If You Knew the Gift of God.....

Conscience, Intuition, Communion --  All three rely on direct sensing, independent of any outside influence.  They represent a kind of knowledge which comes to us without any help from the mind, emotions, or will.  We really know through intuition; the mind helps us to understand what we know.  All the movements of the Holy Spirit on our human spirit are known through conscience, intuition, and communion.
                                            (  --- from yesterday's posting on Body, Soul, Spirit)
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Late January 2010:  I was standing in my back yard surveying the damage from a recent freeze, thinking about all the work I'd have to do when spring arrived.  Suddenly, without explanation, I was surrounded from top to bottom by a bubble of deep peace, and I knew that I would not be doing that yard work.  At the time, I thought it meant I was going to die, and the peace that surrounded me made it all okay.

"Okay," I said, "just give me time to clean out the attic so the kids don't have to do it when I'm gone."  Immediately, still surrounded by a bubble of peace, I went inside and started cleaning out the attic, not telling my husband why I was suddenly so industrious.  Two weeks later, I found out that I had lung cancer; in fact, the surgeon sent me home to die after my first visit with him, because he said the cancer was in both lungs, and there was nothing he could do.  Chemo was not effective with this type of cancer, he told me.  Still, the peace remained.  I already "knew" I was going to die; it didn't matter much HOW I was going to die.

Surprisingly, the surgeon who sent me home on a Friday afternoon called me on Tuesday morning.  "I spoke to your pulmonologist," he told me.  "He thinks that what is in your left lung is not cancer, but inflammation.  Regardless, he wants me to treat the right lung."  Again, perfect peace reigned in me.  The surgeon decided to cut me down the middle, as they do with open-heart surgery, so he could look at both lungs.  He ended up cutting out most of the right lung and doing three excisions in the left lung.

Two weeks later, as I was learning to breathe all over again, I thought to myself, "I guess I'm not going to die; I'd better figure out what I am going to do."  That was six years ago.  I am eternally grateful to the pulmonologist whose intuition told him that it was not cancer in the left lung, showing up on the PET scan.  Both doctors viewed the same scan; one sent me home to die, and one said, "Not so fast!"  How did the latter know he was looking at inflammation in the left lung?  Intuition -- and maybe communion with God also.

And the peace that surrounded and enveloped me throughout the event?  A Gift from God:  intuition, communion -- beyond any knowledge my mind or emotions or "positive thinking" could have conjured up in those circumstances.  I thought I was going to die two weeks before I had a clue that I had lung cancer -- and I knew myself and my life to be in the hands of a loving God.  Nothing was going to happen to me that He did not know about, and I trusted Him. 

I am so thankful for good doctors, and for the amazing work of God in both the skill and knowledge of the doctors and in me.  He preserved me from all anxiety, worry, fear, and restlessness.  I never lost a moment's sleep over the diagnosis or over the surgery.  Throughout the entire time, I felt wrapped up in the peace of God. 

Jesus told the woman at the well, "If you knew the Gift of God, you would ask....and I would give a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  What an amazing Gift!  If only I could tell the world......