This God - his way is perfect: the word of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. 2 Samuel 22:31
My 94 year old father, pictured here, has experienced a series of challenges since the start of 2021 and yet he's expressing joy and thankfulness in this photo. The year began with a fall and trip to the hospital where he was released less than 24 hours later. He returned home and got very sick, spent a day in bed, then fell in his apartment the next day and was taken back to the hospital. He tested positive for COVID-19 and immediately began receiving the conventional treatments. Thirteen years earlier he signed a living will that limited the medical measures that he was willing to receive, one of which was intubation, a measure that is often used to treat COVID-19 patients. During this hospital stay, which lasted three weeks, his condition worsened to the point where they were running out of treatment options. He then came out of the danger zone and gradually got off oxygen completely. In the process of evaluating him, an alert vascular surgeon found that a portion of his aorta had an aneurysm that was three times the normal diameter and deadly if it were to burst. She recommended an endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR). He went through all the pre-op appointments and for the last appointment he was supposed to have a stress test, but the cardiologist and vascular surgeon could not find a suitable stress test due to some other complicating factors. They ended up recommending that since his heart was sufficiently stressed through COVID-19 it would not be necessary to put him through a stress test which came with other risks. They recommended him for EVAR and we agreed to the procedure.
On the day of the surgery, I picked him up at 5:30 AM, took him to the hospital, went through all the check-ins with the doctors and nurses, prayed with him and left at 7:30 AM when he was taken into surgery. I returned at 6:00 PM and took this photo. I've come to realize the privilege I've had to walk with him through this challenging time. In 2020 he asked me to help him write a story of a two year period of his life that we named My Formative Journey. He met and embraced Jesus as Savior during his journey, a journey that began forming him at age 19 into a man of integrity, a man who seems to me to live the words of Psalm 23:6. Trying to understand the path of troubles God has led my Dad through in 2021 has been futile for me at times. What I can see now is that God's way is perfect even when it does not seem perfect and that God has been a shield for my Dad because my Dad has taken refuge in Him. It seems that my Dad suffered through COVID-19 so that his dangerous aneurysm could be discovered and repaired, restoring him so that he would not have to bleed to death at some point in the near future. God has more chapters to write in Dad's life. This was one of them.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 23:6
