30) God, Heart Attacks and Cancer

Anyway you slice it, my health problems could have ended up much worse. As my sister said, I'm either the most lucky or most unlucky person in the world. This issue has called into question the possibility that "luck" is not responsible. As I explain, I find the notion that God manipulated events disturbing.

So, here's some statements that I've heard or thoughts I've had and my level of comfort with them.

1) "In his love, God has done his works and in his love, he has made all things beneficial to me."

Let's start with the latter statement.

comfort level [CL]: 10
Like I've said, I hate to admit it but I've really benefited from what I've been through.

2) "In his love, God has done his works"
CL [before]: 0
CL [after]: 5

Of course, I agree with the statement--the question is really whether the cancer was caused by God as a learning tool.

Before this happened, I would have said "no way" to this one.
I would have argued that God had other tools with which to teach us these lessons. On the back side of these problems, however, I would say that there's no teacher like adversity. Really, I'm sure God was trying to get my attention, but other methods didn't work.

Now, did God cause my cancer? Maybe.

19Nov -- down to 1 or 2 -- I just don't think God manipulates events, except through the choices of people.

3) God has helped me with getting good treatment.
CL: 10

Absolutely. I was very much at peace in discussing treatment options with my docs, and I think these discussions led to my treatment. I was very much at peace when I asked the opthamologist (as he was about to send me out the door), "Gee, don't you have some way to measure how far my eye was buldging out of the socket". The doc got out his bulgometer and that lead directly to his finding my cancer early.

4) God delayed my heart attack until I could get home from Africa.
CL: I just don't know. If I had had the heart attack in Africa, it would have been really bad. I probably would have said, "I'll just look into this when I get home".

19 Nov: 0%
29 Jan: 0%
Just seems too much like the prosperity gospel. Yuk.
19 April : still 0%. It just seems like if God is going to heal me, then he might as well make me rich.

5) God sent me panic attacks three years ago so I'd be ready for these problems.
CL: I just don't know

Honestly, the panic attacks were the worst of all these problems, but I did learn a lot about controlling emotions. I benefited so much from what I learned as part of that process. Otherwise, I would have had a lot of problems laying in the MRI tube, laying 14' off the floor on a little table getting radiation, getting angioplasty while I was awake. Goodness, I would have run from the room screaming had I not been through the panic attacks, I think.