September 09, 2009

The Good Fight

My sister Shelly has never met a prescription drug she didn’t like. Since she has lived with me for the last couple of years I’ve made it my mission to fight her drug usage…basically for her life, even if it meant fighting her. Sadly Shelly is now going through her third major bout with cancer in a nursing home and will be going under Hospice care this week. I’m handling her terminal diagnosis well because we’ve known the disease would return. However, one of the goals of Hospice is to keep the patient pain-free…medicated. And I’m not handling that well. Oxycodone, Vicodin and Percocet are the archenemy and it feels like they are getting ready do a victory dance. Scripture tells us to fight the good fight, stand firm, resist evil and don’t give up…I wish it also instructed us on how and when to stop the fight.

1 comment:

Steve Corey said...

Gail;

-----Jesus’ blanket of mercy covering the sins of our lives has already reached global proportions. I am sure He can stretch it just a bit further to cover Shelly’s use of some strong pain killers in the throws of her last painful moments. Our weaknesses only show His strength, as Paul wrote, “Let God be true, though every man be false…” (Rom 3:4) for, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in Thy sight, so that Thou art justified in Thy sentence, and blameless in Thy judgment.” (Ps 51:4). And even the best of us had committed the most microscopically tiny sin before departing the womb, so we were all born with the need for His mercy to escape His judgment. It is not another sin that nullifies the mercy, but the mercy that nullifies even yet another sin. God only knows, it works this way in my life. Although Jesus refused the pain killer on the cross, and regardless of Shelly’s continued over-reliance on medications, it is entirely possible that God does not see as sin her use of some pain killers during her painful death. Maybe. Maybe not. But we are certain about the mercy thing.

Love you all,
Steve Corey