Two statements in Proverbs are noteworthy. The first: "A merry heart does good like a medicine..." (Proverbs 17:22).
In Strong’s Concordance, the merry heart is glad, joyful. It is meant literally and figuratively. Good medicine and a glad and happy heart works in our favor.
The word "medicine" here refers to a cure. When God allows sickness and suffering, our first response can be, “Lord, please heal.” Medicine is affirmed. God heals with and without medicine.
The second inspiring thought: "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases. Who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies. Who satisfies your mouth with good things; so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.” (Psalm 103:2-5).
Healthy food and the right medicine can be healers.
HEALTH CHALENGES
Five years apart my husband and I discovered we had cancer; modern medicine saved our lives. The knowledge of the doctors and their expert care worked to bring us back to health. By the grace of God, their therapies (chemotherapy, radiation, and several surgeries for both of us) brought us through.
Eric, my husband, was ready to take off for a business trip to the West Coast. Before he retired, he worked for The Navy as a Logistics Manager. His trip from Florida to California was scheduled for a week of meetings. Our son, Zachariah and I discovered for the first time that he was bleeding heavily. It took both of us to persuade him to go to the Emergency Room instead of to the airport. It was Colon Cancer.
Life changed. Our future changed. After his radical colon resection surgery, while he was on chemotherapy, I drove him across Orlando from the west side to the east side of town every day to work. It was illegal for him to drive a car while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. I was writing Submission Is Not Silence, and the drive simply gave me a different place to think and write while I waited for him to call me from his office when his work was through for the day.
For Eric, the colon cancer changed his natural process by a resection. It is still a challenge but has given him years cancer free.
Five years later, a Primary Care Doctor’s Assistant discovered a mass in my left breast. It led to a biopsy.
Earlier that year I had seen a video of a Senior Woman’s Beauty Pageant taking place. I decided to try out for it. Was it vain? Was it an aside for what I was really interested in? As a Christian, could I be a good influence? Eric and I drove toward the first try out and my doctor’s office called my cell phone. The Physician herself was on the line. My biopsy had shown a cancerous mass. I should come to the doctor’s office at once. Eric and I drove to the next Exit on the Interstate Expressway and turned around. We drove straight to the doctor’s office where the process for removing cancer began.
A breast cancer diagnosis meant surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, a second surgery and therapy by a lymphedema specialist.
God was with us those years! The doctors, the assistants, surgeons, therapists: we entered a world that would never have been known to us. My breast cancer needed lymph nodes removed, which left me with lymphedema, a swelling from the shoulder to my hand. A therapist told me, “Take your wedding rings off or they will have to be cut off.” I did. The therapist God supplied is still watching over my tendency to swell on the left side. She is a teacher, a patient teacher. I had a tough time accepting the new reality. Now, though, with again, God’s leading, my care is in place, compression sleeves in the daytime, a Reed Sleeve sinched tight at night. “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19 is amazingly true and real.
NUTRITION IN THE MEDICAL WORLD
How do you assess a world you are not a part of! I know what I am pursuing: that is insight and wisdom discovered in the Bible on nutrition and health.
I will say that doctors and medicine have kept us alive. We still have opportunity to gain experience in understanding and in strength.
I have friends who have suffered strokes, and depression. What to do? Pray, read Scripture with a prayer for wisdom and leading. For Job in the Old Testament and The Apostle Paul in the New, it was uniquely personal. How they were tried through extreme hardship and affirmed by God is a testimony to us. Look and listen. Read things that will encourage you in Scripture. "A merry heart does good like a medicine: but a broken spirit dries the bones." (Proverbs 17:22).
Health, life, and breath…began with Adam. I believe that the years of good nutrition, the strength training and exercise strengthened us for the battle each of us had with cancer. Eric began jogging at thirty, soon after we married. He rose before daylight and followed Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s book, “Aerobics” by jogging before driving to work. I joined him soon after. In our fifties we did strength training in addition to the jogging: lifting weights and stretching. Acting on Scripture as we went through “the valley of the shadow of death” and appearing on the other side was a day at a time. Our future, like yours, is in God’s hands. All of us have this dependence on God: what will He allow? Life can get hard. Remember, the apostle, Paul wrote, “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.” (2Co_12:10). At the same time, are we doing our best to live a disciplined life based on wisdom! Our faith in Psalm 103 can give comfort.
"Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities; who heals all your diseases; Who redeems your life from destruction; who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies; Who satisfies your mouth with good things; so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's." (Psalm 103:2-5).
Look for the Light. He is the Light of the World. He knows and cares and loves you and will lead you as you continue learning to listen to Him and watch for His clues and cues. Then act on them.
