The Best Medicine
Just after I had celebrated my 50th birthday, I was diagnosed with a potentially serious heart condition. I was caught completely off-guard. I listened in disbelief as the cardiologist explained what a series of test results had revealed. He offered little encouragement or hope, except for the possibility of a heart transplant. When I left the hospital that day, I felt numb, empty, and unable to think clearly.
It was not the prospect of death that overwhelmed me—although the possibility of death did get my attention—but the vision of a slow physical decline that would eventually result in my disability, placing a burden on my wife and family. I was frightened of being a cardiac invalid. For several days, I moped around and threw a number of pity parties that no one attended but me. I learned that a Chicken Little has few soul-mates!
A few weeks later several friends recommended that I get a second opinion. The suggestion made sense, and it sure couldn’t hurt, so I made an appointment with another cardiologist. After meeting the heart specialist, he ordered a repeat of many of the same tests that I had undergone a few weeks earlier. Perhaps, he said, the previous tests did not tell the complete story.
Soon after the second battery of tests, I went back to his office to see if anything had changed. I rather gloomily waited for the doctor to enter the examining room, thinking that the verdict would probably not be any different from what I had been previously told.
When the doctor stepped into the room, he sat down beside me and began to ask questions about my family, job, and various other things. Why was he trying to put me at ease? “Maybe he was just making casual conversation to soften the blow,” I thought to myself.
After 10 or 15 minutes he moved to his computer, pressed a few keys and an image appeared on the screen. He explained to me that I was seeing an echo of my heart. He then pointed to the different valves and discussed how they were working, the size of the left ventricle, and a number of other heart related matters. “Yes,” he said, “the tests have verified that you have some issues with your heart.”
I felt queasy, hot, and could feel perspiration forming on my face. Then he turned to me and said, “But there is no reason to panic. There’s lots of hope.” He repeated the phrase, “Lots of hope,” several more times. He continued, “People live relatively normal lives with the same condition you have.”
I could hardly absorb what he was saying. For several months, I had been mentally planning for a very different life, convinced I would soon be unable to take a morning jog or walk our dog or hike in the mountains. I had even taken a look at my will to make sure everything was in order. And now the doctor was telling me, “There’s lots of hope.”
When I left the doctor’s office that day, my disposition had completely changed. Instead of preparing for death, I had to readjust my thinking and jump back into life. It was as though a beam of light had broken through the heavy, gray fog, revealing something beautiful and powerful that had always been there but had been obscured by the darkness. The doctor didn’t dismiss my heart problem—I would need to take medication for the remainder of my life—but he had given me a gift that I had somehow lost sight of—hope. And hope has a way of casting light into the darkest shadow and chasing away the most dreaded fear.
I am forever grateful for the doctor’s words of encouragement and optimism. My heart condition was not a trivial issue but was a problem I could live with and, over time, even be improved with medication.
In all likelihood the first doctor, who gave me the initial diagnosis, knew that treatments were available that could help my heart. Yet, for whatever reasons, he chose to focus on the severity of my condition and not the possibility of improvement. Maybe he hesitated to encourage me because he wanted to see if the medications would work. If he committed himself prematurely, he may have felt he might have done more harm than good. That is certainly a reasonable explanation.
Yet, hope itself is such an important life elixir. We can’t survive without hope. Hope brightens the darkest day and calms the spirit of the most troubled soul. “There’s lots of hope,” the doctor said.
I knew that way down deep, but by focusing only on my mortality and feeling sorry for myself in the process, I had forgotten that hope does not rely on the outward conditions of our world. Hope is so much more than that. In other words, even if the medications had not worked, there would still have been hope! Hope doesn’t vanish just because there is darkness. Hope shines light into the darkness and reassures us that there is nothing to fear.
Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said, “Let not your hearts be troubled. You trust in God; trust also in me” (Jn. 14:1). No matter the circumstance, there is always hope, for hope comes from God. Even in the darkest valley God is with us; there is nothing to fear!
Not too long ago I visited with my friend Dave, an ALS patient, who was in his last days on earth. For several years he had valiantly battled this terrible disease, but now his fight was almost over. He had fought the good fight and kept the faith.
His precious wife stood beside me as we tried to comfort her husband. I combed his hair with my fingers, gently touched his shoulders, and bent down so my mouth was only an inch or two from his ear. I whispered to him, “Dave, your adventure is just beginning. The door is wide open to a wonderful new world. There’s nothing to fear. There’s lots of hope.”
