Now you can breathe....

"Take a deep breath. Blow it out. Hold....."
Once you have been surprised by a health crisis, there is never any such thing as a routine CAT scan again.
When I went back today for a long-scheduled, "routine" follow-up, my head was reminding me that this same medical test is the diagnostic gift that saved my life five years ago.
The familiarity of the place spoke a different kind of memory: the sound of my physician's voice when she called me to come to her office, the sobering, drastic diagnosis of a pancreatic tumor, the uncertainty until post-surgery pathology could confirm the nature of the tumor, the overwhelm at the prospect of major surgery for someone who was, until then, only in the hospital to pray for others. Those heart memories flooded my heart in excruciating detail as I signed in for today's followup.
Nothing routine about a medical procedure once results have turned life upside down at some point.
The mix of head and heart was not a question of faith. It wasn't a question of faith for me in 2007 when I got the news of a pancreatic tumor. There was no question of faith for me today. Nothing I have been through diminished my confidence in God's presence or love or power. I was clear that no medical test would change God's faithfulness--or my confidence in the God who has been my rock and salvation.
The imprint of a crisis -- and the reminder in every follow-up procedure-- is that life is a gift: a gift that is both stronger and more fragile than we usually recognize.
"Now you can breathe" the voice in the speaker said.
And, gratefully, I took another breath after each sequence of pictures.
I drove home thanking God that the natural apprehensions of a followup could be put aside. Life could be celebrated freshly and fully.
I take each breath thankfully and pray that all I have experienced helps me hold others in love more richly.