Page 9 of Mistletoe Dreams
"She just has such a calm peace about her, and I'm not saying that she's never scared. I have seen her afraid. And I know when she made this decision it was very difficult for her, because... who wants to die?" Terry huffed out a breath. "Although I think it's more that she just doesn't want the pain. And I promised her, as much as I was able, that if she chose to go the natural way, I would make sure that she did not end up in pain because of it."
"That's a pretty tall order."
"I know. She might not be conscious, but she won't feel pain. Not if I can help it."
It was easy to see that Terry was resolved about this. And Hannah appreciated the fact that as much as she could, she was going to allow her mother to make her own decisions about her treatment and the way she was going to die. Sometimes in Hannah's experience, the medical establishment could railroad a person and bully them into choosing what they thought was the best way rather than allowing a person the autonomy of making a choice that the doctor considered to be wrong. It was something she’d turned a blind eye to so far in her career, but Terry brought it out front and center and forced her to think about it. The thoughts weren’t pleasant.
To Hannah's surprise, after the office staff came in and the nurse as well, Terry led them all in a prayer before the day started.
That was new. Of course, a lot of things were new. It was much, much different than the big city hospital she was used to.
Not worse, to her surprise. She thought the adjustment would be in the fact that the clinic didn't have as much medicine or access to care like the hospital did, and as the day went on, that was true. But the cases they couldn't handle were sent to a hospital that could, and those were few and far between. For the most part, they saw people needing stitches or people who were diagnosed with flu or ear infections, sinus infections, and those types of things.
Chapter Five
By the time it was time for her to see Marjorie, she wondered how Terry had managed to do everything by herself. Especially since, from what Hannah could see, Terry spent as much time with the patient as the patient felt like they needed.
That meant the waiting room was often full, and wait times were long.
"Hi Marjorie. I'm Hannah, Dr. Hannah Reynolds."
"I remember. We just met in the parking lot. Your grandmother and I were friends."
"Sometimes when people see me in the office setting, they don't recognize me. I think it's the white coat." She did wear a lab coat. It gave her a spot to keep all of the things she needed to carry around.
"Oh, I think I'd recognize your beautiful nut-brown eyes anywhere. You always had such a sparkle."
Marjorie didn't seem to be giving her a fluffy compliment but rather sincerely talking about something that she had observed. Her words made Hannah smile.
"Not too many people compliment me on my eyes. Thank you."
"I don't know why they wouldn't. They're definitely one of your most striking features."
"You seem to know just what to say," Hannah said, thinking about how being around Marjorie made her feel at ease.
"I feel like I never know what to say. I just say what I think and pray it's for the best."
"I have to really work on my thoughts. I could never say everything I think." And she supposed that was the way it was. Once a person got their thoughts under control, they could afford to say whatever came into their mind.
"I think it's just a matter of getting close to God. And that's by prayer and reading the Bible. We often think that we need to do something special, like a certain devotion book or worship services, or that there's some kind of Bible study book or Bible club, but it's really just you and God and God's Word. That’s all it takes."
"You're right. That seems too simple." She knew it was true, but it did seem like it should be harder somehow. People always wanted to take the things of God and turn them into some kind of hard-to-do ritual. When in reality, salvation was simple: just repentance and then belief in Christ. So easy, and yet... humans wanted to make it into a works-based thing that gave them something to strive for.
"I think sometimes we feel like it should be hard because it's so big. After all, we're reconciled with God and saved from eternity in hell. It feels like we should be doing something big to achieve that."
"Exactly. We think we should go around working as hard as we can, doing good works and saying so many prayers or something. But that's not the way it works at all. And if we just take a few minutes to read the Bible, we'd understand that."
"It makes us feel better." She paused. "But there are people who go the other way too. Use belief in Christ as a get-out-of-hell-free card and then don't think about the fact that God commands us to be holy because He's holy, and that as Christians, we're held to a higher standard. An impossible standard, because we're supposed to be like Jesus."
"Yes, it's confusing, I suppose, where we get the idea that we have to work our way into heaven when nothing could be further from the truth. But because we're going to heaven and because we love God, we want to please Him with our lives. And in fact, the Bible says that our lives are a reasonable sacrifice. So we give that to God."
"And isn't that hard to do," Hannah said, thinking about how hard it was for her to give up her life. She had plans and dreams and things she wanted to accomplish. And then she hadn't been given a choice about what she was going to do.
"You've had trouble with that?" Marjorie asked gently.
"I suppose so. I suppose what happened that brought me here made me feel like everything I had worked for was going up in smoke."
"But at the end of the day, God knew, and God had to have orchestrated it, or at least allowed it."
