Being diagnosed with a serious illness changes your life. When the specialist sat next to me with “that look” on his face, it was frightening. He was talking about things going on in my physical being, as much me as my mind and my soul. He reassured me that although my disease has no cure (yet) it is controllable.
Through services of anointing in my parish, I found comfort. I wasn’t alone: Christ was and is with me, my congregation is with me, my doctors are with me. Even though my disease has no cure (yet), my frightened soul has been healed.
Hold on to this thought: You are not alone. Christ is with you. The people of God will support you. Pray, and ask your faith community keep you in their prayers. Whether or not your doctors find a cure for your disease, you can still find healing in the love of God and the care of God’s people.
This is adapted from “On the diagnosis of disease,” a devotion found in Living from the Heart of God: A Journal for Life’s Stages, published by Women of the ELCA in 2007. Today we remember Elizabeth of Hungary, renewer of society, who died 1231.
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