Handmaidens -Health Issues

Summer, 2001
Handmaidens

Health Issues	Topics
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Time to Quit Smoking?
By Iona Hoeppner

I was 13 when I started smoking back in 1952. That was an amazing 49 years ago... I have smoked for almost half a century! Now as I contemplate the ash tray by on my desk, noting the tars left by smoldering cigarettes, I can't help but wonder what the alveoli (tiny air sacs) in my lungs look like. The thought sickens me. Yuck!

But I have been here before... disgusted, dismayed, driven by the thought that I should quit. I have actually quit smoking several times... but never permanently. Never more than a few weeks. The problem was always motivation. I was quitting to please someone else. I was quitting to reduce health risks. I was quitting because "I ought to quit." But never because I wanted to quit.

Denial
Although I have always been fully aware of the health risks associated with smoking, I have never been convinced they applied to me. After all, I know plenty of octogenarians who still smoke and seem no worse off than others in their eighties. I am in denial. I am an addict. I admit it yet have done nothing about it. How silly is that?!

Idolatry
I do not believe smoking is itself a sin. (See my article Smoking Christians) But idolatry is always a major sin, and recently the Holy Spirit began to show me that cigarettes had become an idol for me. Many things can become idols in our lives... money, careers, hobbies, anything to which we devote so much time and energy and investment of ourselves that it becomes a focus in our lives above our relationship with the Lord.

An idol can also be anything that controls our lives... even fear or anxiety. God is sovereign and one of His requirements for His children is that they yield control of their lives to Him. Indeed, it is a wonderful and wise stipulation born of pure love, for only by placing God on the throne of our lives, can we experience that "peace that surpasses understanding."

So, as I took a good long look at my use of cigarettes, I could see that smoking had become something I "couldn't do without." More than once I've gone out in the middle of the night to buy cigarettes, and everyone who knows me well has heard my long winded defenses of my habit. Hmmm... I must admit and openly confess, cigarettes have been an idol for me just as any addict is a slave to what she is addicted to.

Deliverance?
My first step was to confess before God that I agreed with Him and wanted to repent of my addiction (idol worship) but I felt I was powerless to quit. I have full faith that He can deliver me from any craving for cigarettes, but even as a prayed for immediate deliverance I didn't believe He wanted to do that. As a wise and loving Father, God deals with each of His children differently. While there are those He has delivered all at once, He made it clear that for me, He wanted my participation. He wanted me to learn and grow... Yes, I will be delivered from this slavery to smoking, but it will be neither easy nor private.

Where God Leads
The first place the Lord led me was not to my pastor or even my husband. It was to my doctor. Together we worked out a plan which includes her prayers for me and the use of Zyban as well as all the info I can dig up. (I'm a research freak, so that will keep my mind off smoking cigarettes and focused on quitting strategies.)

Next, the Lord made it very clear that I was to develop a support group, ask for daily prayer and go public with every detail. Not only will I share my experiences (good AND bad) here, I have opened up to my church and Bible study as well as other on-line venues.

No Promises!
Did you know that scripture teaches us NOT to make vows or promises to God? Making deals or promises to curry His favor or support merely shows we have no real understanding of His love for us. There is NOTHING we can do to make Him love us more... and there is NOTHING we can do that would make Him love us less.

So I avoided the temptation in the heat of a spiritual moment to tell my Father I would cast these idols (cigarettes) into the trash forever. Had I done so and failed, the accuser would have tried to alienate me from the Lord... that's exactly what he wants!

No, instead of promises, I admit my weakness and throw myself on His unending mercy. I know He wants me to be free of this addiction and will lead me out step by step. And if perchance I fall one or more times, He will help me up, clean me up and we'll keep walking toward freedom hand in hand.

Planning
Success or failure in almost any endeavor hinges on planning. I have impulsively quit smoking many times... and always failed... always! Now, led by the Lord I have organized the quitting process into a series of small steps, attainable goals and am embarking on the journey. I'll let you know how it goes.

Why Risk My Son's Life
Author: Jennifer Myhre, Medical Missionary to Bundibugyo, Uganda
Submitted by Dianne Miller

Our first son Luke was born prematurely in the United States. It was a hard pregnancy. After long weeks of bedrest and medication, late-night trips to the hospital to stop labor, and the prayer support of countless friends he arrived safety. Our second child, we knew, had a 50% chance of also being premature. His birth, however, would take place in rural Uganda where even the basic medication and equipment, like oxygen and an incubator, were an arduous day's journey away. We had to consider the real possibility that we might not be able to stop early labor. If that was the case, he most likely would not survive.

What does faith mean in this situation? Is faith the confidence that God would give us a healthy term baby? Certainly I prayed and hoped for that, but should I expect it?

Well, Caleb Scott Myhre made his way into the world in the spartan surroundings of a mission hospital in Kenya. Let me share two insights gleaned by struggling to be faithful to our calling as missionaries to Uganda and as responsible parents at the same time.

THE RISK IS REAL
The risk we incur with our children is not theoretical. Living in primitive and isolated conditions in rural Africa, it is disturbingly, palpably real. This goes against the deeply imbedded American cultural norm of expecting a risk-free life. Does faith mean the assurance of protection from that risk? Does God guarantee health and life and happiness for His children? I had confused faith with a presumptive optimism, a confidence that God would work all things for the good I deeply longed for. Then I lost three children by miscarriage and had to reexamined my understanding.

As I prayed for Caleb within me, I was tempted to feel that God owed me the favor of saving my baby. After all, I had given up family, friends, material comforts, medical career, all to serve him here in Uganda.

In Hebrews 11, a long list of believers are commended for their faith. Yet not all of them fit our conception of "triumph" -- they were beaten, jeered at, imprisoned, mistreated and misunderstood, even killed -- in spite of their faith.

If this is true, then I must accept the reality that serious illness and death are possibilities for my children here. The risk is real, and faith does not erase it.

THE ULTIMATE GOAL
If the hoped for object of faith is not a healthy baby, what is it?

The author of Hebrews points to Abraham as an example. In one of the most disturbing stories of the Bible, God commands Abraham to take his only son, Isaac, whom he loved and offer him as a sacrifice. Abraham obeys, and as he raises the knife God stops him, satisfied that Abraham's commitment to his Lord is so all-encompassing that he would not withhold even the one thing most precious to him, his son.

What could be worth risking the life of my son? Only that for which God risked, even lost, the life of His own son -- a life lived in the incomparable joy of His presence. A life that never ends.

Jesus is the object of our faith, not health or success or happiness or even life itself. He endured greater suffering that I could ever know, for the joy of saving me. Following Him must be the absolute priority of my life, even if it means putting my precious, irreplaceable children at risk. He gives me a glimpse of how much He loves the Babwisi of Uganda by showing me that their lives are worth even losing Caleb.

In the final accounting, there is no risk to obedience -- not even death with separate Caleb from the love of God. He promises that our apparent loss is truly eternal gain.

This article was written by Jennifer Myhre in July 1995 for World Harvest News. Jennifer, her husband Scott and their four children are faithfully serving the Lord as medical missionaries at the medical mission in Bundibugyo, Uganda.

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