Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to share Coffee Hour with me … and more of this month’s WOW, The Waiting Room in the Hospital of Life. I truly hope you are enjoying what we are discovering as we walk through the rooms in the Hospital of Life with our Great Physician. Grab your coffee and your Red Strand of Faith.
So I shared a couple of exam room experiences, experiences that truly changed my life and the direction of it. Let me return to that first example, because it was shortly after the exam where He told me He was going to be taking me off of work that He actually came and took me to the O.R. room!
The morning after the county’s doctor called in an off-work order, I remember being somewhat dazed and bewildered by the events leading up to that very moment. Memories of His words spoken to me in the exam room in the mornings preceding the actual work release came flooding back to me, offering me hope, peace, beckoning me to let go and take His hand, to let the deep work begin.
I sat in my big, comfy chair with my thermos of coffee, my journal and my Bible. I remember I literally cried out, “But I’m a court reporter,” and He countered with, “No, you’re not; that’s what you did for a living. Now you will become what I’ve created you to be.”
In the months that followed, through what I deemed a spiritual open-heart surgery, He peeled back many layers, revealing lies that I had bought into, removing them through extensive counseling therapy. While on that first operating table, He also cut away a lot of bitterness and un-forgiveness I had buried towards my abusers all the while exposing some of the many painful memories. These memories were what the bitterness and un-forgiveness were wrapped up in and bound by; but now that they were out in the open, no longer suffocated by life, they left me completely, now powerless over me.
Then my Great Surgeon closed me up, temporarily, and gave me glimpses of what He was preparing me for by sending me out to speak, transparently, about my open-heart surgery and my Great Physician. Those were some powerful, out-of-body experiences, kind of like being in a recovery room sort of dazed, but cognizant of what has just happened!
That was just the beginning! I can’t even count the number of open-heart surgeries that He’s performed since then, and promises to keep performing, that I may become more like the image that He created me to be: Like Himself. (Genesis 1:27)
And in between surgeries, I walk through the hallways of The Hospital of Life, and God introduces me to so many other patients, patients in so many different walks of life. When I am discouraged, He brings nurses into my life to encourage me to stay in The Hospital of Life.
Because of all my surgeries thus far, I am able to recognize those who are in pain, and I am able to encourage them as we pass each other in the hallways of The Hospital of Life. But there are those that He brings me to walk alongside of, those other patients that have consented to open-heart surgery, allowing the transformation process to begin in the Hospital of Life, that I may comfort them with the comfort I’ve been given after each surgery. (2nd Corinthians 1:4)
Yes, knowing that He who began this work will be faithful to complete it until the time of Christ keeps me looking in all the rooms of The Hospital of Life, that I may be His heart, His hands, or His feet. I’ll see you in The Hospital of Life!
Love,
Evinda
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