God's Answer To My Prayer

Pete took Luke camping last night and Kyle spent the night at my parent's house so I had a much-appreciated night/morning of peace and quiet. I decided this morning to take advantage of the fact that I was on my own -- unencumbered by kids -- and went to church for the first time since my surgery. I wanted to try to get my head around the idea of starting chemo again tomorrow and thought that church was the perfect place to do that. While I was there, listening to Father Tarantino speak, I was reminded of a service that Pete and I went to back in early February, shortly after I was diagnosed. At that service, we let Father Tarantino know about my situation and asked if he would do a "healing session" for us. Immediately after the regular service ended, he took us up to the alter, said a heartfelt prayer to the Lord that I be healed, and anointed me with oil. I remember after he was done, he reassured us that "a miracle has happened here today." He said that I might not immediately recognize what the miracle was, but that I should trust that God heard us and that he had answered our prayers in some way.

I have often thought about how fortuitous my "suspicious" liver spot ended up being. Without this spot, I never would have received approval from our insurance company to have my surgery done by Dr Garcia-Aguilar at UCSF. He is one of the top colorectal surgeons in the world and he practices only about 10 miles from where we live, but none of that matters to an HMO. All they care about is the fact that he is technically "out of network" for our particular insurance. In the end, the only reason that they approved me going to see him is because of my liver freckle (the hospital that is "in network" for us is not qualified to deal with liver issues). If it had not been for my freckle, I would have ended up going to a less-experienced surgeon here in Marin and who knows what the outcome would have been.

I have often wondered whether my liver freckle was somehow God's way of working things out. I believe that God really did answer my prayer... I was able to get the best treatment available, yet at the same time was ultimately blessed with less-advanced cancer. Of course, the downside is that I also went through months of uncertainty and stress about whether or not the cancer had metastasized, but the reality is that I never really had any doubt about the spot being just a freckle. And I feel like the few times that doubts did creep into my head only made me more aware of just how precious life truly is, and for this I am eternally grateful.

And so, today as I was listening to Father Tarantino and reflecting on my "healing session" so many months ago, I couldn't help but think of a saying that I heard once which goes something like this: "Pray to God for what it is that you want, but don't tell him how to answer your prayer; he will figure that part out on his own."

With chemo beginning tomorrow, my prayer tonight is for the mental and physical strength to get through these next four months of treatment and for my body to once again be completely healthy so that I can live a happy, healthy life for many years to come. And I trust that God has heard my prayer and I am confident that someday I will reflect back on these next few months and understand exactly how he answered it.