.  I heard everything he said.  The first words out of my mouth were: “Should we believe the results as accurate?”  The cardiologist said, “I don’t see why not.  God has answered your prayer for a miracle.  It took four years but it is still a miracle.  In all my medical practice, I have only had 2 cases of reversal.  Your husband’s is the second one.”

He gave us the usual prescription for my husband’s medication.  He gave us the lab requests for the next visit.  He told us to come in back January.  All this time, my husband and I were still trying to grasp this piece of news. We couldn’t quite wrap our minds around it.  What happened?

We asked God fervently for a miracle.  We prayed for God’s will and we surrendered ourselves to whatever the will of God was.  In sickness and in health, God has been faithful.  It makes not much difference now if we are healthy or not, God will always remain faithful. We asked for sufficient grace to fight the good fight and to finish the course.  We asked for strength to keep the faith.  God has granted all that.  We couldn’t ask for more.

We asked God to lead us to a sympathetic doctor.  He answered that prayer.  We asked that the medications he will prescribe will be effective and give relief of symptoms.  God answered that prayer, too.  We asked God for self-discipline that we may behave ourselves seemly: change our lifestyles if that was what was needed. God gave us that, too.  We asked for emotional maturity for our children that their faith might be made stronger through all this.  I specifically asked that they not be offended with God whatever happened.  God granted that, too.  As far as we were concerned, God had given us all that we could ask for, all we could think of, short of removing all the arterial blockages.  We went for a second opinion and the doctor said that it might not just be arterial blockages at all: it might be an un-diagnosed complication from polio that the blood vessels in his heart have atrophied. With that bit of medical opinion, we really didn’t know how to pray for any of that.  We simply surrendered all to the Lord and waited.  While we waited, we ate wisely and exercised wisely. We took medication wisely and monitored his heart and blood sugar tenaciously.

We did not jump for joy. My husband and I sat in the doctor’s office and in the car after that and we were silent.  Were we just processing the news?  Are we in unbelief?  Are we in disbelief? Are we skeptical?  Are we cynical? Maybe we have had such an emotional roller-coaster ride these past four years that we have no room for elation.  I reflected that each time we went to the hospital or to the doctor’s office, I felt as though I have my arms up covering my face and my head, waiting for blows that I expected to come.

We have also lived with dietary deprivations.  On Sunday night we went to a family reunion and my husband ate what we brought from home: lettuce and oatmeal.  All around us, our loved ones were eating and drinking anything and everything they liked. We sat there and ate only so as not to go hungry.  And this is essentially how we have been living these past four years. I often feel rebellious and I treat myself to a cheat day every so often.  Not  my husband: he is motivated to stick around for as long as he can for the kids and so he has stuck to his diet and exercise. I am amazed at his temperance and then, I realized, temperance is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  We prayed for that gift and immediately I thanked God for that gift.

This is a new place for us.  It is so easy to be happy when there’s good news.  It is harder to be happy when there’s a cloud hanging above you.  But we have managed to learn that in whatsoever state we find ourselves in  “therewith to be content.”  Maybe this is why we weren’t jumping for joy.  My son says that maybe we are afraid to be happy for fear that it will soon be taken away…. Maybe, my daughter says, we didn’t want to be disappointed in case there was some mistake and the results we received were some other patient’s.  Maybe we are afraid: we have all heard of people who died right after their check up when their doctor told them that they were improving.  That is humanly plausible.  Maybe I am afraid to be happy, maybe I have not gained placidity and serenity,  maybe the capacity for exuberance has died in me.  Who knows?

In the end, I think that it doesn’t matter how we feel: the reality is that God is at work in our lives.  We may not have been aware of God’s hand working all these four years to bring about this healing but He did work and He is still at work.  Everything works together for good to them who love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.  Sickness or health, both have a purpose in God’s will.

Maybe God has been at work and God has granted all that we asked for and so much more but we had not yet enough faith to receive the answer.  Maybe God has granted it a long time ago but the objective medical proof was not granted because we had to go through the experience to increase our faith and to make us emotionally sturdy.  Maybe it has all been a test.

Maybe we have been living all these four years trusting God day in day out because we had no other alternative; and trusting God has become so much a part of the everyday life that it really doesn’t matter anymore what happens, God is worthy of our trust.  So, come good news of improving health or bad news of deteriorating health, it doesn’t matter anymore, life will proceed as usual.  God’s all-sufficient grace is available in the good times and the bad….

I praise and thank God for this wonderful bit of news.  We haven’t had good news like this in four years.  But we don’t need good news like this to know God is at work.  Our God never sleeps.  And He has our best interest always in mind, no matter what He does, no matter what happens.

Where do we go from here?  I don’t really know…. Wherever He leads, we’ll go…. I still cannot fully grasp this bit of good news…. We are so privileged to know a God who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask of think.

My husband and I have been quite cautious in breaking the news to others.  We told our pastor first.  We told our pastor friends who have been praying for us.  I told my family and my closest friends whom I knew would be happy for us.  We laughed and said we’d be humiliated if hubby suddenly died after we broke the news to everyone that he had been healed but, “hope maketh  not ashamed.”  We are not happy for the news, we are happy because of the privilege of knowing a powerful God; for knowing a loving God who cares for mortals like us.  We share the news because this is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.  I cannot say we deserve this miracle.  I do not think we did anything to deserve it.  We clung in faith to God because no one else could care for us; we clung in faith fully expecting Him to work and He did even when we didn’t know or understand anything.

We give him ALL THE GLORY.  We thank Him and praise Him for his loving kindness.  Truly, the life we live in this flesh, we live by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.

Praise be to God! He is an Almighty God and nothing is too hard for Him.