Day 44
When They Don't Believe You
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff.
Luke 4:27-29
She kept telling them that she was having severe headaches and needing something for pain. They did not believe her. She did so well after the heart transplant that first year. She had got pregnant, carried a baby to term and done well for a few months after Ethan was born. Then the pain started.
She had gone to the hospital; they had examined her and could find nothing wrong. She kept insisting that she was in pain and that something must be wrong but she got nowhere with the doctors. I called a doctor and demanded to know why they were not doing anything for her pain. I was finally told that it was that they thought she was complaining just so she could get pain meds.
I was angry, very angry. They did not know Cathy like I did. She could deal with pain and not ask for pain meds unless it was needed. She had been through chemo therapy, limb salvage surgery and a heart transplant. She understood the difference between pain and discomfort.
As angry as I was I understood why they though she just wanted pain meds. She had been addicted to pain meds once before. It was no fault of her own. When you go through as much as she had been through for as long as she went through it you get put on a lot of medication. She had become addicted to a pain killer and we had to go through the steps to get her off. Now they thought she was just trying to get back on them. They were wrong. She had a child at home she desperately wanted to care for, the last thing she wanted was more drugs and more hospitalization.
It is so frustrating when people don't believe you or understand you. Maybe they have good reasons not to believe you or perhaps they evaluate the facts differently. Sometimes people don't believe because of their own shortcomings. It may help a little to understand why people don't understand you but it is still difficult to deal with.
The good news is that Jesus understands. Jesus had to deal with not being believed and understood. His own family didn't understand him at first. Jesus took years teaching his disciples and they never really understood some things until after the crucifixion and resurrection. The people of his home town of Nazareth did not believe to the point of that they drove him out of town and tried to throw him off of a cliff.
Now this misunderstood, not believed in Savior is in heaven at God's right hand. And when we pray he intercedes for us because he knows what it is like. He understands.
Upon Further Review:
Read Luke 4:14-30
- How was Jesus received at first?
- What was it that made the people so mad?
- How did Jesus escape the crowd?
Read Hebrews 4:15-16
- Why can Jesus sympathize with us?
- Because Jesus does understand what should we do?
Sometimes we have to harden our hearts. We have to decide to not care if someone doesn't believe us. I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it's true. When I was diagnosed with "cryptogenic cirrhosis" in 1998 and told I had perhaps 3 years to live I was put on a transplant list. People would ask what kind of transplant I was going to have and I would tell them my liver. You simply would not believe how many times I heard remarks like "should have laid off the sauce" or "all that drinkin' will get you in the end". At first I explained that my liver was not damaged from drinking. I would try to tell people that the doctors had no idea what caused my liver to be cirrotic. I was met with scoffs, laughs, and "yeah, sure's". It hurt mostly because the truth is I never drank. I don't even like the taste of any of it, never did, and the one time i tried it I didn't like the way it made me feel. I never did drugs either. No, I'm not a goody two shoes. I've done plenty of things I shouldn't have and that I'm ashamed of, but drinking myself silly and causing my liver to fail isn't one of them. So, over the years I've hardened my heart to those kinds of people. Let 'em think what they want to. I don't care. The people that count know the truth. Oh, and amazingly I never had to have that transplant. God answered some prayers big time.
ReplyDelete