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In all good dramas, much of the tension,
like the action itself, centres around the choices that people make.
Since most grief events in our own real-life dramas call for
multiple decisions, may the Lord help us to choose wisely –
especially when our emotions are already stretched and strained.
In the months after Ros’s strange
spasms began, we found it hard to know who to tell about what was
going on. We finally shared the information with about sixty people,
but soon found it exhausting trying to respond to their feedback.
Lovingly offered, most of the
suggestions that came our way stemmed from experiences these people
had gone through themselves, or which they had heard about from
others. We found the sheer number of alternatives overwhelming,
especially because they covered an impossibly large spectrum. It was
rather like being told that
Ros was suffering from mumps,
measles, housemaid’s knee and a broken leg all at the same time!
Since, by definition only one of these diagnoses could possibly be
right, we found the whole experience profoundly disorientating. As a
rule, we found that the more intensely people offered their
suggestions, the less they witnessed to our spirits. The one
“constant” that emerged was that this was first and foremost a
spiritual assault – in other words, something to resist rather than
to adapt to. With this in mind I organised the day of prayer I
described earlier which brought about the breakthrough.
Choices are easier to make when we
know what it is we are trying to achieve. Taking a stand for our
principles calls for considerable courage, however, when we know
that they are likely to prove unpopular in certain quarters. There
comes a time when, like Martin Luther, we can do no other. To
hesitate at this point would be to concede ground to the enemy, and
to risk missing our goal altogether.7
If I may take an example that meant a
lot to us, even though it barely registers when compared to the more
serious issues we are looking at elsewhere in this book, we wanted
our last two children to be born at home. A consultant summoned Ros
when she was forty weeks pregnant with our third child, and, without
raising his eyes from his desk, told her that he wanted her to come
into the hospital for an induction “because babies die if they are
left in the womb.”
He had chosen the wrong person to
pontificate to! Aware that her gestation cycle regularly takes her
well beyond her due date, Ros was able to stand her ground – but how
many other women would have been able to withstand so much pressure
at such a vulnerable time. If we had packed our bags and made our
way to the labour ward, we would have missed a wonderful home water
birth.
All too many stories do not have such
a happy outcome, of course. Tragedy strikes unexpectedly, and we may
be left grief-stricken and frustrated because we unable to secure
the specialized help we needed. Or the medical staff lose interest
because they consider the situation to be beyond hope, and they turn
their attention to acute cases that may lead to a more “favourable”
outcome.
More often than not, however, there
are choices to make, and how we handle these “choosing moments” is
all important. Putting off making any decision at all is still a
“choice” – though rarely a wise one. May the Lord inspire the
choices we make in the short, medium and long term – and graciously
sort out any foolish ones we have made! |
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