So I\u2019m through the op. It\u2019s not nearly as bad a thing as many blokes who may read this have had to face. But I\u2019ve allowed myself to get down and frustrated over this. There have been weeks stuck in the house, off work, a premature retirement and being made to face for myself, the sort of risks\/benefits decision, as a medic I ask my patients to take. Like the decision to have a treatment which carries risks, not as a life saver (as it often is with my patients), but to give me full exercise capability in the long term. For instance, getting back to 100 mile-a-day cycle treks across France, with the mad Revd. Beech. And after making the decision, with difficulty, I get an infection so the op\u2019s delayed for a week with one day to go and the risks increase and other things go wrong.<\/p>\n
Nothing new for many blokes reading this, but one of the things I do best is worry. I\u2019ve done dangerous sports in the past and now, extreme (some would say) endurance cycling, which literally reduces grown men to tears. But through it all, I worry. I worry about all sorts of things, not just this. During these frustrating weeks, I\u2019ve been reading the first part of the Book of Psalms. It\u2019s all there; The Lord is always with you and will guard you and guide you through everything including in David\u2019s case, life and death situations, not just non-urgent back surgery. That\u2019s the unchanging truth in Scripture and that\u2019s enough for anybody. But because I\u2019m weak and a worrier, I keep asking God to give me some more reassurance that I\u2019ve made the right decision. But I\u2019m not looking around for \u2018signs.\u2019 I don\u2019t do that, much.<\/p>\n
Then 2 days before the final date of the op, I\u2019m reading a national daily paper. I don\u2019t get it normally; I\u2019ve just read it a few times while stuck in the house and not for several days previously. Again, my mind\u2019s a million miles away from \u2018signs\u2019. I\u2019m just browsing, filling in the boring hours, when I realise I\u2019m reading an article featuring my surgeon and the hospital where I\u2019m going to be a patient. It\u2019s not a complaint, by the way, it features him as a leading expert in something. Then, at the top of another article on the same page, I catch sight of a photograph of a familiar face–someone who was a medical student in my year, who now does medical articles for that paper. I haven\u2019t read one for years, but that day, his column was about the latest evidence showing that the best treatment for people with back problems like mine is not to mess about delaying things with physio etc, (the previous traditional way to deal with it), but to get on with early surgery–which was just what I had decided.<\/p>\n
Carl came to see me and I showed him the page. And just as though to underline it, while we\u2019re talking, in a lull in the conversation, a voice on the radio solemnly names the newspaper. We both smiled and thanked God. This sort of \u2018fleece\u2019 experience hardly ever happens to me, but when it does, it comes completely unexpectedly. I shouldn\u2019t require it and I don\u2019t deserve it and it\u2019s always <\/em>possible to dismiss it as a coincidence. But I\u2019m taking it as a kind reassurance to a worrier at just the right time, from a God who amazingly cares about details. What do you think?<\/p>\n I went for my op with much more confidence. The lesson I suppose is to be thankful for the health I\u2018ve got and when fit again, to strengthen my all too weak resolve to use it in following Jesus–and perhaps, to try and stop worrying so much. Lord help me to do that.<\/p>\n