Surgery in the Morning

1 John 5:13
"I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may KNOW (emphasis added) that you have eternal life."

Tammy will undergo arthroscopic gall bladder surgery at 8:30 tomorrow morning. The gall bladder is inflamed, and the doctors agreed there was no reason to wait to take it out.

This is totally unrelated to the bone-marrow transplant or the recovery from it. She is a female quickly approaching 50 (next Friday), which are two of the three likely contributors to an inflamed gall bladder (she's not overweight, which is the third). The doctors not only believe this would have happened anyway, they're convinced this will do nothing to impede her progress toward full recovery. It may even help, as some of the nausea she's been experiencing the last few weeks may be more because the gall bladder was starting to go bad than a residual of the chemo more than three months ago.

There's always risk with surgery, so we're not jumping up and down with joy that she has to have it. But this is about as risk-free as you can get. She's proven that she's a strong woman who is a battler, so we're confident she'll get through this as well.

Are we sure? No. But then again, there's only one thing we're sure about. Death? Nope, the Lord could return before that happens. We know He's coming back; we just don't know when. Taxes? That's pretty certain, but maybe somebody smarter than we are will come up with a better way to fund the necessary government and get rid of the rest of it. The only certain thing in our lives is that Jesus Christ is Lord. We know that He lived a perfect life, willingly sacrificed His own life on the cross, and makes salvation from our sins as simple as believing in Him and letting Him be Lord of our lives.

The verse above was written in the context of the refuting the Gnostics, who believed that salvation came from "enlightenment" and was only available to a privileged few. They also believed that all matter is inherently evil, which means that Jesus couldn't have been fully God because He inhabited a human body. John wrote the letter to the Christians who were being told that their faith was not enough. John spent the first four chapters of his letter explaining the difference between their faith and the Gnostics' false teaching. He wraps up the letter reminding them that if they just held onto their faith, they would be fine.

That's what we're holding onto. We have confidence in the surgeon. We feel pretty good that the surgery will go well and that the doctors and nurses in the BMT unit will help Tammy get back to health quickly after the surgery. We're convinced that her recovery has gone well because the medical staff knows what it's doing and she has followed their orders. But we KNOW that God is in control, and we KNOW because we believe in Him that we'll have eternal life.

By the way, David Lee was able to replace the battery in my car, so we have one running vehicle now. We're in search mode for another one. David was driving yesterday when we were hit, and he did a remarkable job during the whole situation. He heard the car approaching quickly and prepared our car to avoid the traffic ahead of us after we were hit. After a second to make sure we were okay, he got out and made sure the other driver was okay. The other driver was a young man who was obviously upset. David calmed him down and reminded him that the important thing was that none of us was injured. I'm very proud of him (just like I am every day).