"This is All Good News"

"This is all good news." That is what the doctor said after conducting yet another nerve study of my arms and hands. I had hoped that this study would reveal the cause of the incoordination and dropsy and clenching and pain of my right hand. I even got excited when the EMG tech said my nerve responses were slow (but then he used a blow dryer to warm up my hand and that fixed the "problem").

(My marked-up, poked-up, post-EMG-test-hand)

I've been struggling with this hand issue for years now. I thought it was carpal tunnel, but then it wasn't. I went to the chiropractor. I visited the neurologist. I underwent MRIs of my neck and spine. I tried a Parkinson's medicine. I got botox. I went to physical therapy. Nothing really changed.

So when the doctor told me the test showed no cause for my problems, I felt disappointed, and angry, and discouraged. I am thankful that I do not have muscular dystrophy or multiple sclerosis or some incurable disease, but I wanted the doctor to find something wrong so he could fix me. The lack of results from my test wasn't good news in my world. 

My mom and I have a weekly tradition of walking and talking on Saturday mornings and on our walk today, she brought up Romans 11:33. This verse says, "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!" As we talked about God and his inscrutable ways, I thought about my hand and how God says he works all things together for good for those who love him (Rom 8:28). My hand issues do not feel good. The lack of diagnostic results from my test do not feel good. But I'm not on the other side of the table. I'm not the one with the medical degree and the background knowledge needed to interpret the tests. I don't know what it would really be like to get the test and have results that pointed to a terrible diagnosis.

I think it's like that with God. We pray for healing and hope and help and other good things and we don't see God come through. Life doesn't go well and we don't feel good. But we don't have infinite knowledge. We don't see our lives as the tiny specks they are in the grand scheme of God's cosmos. We don't know how our pain and sorrow and grief and other "not good" things might fit into God's eternal plan.

The "not good" of life is hard! I am not at a place where I can fully accept a diagnosis of dystonia as the only reason for my hand issues. I get angry when I can't type well or when all the tendons and muscles in my forearm hurt from trying to use my hand. I still plan to go to Phoenix to see another doctor in order to get a second opinion. I am not happy with the "good news" of my tests.

But in the midst of it all, I still have to claim and believe in God's goodness. I have to recognize God's goodness in spite of my worldly suffering. I live in light of God's goodness, and that exists in an entirely different cosmos. That otherworldly universe is about God's glory, not just about what seems and feels good to me right now.