So I Have a Brain Aneurism ...

And I could use your prayers.  It is kind of nerve racking to think there is something defective in your head, a kind of time-bomb that if it goes off, so do you.  I discovered this problem while in the shower about 2 months ago washing my face.  All of the sudden it felt like some monster had dug their claws into the right side of my face and was tearing it off of my skull.  The pain was extreme, so bad I thought I was going to pass out.  It seemed to center around my eye so I first went to the Ophthalmologist to seek treatment.  The Ophthalmologist did find a viral infection (non-contagious) in my eye and prescribed drops to treat it.  But every week I kept returning to the eye doctor because the pain was increasing in frequency, and intensity.  The least little thing would trigger it.  If I touched anything on the right side of my face in a downwards direction, the pain would start up.  I could push my face upwards to try to relieve the pain, but down is a no-go.  If I blow my nose, or even touch the right side of my nose, the pain monster returns.

Eventually the eye doctor realized my pain was not from the infection, and thought I might have “tic deleraux” [sp], a rare nerve condition that exhibits symptoms like I describe.  He sent me to a Neurologist for further treatment.  After an MRI, MRA, MRV, and CT Scan to confirm, it appears as though I have a 3.2mm aneurism along the carotid artery in my brain.  I have been given medicine to try to reduce pain incidents and it has worked sometimes very well, sometimes not so much.  The next step is to see the Neuro Surgeon to find out what is the plan will be.  I imagine treatment will be meds to try to reduce it, or surgery to try to fix it.  Either way, the risk remains in my head.  That risk could be fatal in an instant, or it could sit there for a while and do nothing.  Since the pain monster keeps attacking, I have to assume the risk is not a very good one.

So what do you do?  There is not much the patient can do.  I chase doctors to call me back, and testers to schedule me sooner, and produce results faster.  These are things I can do, ironic that I need to do them, considering healing me is supposed to be a top priority for these folks.  But then, I am only one patient in a storm of patients who all have similar needs, some with higher priorities, so really, who am I.  Ultimately you wait.  You wait to hear what is next.  You wait for people to call you back, who promise they will, but somehow never seem to.  You wait with a personal urgency and impatience that health care providers seem not to share.  Thus far, I cannot be too disappointed with my wife’s insurance carrier at Florida Hospital.  They have approved my tests, and doctor’s visits consistently.  The medical staff has all been very courteous, and pleasant.  But when the time-bomb sits in your head, and when periodic pain reminds you it is there.  Waiting is tough.

What do you want?  Seems like an obvious answer, you want to live, much longer, and without pain.  But even as I write this, that outcome could be sadly different.  If for some reason, what I want, is not going to be something I get.  It forces me to ask, what else do I want?  The first thing that comes to my mind, is that I want my wife Laura, to continue her journey of spiritual submission to Jesus Christ, and I want to meet her in that Kingdom that is just beyond our sight.  But this is a bit presumptuous really.  It assumes I will be there, and to date there is no evidence I have earned that fate.  It also wants to avoid the idea that once I am gone, human nature and the need for companionship will kick in, and my wife will find a happiness with another man who may also make it to the heaven we all seek.  What then?  My bomb goes off now and I sleep not having a concept of time.  For me it is one second writing, the next second being escorted to heaven (because I trust Jesus’ ability to fix me spiritually even though I cannot).  I will still love my wife like I did a second ago.  I will be looking for her to resume a life in eternity with her.  But I may find her with someone else, and happy in that situation.  It will take God to fix my heart if that occurs, but I trust Him that much.  Only God can change a heart.

So if eternal intimacy is another outcome that may not go my way, what else can I want?  My next biggest desire is to see my son Alex, find (or perhaps re-connect with) Jesus, and remain with Him until He comes.  My daughter Sabrina find Jesus, and stick with Him.  And my daughter Jennifer remain in the path she already walks.  Again a presumptuous desire on my part.  My parenting skills, and human failures, have left deep scars in the children I lift up to God.  My mistakes have twisted the beauty of having children into something all of my children avoid and do not see a value in.  The grandchildren I would have expected from a marriage I now prize above all else, are absent.  The environment I was a part of in their upbringing seems to have taught them only the lesson of keeping self-sufficient, not to take the risk of loving a little one, who knows only you.  There is no way to avoid responsibility when all of your children share that philosophy.  It has to be my fault in some way or another.  For 2 of 3 of my children to appear to value Jesus much less than I would prefer, or perhaps can see, must also be my fault in some way or another.  My failures must remain keen in their minds and hearts, and His mercy must yet be elusive in their eyes.  How do I plead for the salvation of the children that I damaged (without His forgiveness to even ask anyway)?

I think my parents know I love them.  I think my family does too.  My friends, whether the ones I am connected to on Facebook who I went to elementary school, or high school, or college, or work associates, or just those who accepted a friend request, or sent one themselves … all of you may not know I really feel about you.  It would be easy for me to say I love each of you, particularly in the medical condition I find myself in.  But that might be pushing it a little.  How do you really define love, if you are going to make that statement?  Is love a periodic message to those you knew forever ago?  Is love, reading the posts and status changes of those you want to stay in contact with?  Or does love require something more, something more personal, something more kinetic?  What I can say with certainty, is that I cannot remember a single negative incident or feeling with anyone in my life up till now.  If I ever wronged you, I hope you can forgive me.  If anyone has wronged me, they were forgiven so long ago, I cannot remember the wrong.  I do not feel anything bad towards anyone here.  In fact, I have a great fondness and affection, for so many who peruse Facebook to stay in touch.  I actually like seeing your pics, and watching the your grow, and families spend time together.  My love it appears is lazy.  But today more poignant than days when pain and risk were not so prevalent. 

If this experience is teaching me anything, it is teaching me something I already knew, just not something I did enough of.  It teaches me to love others in a more tangible way, every chance you get.  It teaches me to be a little more inconvenienced in order to meet a need and share a love a little more often.  It should not take a life-threatening issue in your life, to give you the clarity to dispel all the negative thoughts and feelings you hold on to.  It should not take a real risk that any second you could be sleeping in Jesus, for you to find the freedom forgiveness offers.  Spending your time worried about politics, or power, about prominence or wealth, is spending your time on trivia.  None of that matters in the end.  God forbid something like this ever happens to you, but if it does, trust me, what you want, what you really want, will not be to know who wins the election.  It will not be the myriad of things you focus on now.  It will be more personal, much more personal.  When you cannot mandate your own fate, when the illusion of control is finally busted in your own life and mind, what you want is much more about who you love, and how you love them.

Perhaps our mortality has always been that nagging reminder to prioritize our lives better.  Perhaps we were always supposed to love deeper, and find peace in the loving.  If you are reading this, you cannot legitimately say that no-one cares about you, because I actually do.  I hope to see you again, ideally in this world, but if not, then in the next one.  But I continue to believe in the power of prayer.  I would ask that you pray for me, but not just me.  I would ask that you pray for the salvation of my family, and your own.  I would ask that you pray for the salvation of those you are connected here on Facebook with as well.  I would ask that we create a prayer circle like never before.  For there is power in prayer, and I would not wish to be well, and be unsaved.  Nor would anyone I think.  It is us reaching out to each other in love, that is the mission and reflection of our God.  It is that kind of love that melts hearts, changes lives, and makes the world a better place.  Be a part of it, help me be a part of it, help those you love be a part of it.  If there is any further clarity that comes from an experience like the one I am having it is the same old tired mantra that loving others is all that matters.  While that is nothing new, or unique, or profound wisdom from me … it is still the only thing that really matters.  I ask, what do you want?

Your friend in any world,

Kristian

 

Gossip and the Rumor Mill ...

The scarlet letter, a public symbol used to brand the adulteress, thus humiliating her and serving as a warning to rest of the community.  Today we would not think of using such tactics … publicly.  But between friends and confidants, we are free to share our opinions on stories we have heard about the failings of various brothers and sisters in our church.  If a church leader is suspected to be found in some sort of compromising position, it becomes fodder for the membership, and excuse to warrant our own various objections to offerings, attendance, or any other element of worship we simply do not enjoy.  Harmless gossip after all is innocuous right?  What real harm can it do?  Shouldn’t a community of believers show an interest in what happens in their own church?

The TV images of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson in the 1950’s presented America with an image of family life.  Divorce was a dirty word.  Just being divorced and attending a church would often immediately bring condescending looks, and social slights, enough to let the sinner know their place in the community.  Women would stand guard over their husbands to insure the recently cast out, would not attempt to take their man to cover the loss.  So too would interracial couples find a hard time with acceptance in either community.  Christians would tacitly accept them, but not usually make them a part of the inner circle.  Nominal acceptance with back door critique was the norm for the day for years to come.  Fast forward 50 years and these earlier improper treatments have all but vanished.  Not because divorce is gone, but because it is so wide spread it now dominates the membership.  Mixed families, children from other marriages, step children, all now are commonly seen in the pews and the “stain” of divorce is now too common to make much ridicule against.  So too, racial prejudice has subsided to a great degree.  It is not gone entirely, but it is no longer politically correct to express it publicly, so it now only lives in the dark recesses of the unchanged heart.

How a Christian treats his enemy is a telling event.  But how a Christian treats his brother speaks volumes more.  Gossip, at its core, is about making one feel better about themselves at the expense of another.  Rumors, by definition, include the various thoughts, feelings, and preferences of the person speaking.  Rumors are seedy, unverifiable stories, usually designed to achieve a particular result.  To spread them, or relay them if it makes you feel more comfortable, is to be a gossip.  The only proper response to a rumor is to quash it entirely.  But instead most folks who indulge in the listening or spreading of rumors add their own embellishments to the story as it is relayed.  Most of us would focus on the victims of the gossip and discuss the harm that comes to them from this practice.  That is well known, but the damage continues.  I believe the more salient focus should be on the damage that is done to the gossip than to the victim in their stories.  If the gossip truly understood what is happening to them, perhaps the practice would disappear altogether.

A need to feel better.  A need to be respected and heard.  A need to matter.  All of us crave these things.  Our sins have so long beaten us down, that some of us decide to compare ourselves to others in order that at least comparatively we can begin to feel better about our own lives.  We reason that we may not like someone else, but at least we don’t go beat them up.  Of course the person guilty of assault reasons that at least he did not kill the guy.  The murderer then reasons that at least he only killed the guy who deserves it, not his entire family.  The mass murderer then reasons that at least he did not kill as many people as Hitler.  Hitler reasons he is doing God’s work.  Thus an entire chain of Christians reason that at least they are not quite as bad as their neighbors.  But ALL suffer, all remain in pain, and none find relief from it.  Comparative salvation is not salvation at all.  Comparative holiness is nothing holy at all.  It is vain empty pursuits to bury pain, rather than find a way to end it.

When we embrace the idea of “relative salvation“ (or this sin is not as bad as that one), we implicitly accept the pain that comes from our own sin.  In addition, our focus on the sins of others, leaves us focused only on sin - period.  We do not look to Christ for relief from our own sins, nor can we in any way effect the life of our brother who is also in sin, so at the end of our investigation we have accomplished nothing.  We are no better because our brother is found to be in sin.  He remains in pain as well.  This kind of thinking is what the devil longs for.  Instead of an end to our own pain and evil, we extend its life by ignoring it, and comparing it to the lives of others.  We make our own lives seem even better by embellishing what we know of the failings of others.  In so doing we lie to ourselves, as well as to those we talk with.  We want to believe our own lies.  We need to believe them.  For if we face the unvarnished truth about ourselves we see our own evil up close and personal.  We are then forced to admit we are NO better than anyone we know, probably worse when it comes to it.  This is a truth we wish not to find or admit, but truth remains regardless of our desires.

It is an incredible waste of time and life.  Instead of focusing on pain, why not focus on the cure to pain.  Instead of searching for meaning by comparison, why not allow God to create meaning within you?  A life that matters, a life that will be remembered, a life that will be missed in this world and honored in the next is not a life of pain, but a life of love.  When a person dies, we miss them the most if we loved them the most, and even more if THEY loved us the most.  We do not miss the ones we never knew.  We do not mourn the loss of random strangers.  But our hearts break when one who spent their lives loving and giving to us is taken away by the pain of evil’s ultimate reward – death.  The sting of love lost is keen and is remembered.  Most folks do not miss the absence of a gossip, in fact, most prefer it.  But to lose a loving servant of God is mourned by every life that person touched.

A change of heart is needed, and one is offered.  To change the life of a gossip, one must begin by allowing Christ to change how we think.  We need to value different things.  We need to love in a different way than we understand today.  The feelings of love we have now are dwarfed by comparison to what God is able to install within us when we let Him.  A person may not naturally be drawn to help the homeless or downtrodden.  It costs us our time, our money, and our convenience.  Most of us naturally avoid getting personally involved with “these people” choosing rather to give an offering now and again and let someone else do that actual work.  But when we love like Christ loves, it is an entirely different matter.  Christ while here on this earth, went straight into the ghetto’s.  He spent more time on the Martin Luther King boulevards of His day, than in the places of pomp and spectacle.  He hung out with the hookers, pimps, diseased, and possessed and freed every one of them from their physical and their mental chains.  He broke the bonds of sin that held the weakest in slavery because the weakest knew they could not do it themselves.

Christ longed to teach the Pharisees what it meant to be free from sin, free from the chains that bind us to want to do what is wrong.  But the Pharisees and religious leaders of His day, believed they had no need of this freedom.  They were content to find righteousness in their own actions and self-denials.  They measured their spiritual holiness by comparison with the publicans.  They performed their actions and kept to strict lists to prevent any action that might be deemed inappropriate, but their hearts were completely unaffected.  They did not know how to love.  They desired wrong doing in their core, and denied it in their mouth.  But ultimately, their own self-centered ideas of holiness drove them to kill the only perfect life that revealed their hypocrisy.  Christ came to die for them as well.  He longed to reform their hearts and free them from their chains.  But they would not have it, rather they thought to end Christ and resume their own ideas unchallenged.

The Pharisees and the Publicans both needed a change of heart and mind.  Our actions follow our thinking.  We do what we want to do.  For there to be change, we must want different things.  We must value something else.  We are incapable of accomplishing this change on our own, but we are not asked to perform this work.  Instead we are offered a God who longs to do it for us and in us, and sometimes in spite of us.  All we need do is surrender ourselves to Christ.  Not just to accept that He is our God, or that He created the world, or inspired the Bible.  Those are facts not our personal surrender.  Our surrender is to the idea that we cannot change ourselves and ONLY He can change us.  We need to think differently than we do, and ONLY He can make that happen.  We need to want what He wants, not what we have always wanted.  We need to love like He loves, not like the paltry thing we call love.

When we do start to see people like He sees them, the homeless and downtrodden become the Prince and Princess of England.  Will and Kate are seen in the faces of the dirty street walking, mentally challenged, medically needy who seek only their next fix whatever that may be.  Like Christ, we do not care how they smell.  Like Christ, we do not care what they look like, what skin color they have, how old they are, how lazy they are, how greedy they are, even how dangerous they may be.  Instead, like Christ, we see only hurting children that SO much need an end to their pain.  Our hearts break as we look upon those in such desperate need and we are no longer content to simply give an occasional offering for them.  We need to get involved.  We need to make a difference.  Our hearts explode with love and sitting still in our chairs is no longer an option.  We - MUST - DO - Something.  This is how Christ felt as He walked our earth and saw the pain in so many lives.  He could not rest.  He could not leave the work up to others.  He had to take action.  He loved us too much to sit still and hope.  He got involved and made a difference and 2000 years later billions remember His life.

To indulge in gossip, is to prolong the pain in your own life.  It is to grant an extension to evil, to allow it to remain unchecked and unchanged and it hurts the life of the gossip far more than the lives of those they propagate rumors about.  But it need not be so.  It need not consume the years you have left on this planet earth.  There is meaning for those who seek Christ that they have yet to understand or imagine.  There is love so great that it truly changes how we think and mandates what we do, if we only come to the source of it and allow Him to begin to remake our hearts.  To surrender our desires to Christ is to see them replaced with desires that will echo through eternity and make an indelible impact in our here and now.  The journey to perfection begins as we let our enemy die.  Not the enemy in the world, or even the enemy beyond our sight.  Instead our enemy lies in the mirror.  “I” and my own worst enemy and as I allow Christ to recreate me, it is Christ who is found in me, and “I” who disappears.  This is the beginning of a life of meaning, and an end to the pain we embrace.  Rather than focus on our pain, let us begin to focus only on its cure – Christ.