Unexpected Present Arrives

If you don’t want to hear about moderately gross medical stuff, this would be a good time to head on over to Youtube and watch some cat videos.

I have had kidney stone issues this fall. I thought I had only been having them for a couple of weeks, but my memory failed me. I just checked, and I started having trouble in September.

I went to doctors for my first two stones (over a decade ago), but after that, I got used to receiving sudden healings after prayer, so I quit relying on doctors. I believe I passed two stones at one church and a couple at another. I no longer remember for sure. When I had problems this fall, I figured I would rely on God again.

I drank a lot of water and beer, and a stone came out in late September. I figured I was done. Hooray! Then last month, more stones came out. I passed several in one day. I did not know what to make of it.

I have felt a little weird since then, and I had some more symptoms. I didn’t think I still had stones. I figured I might have a lingering infection caused by the stones.

This morning I was surprised by the unexpected launch of yet another stone, and it was a lulu. I think it’s a personal best. I’m going to say it’s 4 millimeters long, although I haven’t measured it. I did save it, just so I could marvel at it. Also, if I have more problems, a doctor may want it. And it makes a nice paperweight.

I’ll tell you something weird. When a stone which has been driving you nuts for a long time comes out of your body, it will somehow seem precious to you. I feel like having mine set in a ring.

Here’s something weirder. Now that it’s out, things in that general area are working better than they have in years, not weeks. What’s up with that? I’m wondering if I had bladder stones for years and didn’t know it.

A small kidney stone can become a bladder stone if you don’t blow it out of your bladder. Then it can grow and cause annoying symptoms. When I was dealing with my long parade of stones over the years, it never occurred to me that they could end up my bladder. I’m not a doctor. What do I know? I knew I was getting old, so if the system didn’t run quite as smoothly as it did when I was in high school, I chalked it up to age and did not worry about it.

I have been reading about bladder stones today. Usually–not occasionally–they have to be removed by some horrible mechanical process. They use a device made by the same people who make those crane arcade machines that pick up stuffed animals. I’m pretty sure.

I’m not saying it’s EXACTLY like the crane machines. I believe they put a little oil on it before they use it. If the Obamacare death panel agrees to spring for it.

Evidently, if I were not among the blessed, I would have been in for a very unpleasant and, probably, expensive procedure.

I must have had a bunch of stones for quite a while. I thought I was drinking tea (causes kidney stones) and getting away with it, but I was mistaken.

If things really are as they seem, then not only am I healed of various stones; other common problems I had assumed were developing are not. That would be nice. My dad is a prostate cancer survivor, and I do not wish to have any problems with that particular bit of the anatomy. Some men do, and some men don’t, and I want to be in the latter group.

Man, I hope I’m right. It would be like Christmas in December.

Okay, EARLY December.

Sometimes I’ve wondered what I would do if I had this or that disease. In the case of prostate cancer, I have always felt like I should go for palliative care without trying to cure the cancer. Take dilaudid, watch TV, arrange my estate, and wait for the end.

I’m a Christian, and I don’t believe in suicide, but I’ve never heard anyone say it’s a sin to decline treatment. That loophole has helped a lot of people who could not find divine healing.

Prostate cancer treatment is unbelievably humiliating. You end up in diapers, perhaps permanently, and you lose all sexual function. It’s like my Great Aunt Berthy once said about being hooked up to machines and tubes to stay alive: “It’s not worth it. Not to stay here.”

She made it to 98, and she kept a big garden well into her eighties. I mean like half an acre, with hand implements. She had a root cellar sort of a structure behind her house, built into a hill. She kept it full of things she canned, plus her famous liniment, which burned like lye. She also kept bees. Big lady. Looked like she was 6 feet tall to me. She once shot a guy for bothering her chickens.

I am not overly attached to this life. The more I learn about God and heaven, the more horrified I am to be here at all. This is a very rough place. Injuries. Aging. Disease. Death. Income tax preparation. Jury duty. Killer bees. Paper cuts. Liver. The worst.

When I realize there is a place like heaven, I can’t believe I live on hell’s roof in a body which is nothing but a sack of vulnerable, malfunctioning, unrefrigerated meat.

I suppose that almost sounds pessimistic.

I’ve seen movies about angels and divine beings that have decided to become human for some unbelievably stupid reason or other. The second Superman movie! Remember that? Christopher Reeve gave up his superpowers. What a moron. What was the first thing that happened to him afterward? A middle-aged truck driver who was smaller than he was beat him bloody with one cheap shot. He bled all over the floor at a diner. First time he ever felt pain.

He brought that on himself. At least he was smart enough not to stick it out. Think how he would have felt, buying reading glasses at 40 or rupturing a disk at 70 while lifting a grocery bag full of prune juice.

He would have loved Obamacare. Shelling out $800 per month to be treated like a lab specimen.

Think how he would have felt, 30 years after Lois ran off with Jimmy Olson and took the Fortress of Solitude with her, lying in a doctor’s office with a bulky camera on a greased stalk invading his formerly immortal person. Imagine the regret. DOH!

No, no, no. If you have a choice, inside a flesh body is not the place to be.

I am extremely happy about the way things turned out. I did not expect to come out of this better off than I was before I got sick.

In what may be related news, I got a serious blessing last night.

For some time, I have been trying to get more love to flow through me. I had health issues that involved blockages, and I felt that they were God’s way of showing me how I blocked the fruit of the Spirit from flowing through me. I knew from past experience that God was able to open me up and make love flow normally, so I prayed for it a lot. I was tired of being provoked. I was tired of hostile emotions, including things like envy and malice.

Last night during prayer I started focusing on loving God and people. I sort of pushed from the inside and tried to hold the channel open. I know that sounds weird. I made myself think of the most infuriating people I knew of, and I forced myself to feel warmth toward them.

Since then, I’ve been doing pretty well with it. I have been choking the negative things off before they can get a grip. I know God is helping me, because I have tried this before, and it didn’t work.

I have had problems with worry. The Bible says, “Completed love casts out fear.” Jesus has visited me twice, and I felt love radiating from him like heat from a fire. While his love was bathing me, I could not feel fear. The desire to be rid of worry was one of my main motivations for trying to open up to love. I don’t know why love erases fear. It’s not intuitive. It’s true, however.

I do not want worry or fear. I don’t want their sibling, doubt. I do want love. We’re supposed to be little replicas of Jesus, and when people interact with me, God’s love should flow through me toward them.

God once told me he created the universe for love. That’s really something. Who else would create a universe for love? Others might create it for power or entertainment or fun. God made love the top priority. In heaven, we are going to be irradiated with each other’s love all the time. How strange that will be. Down here, we’re so busy putting out fires, being reactive, we don’t have that much time to think about love. That’s even true in churches, where we focus a lot on duty or the things we hope God will do for us.

If God’s love flows through you, your circumstances won’t be able to make you worried or afraid. That’s something very few preachers teach, and it’s not something we commonly think of as a goal.

It must have been love that enabled Jesus to face the cross. It seems that way, based on John 3:16. A parent will fight a tiger to save a child, and God is no different, except in degree.

I had a spiritual breakthrough last night, a kidney stone I didn’t know I had flew out the next morning, and afterward, I was in better shape than I had been in years. Is it a coincidence? It doesn’t look like it.

I plan to keep at it. I am determined not to be an angry or worried person for the rest of my life. I can’t make God happy and succeed for him if I’m nothing like him in my heart and mind.

I hope this is helpful to people, and I hope they get to read it. A hacker screwed up my site last night, and I had to do some work to fix it. I don’t know what other tricks he has up his sleeve, and I’m not willing to put a huge amount of work or money into making the site totally secure. If it goes down, it goes down. I’ll get over it.

I’m not sure why I attracted the attack. Maybe it was random, or maybe someone out there has a problem with Jesus.

I believe I’ll go drink more water now. I want EVERYTHING to flow.