Cosmetic surgery

by Renae Brumbaugh

 

I had a bit of cosmetic surgery done last week. Only it wasn’t the traditional type of cosmetic surgery. Not a nose job, though I’ve always felt I needed one. More of a . . . piercing. Yeah, that’s it. A belly piercing. Three of them, to be precise. My doctor insists on calling it an appendectomy. That doesn’t sound nearly as glamorous, though. It came out of that tiny little space between no and where. I was fine. Looking back, I was a little tired, and didn’t quite feel myself for the two previous days. But I wasn’t sick. Tired isn’t the same as sick, at least not at my house. So I carried on with my daily tasks. I even persuaded Superman to go on a long walk with me, in hopes the exercise would snap me out of whatever slump I was in. Oh, and in addition to tired, I became extremely sensitive, which for me is a whole new level of extreme. Everything the S-man did or didn’t do hurt my feelings. In one part of my brain, I could see the rational side of things and knew I had no right to have my feelings hurt. But that didn’t stop the high dramatics and tears over the least little thing. Here’s a little peek, just to give you a better idea. Me: You’re ignoring me. Him: I’m not ignoring you. I’m reading my Louis L’Amour book. Me: You care more about Louis L’Amour than you do me. Him: (Long pause.) You bought me this book. I thought you wanted me to read it. Me: I do want you to read it. But right now, I want you to pay attention to me. Him: (Setting book aside.) Okay. You have my full attention. What do you need? Me: It doesn’t count when I have to tell you to pay attention. Poor Superman. There was no way he was going to win that battle. I feel kinda bad for him. So that sets up the story for a couple hours later, when I started feeling sick. Me: You hurt my feelings, and now my stomach hurts. Him: Uhhhh . . . Me: It hurts really bad. Him: Uhhhh . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Me: I think I’m gonna throw up. Him: I think it’s stress. You’re stressed out, and now you’ve given yourself a stomachache. Try to relax. Me: It really hurts. You can see the handwriting on the western novel. This was going nowhere good. I went to bed, but before long I was in the bathroom tossing my popcorn. Superman brought me a damp cloth and a glass of water. “I don’t know why you stress yourself out so much. Try to relax.” I did what he said. I tried. Really, I did. But it kept getting worse and worse until I finally knew this was more than stress. More than hurt feelings. “I think I need to go to the hospital.” Him: Because I hurt your feelings? Really? Me: No. Because I’m sick. Him: (Feeling my forehead.) You don’t have a fever. Go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning. Well, I didn’t feel better. I kept feeling worse. When every bit of nausea and discomfort and pain seemed to show up for a party in my lower right abdomen, I tapped the S-man on the shoulder. “This is serious. I need to go to the hospital. Now.” This time, Superman didn’t question me. Before long, we were in the car and on our way. I promise, that fifteen-minute drive took six and a half hours. We arrived at 4 am. Long story short, they wheeled me into the ER. Took my blood. Did a C-scan. The x-ray attendant guy assured me I had a heart, and that it was still beating. Then they took more blood. In record time, they wheeled me to pre-op, gave me some happy, sleepy drugs, and the next thing I knew, I woke up with three little incisions on my belly. And I felt so much better. Now, if you had asked me a month ago if I wanted to have an appendectomy cosmetic surgery, I’d have given you an adamant NO. Surgery of any kind is not on my bucket list, thank you very much. But after feeling the pain and yuck of appendicitis, I’m so grateful for that surgery. Left untreated, I could’ve gotten really, really sick. I could’ve died. That’s how it is with a lot of things God allows us to go through. We wouldn’t choose the hard things, ever. That would be pretty dumb. But sometimes God can see what we can’t: that things are getting infected in our spirits, and they need to be removed. Thus, surgery, in the form of many hard things we have to go through. We can fight it. We can try to ignore it. But we’re better off just letting the Great Physician do his work. After that, we’ll feel so much better. “Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies, Who satisfies your mouth with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s,” Psalms 103:1-5. Connect with Renae at www.RenaeBrumbaugh.com, and purchase her latest book, The Breaking Point, at Amazon.com.