"Too Close To Home..."

In 2005 I suffered a heart attack. Turned out to be "mild," if such an event can be so classified, with no residual damage to the heart muscle. I am under a cardologist supervision and, as long as I continue to faithfully take my prescribed medications, I "should" live a very full and productive life. So far so good.

A year later, after my general practioner strongly advised that I should do so (His words, "I have set the apointment and you will go!"), I had my very first colonoscopy. As everyone knows who has ever under gone this procedure, it is the prep prior to the actual procedure's scheduling the following day that is the pain in that part of the anatomy where the attending physician conducts a thorough looking up of one's personal address! Hindsight (pardon the intended pun) is always 20-20. I am glad my GP insisted that I was overdue to "have a look around." It was discovered that I had several pre-cancerous pallops that had to be surgically removed. Outcome...pallops removed...all clear. (Before moving on, let me stress that every person 40 years of age and above needs to undergo a colonoscopy. Mine may have saved my life. Not doing so could end yours and the thought of the inconvenience of doing so pales when compared to the real and permanent inconvenience of being excluded from the next U.S. census.)

Although distance now permits me to make personal light of my most recently successfully diagnosed and treated physical maladies, and to say how truly thankful I am for the advancements in medicine that have granted me, Lord wlling, many more years of happy memories yet to be created, I am also grieveously aware that modern medicine has not advanced to the point where every affliction can be successfully eradicated. This truth came home to me this day as my boss announced with all the courage he could muster that his oldest daughter, Jennifer, has been diagnosed with a type of melanoma cancer that is speading rapidly in her brain. The prognosis, absent of a modern medicine miracle coupled with God's merciful intervention, this young lady in her early 30s has perhaps a year at best to live. I am at a loss as to what to say or how to feel.

As a father or a young and vibrant daughter myself, my heart goes out to this fellow father who is struggling to comprehend that the daughter he so successfully loved and protected for all these preceeding years is beyond his earthly ability to snatch safely and permanently away from this far too premature visitation of finality. How does one realign ones emotions to comprehend that the assumed expectation of years to come with this daughter of promise is not to be? This is a reality that defies human explanantion, leaving one numb with helplessness and searching for answers to the questions that all begin with "Why?" My heart is filled with his saddness and no words of comfort form on my lips. I am left with the only source of comfort that I know exists but cannot myself fully comprehend: the undefineable power to pray for God's grace and mercy to be visited upon this family in their coming hours of desperation.

Look with your heart today to those you care and love the most. There is no promise for tomorrow. Say "I love you" and mean it, and be thankful to God for the gifts that these special people are in your life.