This disease isn't going to get better, my pulmonologist explained at the end of my annual visit with him earlier this week, but I don't need to see you again for a year...unless you begin to deteriorate.
Really? I thought. He'd been so encouraging earlier - telling me that the c-t scan and pulmonary function tests I'd had the week before showed no progression of the autoimmune lung disease. In fact, it hasn't appeared to have worsened in the three years since my diagnosis. This makes me very happy, he said. Did he really have to end the visit with talk of deterioration?
Throughout the hour drive back home in the cold drizzling rain, I fought to keep that joy-stealing word from taking root. It's a battle I wage still as I cling to the truth that it's the LORD who orders my steps and has numbered my days.
As January comes to a close, so does Psalm 84, with the exhortation that the blessings in this life come from trusting in the One who created and ordained my days before there was even one.
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139:12-16, ESV
Have you been memorizing Psalm 84 with me this month? If you have, I'd love to know it. I have a gift for you.
