Faithfulness

This past weekend I had a good reminder of God's faithfulness in all of the circumstances in our lives.

I don't know about you, but I find that it's really easy to believe that God is present with me when everything is going well. I can sit and thank and praise God all day long when I'm happy and things are going the way I believe that they should go. But, the moment a wrench is thrown into 'my plans', freaking out is my first reaction. By 'freaking out' I mean that I get sick to my stomach, and thoughts just begin to snowball in my mind. All of a sudden, I've gone from receiving news that something might be wrong to the worst case scenario of what that news actually means. But, once I start, it's almost impossible to stop... it'd be like trying to step on the tracks and stop a speeding train by holding out your hand.

Last Friday night, at about this time, I noticed that Jack, my sister's cat, looked like he was holding his jaw funny. Looking a little more closely at it, we could tell that the one side seemed to be swollen. My sister had to work at the hospital the next day, so I took Jack in to see the vet in the morning. Prior to even taking him in, I had a bad feeling. There was really no reason to have a bad feeling because it looked like Jack might have just played rough with the other cat and this injury was just the result; but, nonetheless, I just didn't have a good feeling. The vet takes a look at him and she starts to feel around on his jaw and all she said to me was, "hmmm... I'm not sure that I like this". Great. That's encouraging. She ran x-rays to get a look at the lump and she seemed less than hopeful after those results... basically, telling me that she was concerned that it looked like cancer. She said that it could possibly be a really bad infection, but you could tell by the tone of her voice that she really didn't think that was what it was and she was just trying to give me some shred of hope (or maybe she was trying to stop me from bawling... not sure which one) She starts throwing out at me all of these different things that they want to do and what our options would be if he did have cancer and I really wasn't processing any of it. All I could think about was having to call my sister, at work, and tell her that her 7 year old cat has cancer. The vet left me in the exam room to call my sister, but because she works in a hospital, she can't have her cell phone on, so I wasn't able to reach her right away and I left a message. While I was waiting for her to call me back, I was pleading with God that Jack wouldn't have cancer and pleading that He wasn't going to put us in a position where we'd have to decide Jack's 'quality of life' and be put in that position where we had to make a decision regarding Jack's life. I've been involved in those situations before and, actually, absolutely every pet I've ever had has had to be put to sleep due to illness and I was angry that God couldn't just let our pets die a natural death and not put us through the agony of that decision. I felt like I wasn't getting any answers from God or reassurance from Him and I was feeling really alone and just really wanting someone else to come in and take over- I didn't want to have to be there on my own. Around that point in time, the Vet Tech came back in the room to explain the procedures they wanted to do and once he was done, he told me that he was going on his lunch break, but that if we had any questions, to go ahead and ask for him. He started to walk out the door and I stopped him to ask him what his name was, so I would know who to ask for. I glanced at his nametag and his name is "Immanuel" - 'God With Us'. I thought that it was so amazing that God would reach out to me at that time and remind me that I wasn't alone and that He was with me in that examining room.

These are a couple of pictures of Jack right after his surgery:





Yesterday we found out that Jack doesn't have cancer. It turns out that it was that really bad infection that was a slight possibility, previously mentioned by the vet. So, he just needs to stay on antibiotics for a while and he should be fine. :-)

In this picture, he apparently doesn't realize his actual size...