I have an Attitude,,,

We had a new Nurse Practitioner come to give Piper her three month recertification examination yesterday afternoon.  Although the gal was new to us, she told us that she has been with Liberty Hospice for about six years.  Since they are on the road most of the day, the organization had done some reshuffling of their staff so that the nurse’s coverage areas could be a little closer to their homes.  I believe she said she lives about 20 minutes away from our home. 

While she was checking out my sweet wife she asked about “our story” of how the situation with Piper’s health began and progressed through the years.  It is a story I have told many times since 2007, so I started at the beginning and brought her up to current times!  At the conclusion of my comments I told her that I have learned many personal lessons and seen the different sides of many people including myself.  I also told her that I should actually thank the folks who gave us some of the hardest times, especially at the beginning when it seemed like we needed the most physical, emotional and spiritual assistance.  I related how their vehement resistance to us and the courses of action that we felt led of the Lord to follow, in effect, only caused us to be stronger and more resolute in our faith. 

As I re-read Proverbs 3:5-6 from the Contemporary English Version this morning, I was immediately drawn back into our conversations with the Nurse Practitioner.  This modern translation states:

“With all your heart you must trust the LORD and not your own judgment.  Always let him lead you, and he will clear the road for you to follow.”

And again, like I mentioned in my last post, what I saw and wrote down in my notes actually differed a little from the way the words on the page were composed.  My notes this morning spoke to me in a more personalized manner as I wrote down: 

“With all our hearts Piper and I MUST trust the Lord and not our own judgement.  We choose to always let him lead us, for we know – by repeated examples through the years – that HE WILL clear the road for us to follow.”

As I meditated on my personalized version of this verse, I began to think about “our story” that I had shared with our new compassionate friend when suddenly the word “predisposition” popped into my brain.  I quickly looked up the definition of the term and discovered that it means to: “to hold a particular attitude, or to act in a particular way.” (Oxford Dictionaries) And then… Walla!  The light went on and I turned to my wife sitting next to me at the kitchen table and almost shouted: “That’s what we did at the first sketchy report on the original MRI that was taken of your brain back in 2007!”  Following the initial emotional reaction to that report from the nurse on the phone while I was standing alone (thank God!) in the power accessory aisle in the Garden Department at the South Tulsa Home Depot in Oklahoma and my subsequent run to the outside soils storage area so that I could be totally alone, I immediately KNEW that our only answer to this devastating news was GOD and the truth of His Word!

When I got home a little while later and told Piper the negative information I had received, we immediately took hands without any thought or conversation and gave it all to God.  Why?  Because we were PREDISPOSITONED to trust God for this and any other similar situation.  As the dictionary definition states, from the very beginning of this life-altering situation, WE HAD AN ATTITUDE!  And just as today’s translation of Proverbs 3:5-6 says, we knew that we knew that we MUST act in a particular way.

In our minds we immediately KNEW that we had NO OTHER CHOICE but to seek, obey and then follow through on whatever Papa God in His Word and confirmed in our spirits told us to do!  Following that prayer in the late evening hours of that first night, it didn’t matter what or who came against us as we KNEW that we MUST follow God’s plan for us.  This may sound a little harsh, but I firmly believe that if we had rejected what we believed to be the Father’s directions for us and followed some of the contrary “advice” given to us that my sweet wife would not still be alive today!

Have you ever considered the things in your own lives that you have a PREDISPOSITION about?  When things turn south… where is the FIRST PLACE that you automatically turn to for help?  Is it 911, your family and friends, your Pastor or Papa God and His Word?  Over the years since that first report concerning my wife’s health, I have called and/or counselled with all those I just listed… but only after I have sought the Lord and His immediate directions for us.

What do you think about it?

Have a great rest of the week, and as you do, keep asking yourself…  “Am I expecting to follow my PREDISPOSITON when times get rough?”  … Hummm... maybe you also have an ATTITUDE!