More Faith than Fear: My Heartfelt Motto as I Face Surgery Next Week
Relieving fear through the power of prayer and asking for what I need
It’s easy to get overwhelmed.
Next Tuesday I go for my urethroscopy where they’ll zap my kidney stones with a laser.
They call it surgery because I’m having a general anesthetic. But it’s not considered an invasive procedure. Unless you call getting to my kidneys through my ureter, bladder, and both ureters invasive — which I kinda of do.
Those are really narrow tubes, folks.
So they’ll put stents in the ureters for a week or two to hold those puppies open. Then, I’m told, they get yanked out like tampons. I’m not sure if they’ll be doing that or I will. But hearing that makes me squeeze my knees together hard.
Friends who’ve had the procedure say that afterward, they passed the newly dissolved or broken-up stones with no pain or problems. But they were sore and uncomfortable for a day or two.
No wonder I’m nervous and a bit overwhelmed.
But rather than sit here and wallow in dread, I’m responding to my fear with compassion, information-gathering, and prayer.
More Faith than Fear is more than a motto. It literally is a tee shirt. One my mama bought me when we visited Amish country back B.C. — -before COVID. Like donning the spiritual armor Debbie often writes about, It’s time to put it on. And keep it on.
My response to fear is not to fight it.
It’s not the enemy. It’s a natural Creator-given gift we have and need for our survival. Fear alerts us to danger, and pumps us full of adrenaline so we’re on high alert with muscles poised to fight or flee.
Most of the time, we don’t need to either fight or flee. We’ve had our buttons pushed and we’re triggered, so the alarm went off. But it could be a memory, an unpleasant email, or something we saw on TV.
In that case, usually a few deep breaths and reminding ourselves we’re not in any real, current danger may be enough to reset our nervous system. This is important to do, otherwise stress builds up, disempowering us to respond in a real emergency. When this happens to me and I can’t easily regulate, I take a Rescue Remedy lozenge or two — a homeopathic product made by Bach.
This week, I get to remind myself that my procedure is not an emergency.
It’s a carefully planned process my urologist and anesthesiologist do all the time. Passing my kidney stones as they are now would be a real emergency and hurt like hell–or worse as friends who’ve been there, done that tell me.
This is to prevent having to go through that pain. So really, I’m blessed.
Let me count some of the ways.
I’m blessed to have a comprehensive health plan paid for by my former employer’s retiree association. I’m blessed to have a roommate who can bring me home afterward. I’m blessed to have a doctor willing to order my medications ahead of time.
This was not in her original plan. But it was in mine.
The last thing I want to do is stand in a long line for prescriptions when I’m still weak, groggy, and/or sore. I don’t want my roommate to have to either. So I asked for the Rx ahead of time. And when she didn’t agree, I asked again, explaining my concerns.
And just a few minutes ago, she ordered the drugs. Now I can go pick them up ahead of time.
Ironically, one of them, Tamsulosin, is prescribed for men with enlarged prostate glands. Go figure! No doubt it’ll shrink mine down to nothing, right? It’s also a bladder muscle relaxer, which is why they’re giving it to me. It’s supposed to help deal with the discomfort of having those stents. So bring it on!
Once she did that, and gave me the okay to keep taking melatonin and Rescue Sleep, another Bach product, I relaxed. Not all, but much of my concerns just got alleviated.
How?
By persistently asking for information and stating my case to the best of my ability.
But if the answer was no, that would have to be okay.
Which would require work on my part. Mental work. Work I started while in the shower. I prepared myself by acknowledging that Aikya would need to stand in that line and get my drugs for me. And the beauty of that is, she uses a walker. She can stand in the much shorter disabled people’s line. So it’s not as big a deal for her as it would be for sore, groggy me.
In the process of making my request, I looked up the drugs online. To see what they did and didn’t do. They’re not narcotic painkillers. My urologist said I can use Tylenol or Ibuprofen for pain. That’s reassuring.
If she said I needed a narcotic, I’d be scared. Scared of the anticipated pain. And scared about taking it.
But if I hadn’t pursued my request, I would not know any of this.
What I’m learning is every new piece of information assuages some of my fear and worry. A great antidote.
For the rest of it, I’m using my spiritual tools, prayer, affirmation, and journaling.
Monday night, our church prayer circle met.
We do a round-robin of prayer. I usually start it and speak my word for my concerns. Then we go around the circle and everyone prays out loud for what’s on their heart at the movement. And finally, someone closes the prayer with love and gratitude.
No surprise — I prayed about my procedure.
Affirmatively.
Knowing that my Higher Power and all available angels will be holding me while it happens. Knowing that my urologist and anesthesiologist’s hands are divinely guided and I get the best care possible. Knowing that my body knows how to heal itself and is full of light. The photonic light that’s in every cell. And the God-Light that operates on the spiritual plane.
By the time I said all that and more, my fear was gone.
That’s the magic of prayer. Something shifts in us, whether or not real-world conditions change. I’m in a better place to respond to whatever happens. And the creative power of my consciousness helps ensure a good outcome.
In this book, Healing Words, Dr. Larry Dossey shares the results of his research. He studied over a hundred studies of health outcomes following different kinds of prayer. He found that Thy Will Be Done prayers were even more successful than prayers that spelled out all the details of a desired outcome. How cool is that?
In fact, he found that just having a prayerful attitude got results. The words are less important than the state of our hearts. When we feel that divine connection, something powerful’s happening.
I don’t worry that Thy will might leave something important out. If anything, my laundry list prayer might. This is where trust comes in. This is where having more faith than fear comes in. This is when it’s time to don the tee shirt.
Writing this heightens my faith and minimizes my fears. That’s why journaiing’s one of my spiritual tools.
And affirmation?
Some form of All is in Divine order will do. My favorite is God’s got me, I’ve got joy.
And if this is true for me, It’s also true for you! Can I get an amen?
Marilyn Flower’s a sacred fool who writes every day — fiction, poetry, and blogs — inspired by a process called SoulCollage®. She’s the author of Creative Blogging and Bucket Listers, Get Your Brave On. Follow her Sacred Foolishness or SoulCollage® for Writers, and Stay in touch!