Divine Cardiology (Part 2) Don't Lose Heart

About a year ago I had a phone conversation with an old high school friend who happens to be a physician. She had told me about a book she was reading called "Waking the Dead" by John Eldridge. She highly recommended that I read. I finally picked up a copy at the book store a few weeks later, but not being much of a reader I never made it past the 40th page.

The night before we left Kigali Naomi and I were chatting in room when somehow that book made it into our conversation. Ironically I had packed the book in my carry on while in Seattle but I hadn't cracked it the entire trip. Now I had to read that book! I am glad that I did...

It must say that I found it quite thought provoking. There were a few things that "made me go hmm," but overall what I got from it was worth the "hmm."

In the first chapter of the book the author makes this quote by St. Irenaeous; "God's glory is man's heart fully alive." He goes on to make the point that once we have made a confession to follow Christ, we have a "circumcised" heart. The evil is stripped away and we have a new heart, a good heart. God in fact loves our heart so much that He died for it. He wants our hearts to be "alive" and healthy. God's desire is for us to live in wholeness a victorious life. Wow, God loves my heart because He made it good? God thinks my heart is worth fighting for? That's quite a powerful concept if it is indeed true.

The author then discusses the idea of spiritual warfare. If our hearts have been made "good" (I think this the idea of sanctification for all you AF folks out there) then of course the Devil is going to target you. We need to be able to prepared and equipped to fight for our own hearts and our relationship with our Lord. Because He has made me in His image and has redeemed my heart I do not need to go life ashamed and bound to the thought that no matter what I do I'm going to mess it up. After all, in my weakness He is made strong.

Don't lose heart because you'll miss it when it's gone! You're heart really is something worth fighting for.

Divine Cardiology (Part 1)

I was in nursing school sitting in an unidentified class with a particularly long winded professor when I suddenly broke into a cold sweat and grew very pale. My table partner, being very perceptive, noticed my plight right away and told me to leave class that she would share her notes. Similar episodes, sometimes accompanied by chest pain, continued to happen from time to time for several years.
As a nurse in cardiothoracic intensive care this happened several times while at work. It wasn't until two years ago however, that one of the charge nurses was on to me. She would see me rolling around my patients room in my computer chair looking like "death on cracker." It wasn't until she threatened not to let me come to work that I finally saw a cardiologist.
I wore an EKG monitor constantly for an entire month and even had to print my own strips. Of course as a cardiology nurse I also analyzed them but I found myself stumped right along with the cardiologist. The rhythm abnormalities didn't appear to follow any sort of usual pattern. The options were an invasive heart procedure which could possibly end in a pacemaker or a trial of a host of cardiac medications. The drugs helped a little at first but unfortunately also caused a very slow heart rate. For over a year we tried but couldn't find the answer. Fortunately, though symptomatic, the arrhythmias are self limiting. But I continued with my crazy schedules and stressful lifestyle and thus continued to mistreat my heart. I don't think I was entirely convinced that it was worth taking care of. Eventually, the cardiologist and I decided that because we couldn't find anything that "worked" and because the rhythms were not life threatening, we would discontinue care and ride it out for as long as possible.
Unfortunately the episodes were disruptive enough cause some hesitation in what activities I chose to participate in. I finally quit working on my beloved ambulance because I was afraid that one day "the thing" would happen at just the "wrong time." Worse yet, somebody might find out about my "broken heart."
Everyday I go to work, I see broken hearted people. I fill them full of drugs, shock them, manually pump their blood, pace them, etc... None of those things are really able to cure them, they are just meant to hold them over. In reality my patients are cardiac cripples. What most of them really need is a new heart, a good heart.
To be continued...