Complications: A Continuation of the Last Story

She kept getting better. But it seems medicine, and it’s providers, kept fighting against her. Two days after surgery I noticed her leg was swollen. I knew that she had a clot in it. I looked at the chart, making sure that I had not forgotten to write for the medicine meant to prevent this particular complication. No, the order was there. As well, another order was right above it, written by the surgery team, which ordered the exact same medicine. Written twice, but never given. I called the nurse, and no, that medicine hadn’t been given. “It must have been overlooked”, they answered as if it were no big deal. But it was a really big deal to me. They continued explaining, “maybe the chart was moved by one of your colleagues”, and “we have been very busy”. Finally the gasket blew (it isn’t always that firmly attached anyhow, and this episode of apathy flipped it off). I explained heatedly that I didn’t care about any of the excuses, what I cared about was if my patient got her medicines. I emphasized that she could die from this. And how I wrote those orders to prevent stuff like this. And again said that the least important thing to me is the excuses that keep coming. That explanation probably did very little to encourage my relationships with nursing, but I lacked the strength to hold it back.

In spite of her setback, she started getting better. I had one of the medicine doctors seeing her to make sure her blood clot was being managed correctly. Better and better and better. She always smiled, and it delighted me to finally see her condition catching up with her attitude. She was actually getting better. I transferred her medical care to other doctors to manage her clotting issues and her chemotherapy treatments.  I couldn’t really let her go though, I thought of her every day, so found myself going by to make sure she was hanging in there, or to have a quick word of prayer with her.

I got the final pathology back. It was a cancer that is rare, but can be very aggressive. In fact, it was the one I was hoping most against. I went to tell her. I had to make her understand. Medical terms would be lost, so I went with a more accurate description – “I was hoping it would be a type that we could really squash dead, but it is a type that is much harder to kill, and even with the treatment, it could come back”. I told her about the medicines she was going to be taking. How they were cruel to the body, but how she had to hold on, even through the hard times. Looking at her little frail body, I was surprised to hear her so excited to fight against it. And so she did. Made it through the first round of chemo weak but vibrant, and smiling as always.

About a week passed. Just a few days after she was readmitted for more chemo, I got a call from her brother. He said she was not breathing well and was confused, and that he couldn’t find a doctor. I hung up and called the medical doctor at the hospital to please go and see her. Soon it was clear. Her issues had been “lost” on the readmission. The new doctor didn’t know her well. No one was following her issues. The medicine to treat the blood clot had been forgotten. She died the next morning of a clot that moved to the lung.

I had poured my heart out into her. I cared too much. She loved it when I came to see her. She loved that I would walk through it, and hope through it with her. I loved to watch her get better. But caring wasn’t enough. It seemed that it was an avoidable death, a greater tragedy than when a loss couldn’t have been prevented. Too many things had gone wrong one after the other, leading to the loss of life. I was discouraged and frustrated. And just plain sad.

It is a hard reminder that my best is not enough. That medicine isn’t enough. Out here we need better training, better management, a better system. Our resources, including both human resources and medical resources, are stretched too thin. In fact, for most of the society here such loss of life is accepted as normal. It is not the exception. All those things really are issues. But if they were fixed, it still wouldn’t be enough. It still couldn’t make sense of the madness of circumstances that we pass through. It couldn’t make sense of our losses.

But my patient seemed to make sense of life, at least to me. In spite of her circumstance, I never saw a bad attitude. She never complained, though she certainly had reason. There was no feeling sorry for herself. In the midst of great pain, she pushed through with a smile. Over one hurdle, over another, she just kept climbing. While I was frustrated and tired from fighting on her behalf, she was just resting and trusting that God would care for her. She did want the medical care, she wanted help, but she knew that it wasn’t ultimate. She could rest in Him.

Too often I cannot rest. I am too busy fighting. I fight on behalf of my patients. I push to make the staff provide better care. I fight for the injustices I see all around. Sometimes I work as though I am holding up everything around me. Frustrations abound because I carry more than I am meant to. My grasp is a bit too tight. One day I will know better how and what to fight. One day I will know better how to rest in Him.

For this time, in spite of the struggles and frustrations, I have lost the battle on her behalf. Yet still she rests, now more completely than she ever has.

The Kindness of God in the Bitterness of Cancer

The greed of cancer. Taking position and strength from places it should never have gone. Invading bodily fields it was never given a right to enter. Growing and stealing from other organs without any regard to their welfare. 

Stupid cancer. 

Her belly had grown beyond the size of practically any that I had ever seen. It grew far beyond her pregnancy expectations. There was indeed a living child within. But it was getting squished and pushed more and more as the tumor grew. Eventually the child came, early, but healthy. However, the abdomen was still massive, as if many babies still rested inside.

She was a young woman, younger than me, pregnant with her fifth child. A doctor had seen the tumor in an ultrasound during the middle of pregnancy. Then, it was 7 inches in size. He stapled the report in her little booklet. But he never told her. After she delivered, she waited, wondering what was happening. There had been no change in the size of her belly even though the baby had come out. Six more weeks past. Her abdomen bulged beneath her ribs, hugely swollen, now many times it’s earlier size. The rest of her frame was like that of a refugee, frail and thin, making the protruding belly even more strangely alien. She began to have difficulty breathing, and came to our hospital for management. I was consulted since she was postpartum, at which time I found the ultrasound showing that not very long ago it was only a large, but reasonable sized mass from one of her ovaries. In only a short time, it had flourished, and now was overtaking the rest of her.

I made a plan, knowing that I was in over my head. If there were a specialist, I would have sent her to them. But there was none. The head general surgeon said that he agreed with the proposed surgery, and so we teamed up against the disease riddling the patients frail frame. The next day, too weak to move alone, she wrapped her arms around my neck as I helped to lift her off of the stretcher and onto the operating room table. Without the surgery, she would have been dead in a matter of days to weeks. With the surgery.. I couldn't know. Hope and fear were in my heart. Hope that though she obviously had an advanced cancer, that it would show itself to be a type that was treatable with chemotherapy. Fear, because decision making and surgical care for her were beyond my level of training. 

Two hours later, we closed up the abdomen. The length of the incision was almost like a jacket's zipper, running the full length from just below the chest to the pubic bone. Approximately 30 pounds of tumor had been rolled out of her abdomen, into my arms, and then dumped into a large bucket. As much other residual disease as possible had been dissected, adding to the final total weight.

She went to the ward. I went home. She uneasily rested. I worried. I prayed.

Next morning, she smiled. Finally she was able to breathe. By the next day she was walking with the assistance of a walker. She continued to improve. A set-back would come, but she would struggle through it. Better days kept coming.

I wish I could say that we were out of the woods. But we aren’t done yet. She could still die from this disease that has taken hold of her. It is likely an aggressive type. She has a long road ahead. I have done all that I can do surgically. Now she needs chemotherapy. I’ve transferred her to the care of another doctor for the drugs that she needs to help fight the cancer. Now, as her doctor, and as one who practices under the supervision of the Great Physician,  it is time to once again ask for the help of my Supervisor. He has guided us this far, and is still at work. But now my hands are done, I personally have nothing more that I can offer. It is time to kneel. Because He still has plenty that He can do. I pray that inside her – from every crevice that has a cancer cell attempting to gain ground to the deepest depths of her soul – He will work to restore all that is broken. Please pray with me. He loves to hear you pray, and He often moves His hands to heal in response to your requests. May He be glorified through this one frail, sweet woman’s life - for as long as He gives her to live. May she know the kindness of God, even in the midst of the trials and bitterness of cancer. 

Generations and Restoration

Her diagnosis preceded her exam. The odor of urine made me want to turn away to get a clear breath. But her sweet smile and nervous eyes drew me in and I welcomed her into my exam room. I knew that she had a fistula – a condition where women get damage to their bladder and vagina during labor, and then leak urine continually thereafter. Now I had to find out how she got it, and figure out if I could fix it. Most women in the developing world get such problems through prolonged labor and delivery. Most are having their first baby, and lose it in the process of delivering. But that wasn’t really the course that led to the steady stream of urine running onto the floor.

No one wrote down how long she was in labor, or anything about her labor course in the little book she handed me. Her story seemed to indicate that it wasn’t too terribly long. Nor was there anything written about the C-section that was performed. They never really told her any of that either. So, it seems that though she labored, she wasn’t able to deliver normally. But surgery was done and a healthy baby was the end result. That is all I knew. But ever since the surgery a couple weeks ago, she had a stream of urine leaking down her legs. I performed the exam and saw that it was quite extensive, but appeared related to surgery rather than specifically a long, abnormal labor. 

She asked if her father could come in to hear the counseling. In came a smiling, joyful man. He was beaming with hope. It was as if the grin couldn’t leave his face. A few teeth missing and one short black one, his continual smile showed his excitement. He said that he was so glad that someone could help. He said that he brought me something. I didn’t really understand what he was getting at when he said that part though. It was only after they had left the clinic that the nurse brought the lettuce and scallions and celery – special things that most people don’t grow, as a gift for the certain success that he envisioned. He wasn’t a rich man, he was a farmer. As I stood there talking with the two of them,  I had to tell him what the expected hospital charges would be. The prices are only a fraction of what most hospitals in the country charge, but still can be significant for the patients and their families. I expected the usual, “doctor, it is too high, can you reduce it?” that I hear from so many patients. Instead, I heard, “no matter what it costs, I will pay it. She is my daughter”. It almost made me tear up to hear him. As if he would plant every vegetable, till every inch of soil, sell at every market, whatever it took, to see her healthy again.

Her eyes, his smile. They were creeping in on me. They were becoming more human than usual. She was somebody’s baby. In her arms, she carried her own firstborn, their next generation. She was ashamed of her condition and in obvious need. She was void of dreams for the moment, except for the great dream of being normal again. He was densely filled with optimistic anticipation.

It was refreshing to see such a father’s love. Here was his daughter with a newborn baby. There was no man around who had helped conceive this recent birth. Now there were complications and responsibility. It wasn’t as fun anymore. I asked her dad when I saw him a bit later if the father of the newborn baby was still around. His answer, still smiling, was “He has escaped. Now I am the father.” The only man in her life right now, was the one who had been in her life since day number one. He still stood steadfastly in her time of need, willing to do anything that could help return her to health again. He wasn’t rigid and austere like many fathers, he was loving and kind, willing to pour out himself, no matter the cost. If he hadn’t been like that before, her need had exposed his love.

But it wasn’t just refreshing. It was a bit burdensome. He looked at me with eyes filled up with hope. He brought vegetables in anticipation of some great outcome. I felt the weight of it. When people lift you so high, you’ve got a long way to fall. What if surgery failed? What if I couldn’t fix it? What if when they left, I had let down their hopes? I don’t like to hold people’s big dreams. I don’t want the chance to disappoint them.

So, I took it before my kind and gracious Father. The one who has poured Himself out for me. The One who has sacrificed greatly for me. The One whose love for me has been clearly exposed through the work of Christ. I asked Him for help and wisdom. I told him of my inadequacies, but He already knew them. I told him of my anxiety, but He already knew it. And though the weight of hope and expectation made me uncomfortable, I was reminded that He was big enough to bear it. So then I just rested and waited for the proper time to do the job that He has given me to do.

Surgery day came a little while later. She was the last patient for the day. She hadn’t eaten all day, and it was late in the afternoon. There was no complaining, though the wait had been long and she dripped urine all around her as she sat. As she waited on the wooden bench in the entry area of the operating room, her family brought the newborn baby to breastfeed periodically. She waited, and waited, and waited. Finally her time arrived. My neighbor, a general surgeon, assisted me during the procedure. There was plenty of scarring inside, with everything matted together that should be clearly separate. As I dissected the layers free, it became clear that the prior C-section had been improperly performed. The cut was too low, actually below the uterus. And then the bladder had been directly sewn into the vaginal incision. “Surgical misadventure” was the cause of her condition. We opened and explored, took apart and put together. We added an extra layer to keep the structures separate to try to avoid recurrence of the fistula. And then we closed it all up.

Post-operatively she did well. An ideal patient. She slept on dry sheets for the first time since her prior surgery. She sat on a dry skirt. The lack of normality now made “normal” feel extraordinary. She felt so good that she asked to go home on the second day after the procedure. There they went, she with the now brightened eyes and urinary catheter in tow, and he with that same big, bright smile.

She walked away a bright, young woman – not the nervous, embarrassed, malodorous girl from just a few weeks before. God allowed us to take part in restoring her wholeness. And I loved to see her bloom. Praise His name for restoration – body and soul.  

where heaven and earth collide

We all want to see where heaven and earth collide. I pray sometimes for the miraculous to occur in the lives of my patients. I wait, expectantly watching to see what will come. There are difficult times, when I am fighting with all my strength to save a life in a complicated surgery, or in a horrible delivery, I find myself crying out aloud for Him to make something amazing happen to bring resolution to the emergency. I, too, long to see great revelations of the unseen hand of God.

Humans always have yearned for such. Those circumstances are often rare, that is one reason why they are so exciting. There were some times when the miraculous seemed more common, such as during the earthly ministry of Christ, or during the early church. Still, even in the days of Christ, when He was doing awesome things which had never been seen before, they asked Him to perform more miracles to prove Himself. With God standing among them, they still apparently wanted more amazement than healing of the sick and raising the dead. Heaven and earth were wrapped up in His frame, yet, it wasn’t enough for most. But there were some, who saw divinity beneath the human skin. And as their eyes were opened, their hearts were changed. Other miracles were happening, but the greatest ones were unseen in the souls of men.

I remember when it happened for me. I had grown up in a church, but there was no substance to it for me. But that night as I sat alone and saw the lines of cocaine on the table behind me, and my friends wasted in empty pleasure around me – He opened my eyes to more. I realized that everyone around me was going down a path of destruction and hopelessness. And I didn’t want to walk any further down it with them. I wanted a Savior. I had never wanted that before. I had wanted a ride to heaven, avoidance of hell, and some “genie” type help along the way, however I didn’t want anybody with actual authority over my life. But in the external haze and beginning of internal clarity, I began to understand that if God really was legitimate, that He was worth a life lived.

I started to realize that all the things of earth weren’t what they had promised to be, and that the neglected things of heaven were more than I had ever imagined. It was as if I had never had eyes to see before, as if the world around me were new. I grew to understand the work of Christ – how literally heaven and earth came together in Him to bridge a gap between the two. I had heard about the work of Christ thousands of times, but it never became real to me until then. His sacrifice for my acceptance, His payment for my debt. Love so far reaching was almost unbelievable. But amazingly true.

I still want to see great and glorious things. Miracles and wonders, divine aid and assistance…but sometimes I forget that the greatest works of God are being wrought in the hearts of men. That is what I want to see more than anything else – hearts that come to see the unseen God and are changed by Him. The God who became seen as Christ, walked the earth, died to save the people on it, and then left the Spirit as a guide. He brought salvation and grace to the sinful who had no possibility of obtaining it on their own. Justification was brought to us through Christ, who died undeservingly, appeasing the wrath of God that we should have borne.  Only God could make heaven and earth collide with a plan so full of love and mercy, and yet satisfying justice. Only God. 

The Psalmist's Sieve

The Christian life is not a life to be only contemplated, it is a life to be lived. What does that look like? Lived in the midst of joy, delight, suffering and sorrow, with a thousand frustrations along the way. Sometimes I think, usually only upon reaching the end of myself, how I need to reframe my thoughts to align with God’s plans and purposes. He isn’t sitting in Heaven frustrated, irritated, and with vision blurry from anger. And yet, where I am right now, there is injustice, poverty, oppression, apathy, disease, pride, and death. The stench of those foul odors waft through life here every day.

Too often, though, we find ourselves fighting against them with a very human strength. Unfortunately, disease and sorrow and poverty are winning. There are times when we can alleviate a small drop of them, but one drop isn’t even noticed when it is removed from the sea. Our frustrations will have only mountains more to add to their burdens, unless we learn to let go a bit. When I say “let go”, I don’t mean become lazy or apathetic. I mean filter properly.

It is God who allows us to make a small difference, to bring a brighter moment to someone’s day, a smile to their face, restoration in the midst of decay. And it is God who, for now, allows the vast majority of those dark evils to remain. Even after healing, the body still heads toward death. Even great joys will have times of sorrow to follow.

Big things, little things, they start to build up and wear us down. The frustrations of living as a plain, normal human. Just like for you. The kids don’t quiet down to give you a moment to avoid the snap of your temper. Your spouse doesn’t even try to see it your way. The neighbor’s dog poops in your yard, not once, but every single day. You get overlooked at work, while others get acknowledged and don’t even deserve it. Your relationships are falling apart. He died. She died. They left. Don’t have enough to make the bills. On and on.

This is real life. And yet, in the middle of it, there is real hope. In every joy and sorrow, I want to grasp them each up and run to the Lord with them. Like the Psalmists, pouring out their hopes, praises, losses, pains to the God who truly does care. Those men had a perspective of God that was big enough for them to take their troubles to, kind enough to be willing to help bear them. They knew Him as the only one great enough to worship, and the one worthy of continual praise. So they brought Him their greatest and worst moments, and left them there for Him to make sense of. He is the filter that I want to sieve through as well. Too often, instead I run to someone who can listen to me vent, knowing that they will be on my side. Then I can have the feeling that they understand. There is validity in that sometimes. But they aren’t my comfort, or shelter, or peace, or shield – God is. And He certainly understands better – not only my situation, but how it fits in His bigger plan.  I want to learn how to run much more quickly to Him. To give Him the burdens that are bigger than me, the sorrows that can overwhelm me, and the praise that flows from inside me, and let Him sort out the details. He is big enough to manage all of that.

The Splash

I knew that she was HIV positive before I started her surgery. I’d seen her multiple times for significant other problems related to her pregnancy. She was kind, and smiled sweetly each time she came to see me. But this last time was different. She was bleeding too much and I knew that a C-section would be needed urgently. I put on my routine  garb –hat, glasses, mask, plastic gown, then cloth gown, followed by double layers of gloves. I moved quickly, as the situation required. The placenta was sitting beneath where I had to cut the uterus to get inside to where the baby was, so I had to cut through the placenta. This added a little bit of extra bloodiness to the routine operation. As I finally got inside where I needed to be, I stretched my hands to make room to get the baby out. The tissues started to move against the force of my hands, and the amniotic fluid rushed out. In that moment a mixture of blood and amniotic fluid gushed at my head, hit my hat, mask, and glasses, went behind them, and ran all down the side of my face. I tasted the slightly salty (unfortunately previously known) taste of the fluid as it even soaked through my mask. There was nothing else to do but get the baby out quickly. Meanwhile, the fluid had also gotten all over my assistant and the anesthesia staff too, and they had immediately left the room to clean up. So, I found myself alone, with no one to hand the baby off to at the baby warmer. I was yelling for someone to come in and clean off my face, but it was multiple minutes before anyone arrived.

Finally a replacement anesthestist arrived at the head of the bed. He cleaned my face with rubbing alcohol. I told him that I needed to rinse out my eye. A moment later the bore of a needle was aimed at my left eyeball. I usually think it is a bit ridiculous to be scared by a needle, but this one was looking huge! It was equivalent to looking down the barrel of a shotgun pointed at your head. It was like a centimeter away and the more I looked at it, the bigger it got. I thought the guy was going to pierce my eye with it. I instinctively began to back away. He saw my deep distrust. He told me to be still and started to squirt sterile saline forcefully into my eye. I’d never exactly had an eye rinse like that one. It was scary. He finished a couple syringes full and then I finished up the surgery. 

After the case, I rinsed it more myself in the sink, grabbed the medications that are recommended for HIV exposure, and then went home to take a shower. Yuck. But the yuckiness was just beginning. I took the necessary pills upon arrival to my house. They were quite large, what in my family we would describe as “horse pills”. Almost immediately after taking them I felt some uncomfortable nausea. I figured if I just waited, it would go away. Nope, that wasn’t an accurate assumption. My compassion rapidly began to grow for those on such medications permanently. The nausea was constant, initially only relieved when I fell asleep at night. In addition, frequent diarrhea left me nervous to leave the house. I felt bloated up like one of the dead frogs that I used to find in the swimming pool. Disgusting, that is how it felt, disgusting. I spoke to others who had to be on the medications before for similar exposure related risk reductions, and they all said it had been awful. Most had stopped the medications after only a day or two because they felt so bad that they couldn’t leave the house.

I knew that my true risk for contracting the disease from the eye splash was really low, but each time I thought of stopping the meds I considered how stupid I’d feel if I were that rare person who contracted the virus and it could have been avoided. So, I kept on. I never really felt motivated by fear, just by a desire to do what seemed to be the responsible thing for my health. I did consider the obvious, of course, that it would sure stink to get that infection. But a moment later, the less obvious, but completely certain reality set in – that God can manage any “complication” that my life ever brings. That includes every single sickness and injury and pain and loss. I don’t have to live in dread of something bad happening. I don’t have to live with fear of losing control over part of my life. All I have to do is live for the glory of God. It is so comforting to know that He can handle all of the details from there. Now that doesn’t mean that I understand what He does with all of it, but I know that He can be trusted with whatever comes. And that is good enough.

Practically, I am very thankful, as I have now finished those terrible medicines. All my labs are fine, with negative test results for HIV. And I have once again been reminded that being in God’s hands is the safest place to ever be, regardless of circumstance. 

Abdominal Pregnancy

Abdominal pregnancy. It's a very rare event that happens when the baby grows inside the abdomen, where all the guts and such are, instead of inside the uterus, where it should reside. It was one of those thoughts that always made my heart beat fast. What would it be like? Would the baby just hop out at me when I cut into the belly wall? The theory of coming across that obstetric rarity had always been sort of fearfully exciting. But as I stood there alone with the knife in my hand, there was no sense of excitement or adventure. There was only a very real sense that this patient could die in the next few minutes. She is alive right now, and she may be dead before she gets off the table. But there was no other choice.

I had called the surgeon on call with a fury of need and hope in the moments before scrubbing in to begin the case. But his phone wasn’t passing through. I had notified security to go to his house to get him, but he hadn’t come yet. I took a moment to pray my usual prayer for wisdom and skill and set my mind to act. I began to open the belly wall and found what I knew was a couple of cell layers away from disaster. I asked the anesthetist at the head of the table to call the surgeon one more time. I prayed that he would answer, and he did.  I waited, thankful that someone experienced with such possible complications was going to stand on the other side of the bed. He scrubbed in a few minutes later, and after seeing the mass, said that he had never seen something like this. If the mood were different I would have chuckled, since I was banking on his prior experience. The entire abdominal area was covered by the placenta, bearing its huge vessels boastfully before our eyes. If we got into those, the bleeding may not be controllable. The mass was attached to bowel from what we could initially see, and who knew what it was attached to beneath the superficial area of our vision. We found an area that seemed a bit thinner than the placental bed and opened it there. A gush of blood and fluid flooded out. I grabbed the baby’s feet and delivered it through the small incision that I had made. As we cleared all of the residual blood and debris, I noticed the importance of the exact area where we had entered. One inch higher and we would have injured the intestines, one inch lower and we would have been in the bloody placental bed. Indeed, God had guided our hands, just as I had prayed. After we could examine inside, it was clear that the possibility for catastrophe was even larger than we had known. The placenta had implanted itself in the large intestine, bladder, abdominal wall, and the kidney. How it spread to involve all of those organs was almost incomprehensible. But it certainly did. Removing it would endanger her life within minutes, so we packed some sponges inside to hold pressure and closed the belly up.

A day and a half later we opened her back up to remove the sponges. The surgery went well. She was in pain afterward, but overall was beginning to improve. I counseled her each morning on what the experts from the States had recommended for her further care. I prayed for her at night as I knelt on my bed. Last night as I prayed for her, all I could think about was making sure that she understood the Gospel. I determined to make sure to talk to her about it in the morning. But morning came and I again told her more about her condition and the treatment needed. She has so many possible complications and she had questions about each. I got lost in the medicine. It was evening as I read my Bible that I remembered that the one thing that I had set out to do for the day had been forgotten. I had covered the medical scene, but I had forgotten to make known the Gospel. Huh? I mean, am I a missionary doctor or what? Well, it turns out that I’m the very same doctor that I’ve been all along. How could I forget to mention the One I adore? Well, sometimes I get caught up in medical care and forget that something bigger needs to be addressed. It’s deep down in her eyes, past her figure, beyond her smile or frown, unseen and yet very real. Medical need is important, don’t get me wrong. The compassion to a patient through hands on care adds legitimacy to the claim that they actually are loved and cared for, that they have worth. But there is one weighty thing, and comparatively, the rest is feather light. And that is the truth of God’s love, poured out to us through the life and death of Christ. We call it the Gospel.

We all are sometimes carried away. Sometimes it’s by important things. Sometimes by just wasted time. We lose our focus and forget our purpose. We walk through hours, and days, and weeks like that. But people need to know that there is a God who loves them and who cares about what they are going through.

So, I walked back up there tonight to tell her about the goodness of the Lord. I’m no orator. I’m clumsy and stumble over my words sometimes. But I just started to tell her that God loved her enough to send His Son to make a way for her to be right in her relationship with Him. And that He cares about what she is going through now. The bad pregnancy, the possible complications, the treatments. He loves her, and He cares. I want her to rest tonight reminded of His great love for her in the midst of uncertain circumstances.

To those who read this, I want to remind you of His great love. All of life seems uncertain, but the Gospel allows us to rest in Him. He loves you and He cares.