I know a lot of people who deal with chronic pain, and one thing that I hear quite often is "Why is God doing this to me?". In fact, there have been times when I have wondered the same thing. I'm a good person. I try to follow His commandments. I love my family and friends, and I try very hard to love my enemies. I have never intentionally hurt anyone (I don't think that the fights my sister and I had as children count!), and I do my best to forgive those who have hurt me.
This is something that I have prayed and meditated on. And this is the conclusion I have come to. God hasn't done this to me. The God that I know is a God of love and he doesn't punish His children. Sometimes, things just happen. I don't have all the answers, I just know what I know. I believe that everything thing has a purpose, and sometimes, we don't know what that purpose is. We just have to have faith that things will work out in the end.
I have always believed that everyone has a purpose in life, and for a long time I searched for my purpose, but I couldn't figure out what that purpose was. I was just so ordinary. I always thought, in the back of my mind, that I was meant for greatness. I have been singing almost before I could talk, and for a long time, I was convinced that I would be a world famous performer. That didn't happen. There was even a time when I thought that I was meant to be a minister, and that didn't happen either.
I prayed and prayed, begging God to tell me what my purpose in life is. And then, one day, I got my answer. Because of me, thousands of babies are alive today. I was just a tiny baby myself when my purpose was fulfilled. I've spoken about this before, but I believe with all my heart that my purpose was to be saved from my birth defect. When I was born, there was something protruding from my nose. The doctor's told my mother that it was a polyp and easily repaired.
Shortly after my birth, I was sent to see an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor. They took xrays of my head, and then my mother and I were taken to an exam room. The doctor told her that he would be in in just a minute or two. He finally showed up an hour later. The tissue coming out of my nose was not a simple polyp; it was part of my brain. I was born with a birth defect called an encephalocele. This birth defect is a form of spinabifida. In my birth defect, the covering of the brain doesn't completely come together. Mine allowed brain matter to come through the opening, down through my sinus cavity, and out one of my nostrils. This was a Big Deal.
At the time, there were only two hospitals in the country attempting the surgery to fix this problem. One was Sloan Kettering in New York City, and the other was Barnes Children's Hospital in St. Louis, MO. Because we lived in Arkansas, my family chose Barnes. That afternoon, we were on our way to the hospital. As I said in my previous post, the neurosurgeon told my parent's not to get too attached because every baby who had the surgery previously either died or had severe brain damage following the procedure. Luckily, I come from a family with a powerful faith in God, and they started sending up prayers immediately.
They performed the surgery the way they always had. I have a scar that runs from ear to ear across the top of my head. Once they opened me up, they put a piece of plastic is the hole, and simply cut off the tissue that was hanging out my nose. It's more complicated than this of course, but I'm not a medical professional, and this is the way things were explained to me. Almost immediately after the surgery, the primary doctor left for a conference in Europe, leaving his resident in charge of my care.
Within hours of the surgery, I spiked a fever of 106. This was the pattern they had seen with all the other babies. I was packed in ice in the hopes that they could bring the fever down, and lessen the chances of brain damage or death. But this resident had another idea, and asked my parent's if he could take me back into surgery. He told them that it was possible I would die either way, but this gave me a chance. Once in surgery, the doctor removed the plastic from the hole, and replaced it with a bone graft that he took from my forehead. This worked! Now, they would know that I had gone into rejection from the foreign substance of the plastic. Replacing it with my own bone stopped the rejection process.
I was the first baby to survive the surgery perfectly normal! There was even an article written for one of the major medical journals documenting the procedure. And I was told that a doctor came over from Japan to see me and to study this new procedure. After 6 weeks in the hospital, my parents were able to take home the baby they were told not to get attached to, and raise her like any other normal baby. Because of this doctor, and me, thousands, if not millions of babies around the world born with this particular birth defect are able to live normal lives. The procedure is pretty routine now, and instead of opening the skull, they are able to go through the sinus cavity itself, by making a small incision behind the upper lip.
This was my purpose in life. God didn't "do" this to me. It just happened. But He was able to use the doctor and me to save so many other children. I don't know why we suffer from chronic pain, but I do know that we aren't being punished. Some things in life just happen, and we don't always know why. But I do know that God doesn't want us to go through this. I know that He suffers right along with us. And I also know that somewhere, sometime, he will use another doctor and one of us to bring an end to our suffering. How do I know this? Because it happened to me.
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