Hi everyone,
Got home yesterday - which is great. Spent most of yesterday sleeping. I am feeling very, very sore - both my throat and my neck itself - i.e both muscular pain and internal post-operative pain. I am not allowed to speak at all until Sunday/Monday because the growth was much larger than they thought. They could not remove it all because they were worried about causing permamnent damage to the vocal chord if they tried that, so they have cut away as much as possible and have left a small flap to cover the scarring - hence the command to completely rest my voice. Both chords were very swollen and impacted by the presence of the one growth - and it had almost completely closed the gap between the chords. Biopsies have been taken and I am back to get results and discuss the way ahead in the next week - ten days or so. Also await appointments with speech therapists etc, so the decision to cancel all speaking engagements between now and the end of the year was absolutely right - will give me a chance to recover and rest the voice and let healing and restoration take place.
There is no point in worying about what happens next - I have a real sense of God's continued peace and power and presence - and promise of restoration, so please join me in thanking God for that blessing and his love and peace which absolutely remain with me and the family.
The funny thing is that I am communicating with a simple 'etch-a-sketch' type thing that Debbie and the kids bought me. When I started writing with it, they started using it to write back to me! I'm the one that can't talk though - not them! The same has happened with anyone who has used it - funny, eh! I may not be able to talk to you, but you can talk to me!!!
Thank you all for your love, patience, kindness and prayers.
Part of the fabric of life?
Anyway, continuing the reflections on this whole thing, I am so aware of God's grace and peace.
Whether we like it or not, pain is part of the whole fabric of life. To escape suffering completely, we would have to live in some sort of vaccuum - detached from the reality of most people's lives and experiences - like sterilized and cushioned pods, where there was never risk of the unexpected or the experience of real life. If we do no not face trouble, pain or difficulty in our lives, then we would have no need of courage, patience or faith - and we would have no opportunity to grow in these virtues and learn how to become more like Christ. We would also loose the ability to show and have real compassion and empathy. If you do not understand, you cannot trully care - that is why the second person of the Trinity became a man, isn't it - so he could be tempted in all ways, like we are, and he could be 'touched by the feeling of our infirmities'.
Without pain and struggle, we would never learn from our mistakes or grow through the struggles and hard challenges. Our life and 'goodness' would be like the robotic response of puppets, made to look pretty, but with nothing but wooden hearts and strings to pull us - no freedom, no life, no depth. The more I try to think of a painless and a flawless world, the more impossible it becomes to think of whilst we live in the midst of a Kingdom which has come in part, but not yet fully. One day the struggles will end, but until that moment, we live in the midst of struggle and are changed by it - and given the chance to show those around us that God is just as real in the midst of pain as He is in the midst of blessing.
Difficulty and struggle are part of the inescapable mystery of what it is to be fully human and fully alive.
It doesn't make suffering any easier to bear, though. I still protest and fight against pain and struggle when it comes my way. I still want to get out of it as quickly as I can - and I still believe that I can ask God to end it as quickly as possible - but not until He has taught me, and others, of his grace and power in all of life. Of course we tend to complain about how unfair it all appears. We often ask, 'Why did God let this Christian or that Christian struggle with illness or pain or tragedy?' We can reduce God to a petty wonder worker who looks after his favourites and forgets the rest. Some Christian theologies make God into a puppet and us into the puppet masters, with the church being a consumer based convenience store. God is a heavenly resue service who can be called upon to do what we want, when we want, how we want, with the currency being our faith rather than his grace.
This seems to be a far cry from the call of Jesus to give our all, take up our cross and to follow him. Sometimes discipleship leads us into more struggle, not less. God has not abandoned those who go through pain - he is not detached, he is not distant and he is not uninterested. He is with those who struggle and suffer as much as he is with those who do not. The absence of suffering and struggle doesn't equate to the absence of God's grace and power and love.
Faith to endure is as important as faith to escape.
