Questioning God

Sometimes I'm afraid if I simply think something horrible, God is going to strike me dead. He has to make an example of someone, and that someone is usually someone in my family. Odd things happen to us, even if there's a slim chance of it happening to anyone at all. Strange people strike up conversations with the women of my family in line at the grocery store, or follow us in Target. There are plenty of "Who does this happen to?" moments on a weekly basis, and laughter between aunts and cousins as the moments are shared.

All in all, we believe there is a reason for everything, for ever conversation had with someone we think we don't want to know. We talk with the strange people, look at weird events from a different perspective and try to pull out the good--and good there almost always is. I've become best friends with more than one person I thought was strange and am a better person for it. God has His reason and I've learned most things happen for a reason. (You can the cliche all you want but, quite frankly, you won't believe it until you actually experience it.)

The one thing I don't understand, though, is why God is making my aunt go through so much. Through it all she has been a modern day Job, praising the Lord when all her strength is gone and when you think she can go no further. Through her I learned there is a reason for the things that happen, even if we don't know why yet. Most of the time, those things will reveal themselves.

Did you know that if my sister wasn't in the process of getting her health checked out to donate a kidney to my aunt that the ovary she had removed back in June might have created more problems than just sharp pains? My sister had a cyst removed from the ovary a couple years ago but the pain from it had never really gone away. They discovered it had come back, larger than before, and needed to be removed. Surgery was scheduled within the week.

In the process of trying to save my aunt's life, my aunt may have actually saved my sister's. There is no telling what the damage the cyst could have caused if it wasn't removed. It was so frustrating trying to get the wheels in motion and took nearly a year to get the kidney transplant to take place, but what if it only took a month? Would the cyst have been meaningless, would it even shown up on the x-ray? Possibly not. Everything happens for a reason.

But. I am having a difficult time understanding why the hurdles we had to jump through to make the kidney transplant take place have only increased after October 13th. My aunt's fistula in her arm, through which she had her dialysis, clotted on October 11th. On October 12th my aunt had to have a neck catheter put in that morning in order to rush over to the dialysis center to have dialysis--right after the surgery!--and my uncle drove her to San Francisco after the hours-long dialysis. The next morning my sister donated her kidney to my aunt. The doctor said the kidney began to function before the surgery was even complete. What wonderful news!

We knew there would be health issues for her to overcome. My aunt is 58 and it's her 4th transplant. The medications she's been on for years to keep her alive cause their own set of problems. She struggled with breathlessness and her body not creating enough red blood cells to keep it going on its own. And I can't help but feel like someone forgot to do something to try and fix her!

It's November 11, nearly a month after the transplant and my aunt has been in and out of the hospital emergency room. She's been to doctors appointments at UCSF and locally, told them of her breathlessness, had a blood transfusion before she left UCSF initially and had EPO shots on a regular basis. Yesterday, she was admitted back to the local hospital, where they NPO'd her (a diabetic!) and she went without her medication for two days--one of which helps stave off a virus in her eye that caused her to reject her first kidney (there was no medication for it at the time...it doesn't cure it, but it stops it, it keeps it at bay). And then the hospital ordered a contrast scan that has the potential to cause rejection because of the dye used for the scan! Twenty minutes ago, she was just admitted to UCSF.

I know she won't bounce back like she did after her 3rd transplant, in addition to the myriad of issues she's had over the last few years she is also not as young as she used to be--but what is going on that they haven't been able to get her medications straight? Why doesn't it feel like the doctors are communicating? Like they're so worried about freeing up another bed and pushing another patient out the door that they're forgetting the patient isn't paperwork, she's a person. Why does it feel like the pieces of the puzzle are scattered all over the floor and everyone refuses to work together to pick them all up?

My aunt keeps saying God has a reason. He has a plan. But what is it? Why is he making her suffer so much, only to make her suffer more? I'll never forget her giggling, her joyful laughter and silly shaking of her belly mere hours after the surgery. "I feel goooooood!" Lord, can you give her that feeling back? Give her enough health to heal, to get back to church and visit. Give her the breath she needs to walk from the front door to the car. Give her the time to write that book so many people already want to read. Let her raise her hands in church to You during worship. Let her stand through the songs instead of becoming out of breath just standing. Out of everyone I know, she deserves Your love the most. And she's the one, out of everyone, that will praise You in the storm (a storm that started when she was a teenager). Lord, please, just let her be healed.