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It was like my intestines were tied up in a knot. I’d been having stomach pains for a couple weeks, so that I had trouble standing up at times. But to do anything about it would screw up my schedule. So, convinced it was probably just a mishandling of stressors in my life, I’d just take a few deep breaths, and an occasional Alka Seltzer, and press on. Wisdom at work, huh?Well, in response to my wife’s “promptings” I finally made a doctor appointment for Tuesday at 3.45pm. That resulted in an X-ray, followed by a trip to the local hospital for bloodwork and a CT scan of my abdomen. By 7PM they were admitting me to figure out what was going on. Hmm.

They thought maybe appendicitis but two weeks of that without rupturing is unheard of. So the chief contender became Crohn’s Disease, so they set up a… a… uh… colonoscopy for Wednesday. The worst part about that is drinking Colyte to flush your system. I don’t mind the flush. I just mind the Colyte.

Well, the inflammation that was so impressive on the CT scan on Tuesday was very minimal by the time they got it scoped on Thursday. And by Friday, with the pain pretty much gone and zero fever I was released without a diagnosis, and with my wellness back.

Monday I’ll go in for a barium X-ray of my small intenstine. I hope the barium tastes like Milk of Magnesia or something, because I love that stuff. Then again, I thought I loved Alka Seltzer until I had to drink a gallon of Colyte.

Anyway, assuming that Monday’s test will also prove nothing, what do I make of all this?

I tend to say that I had an infection and the antibiotics killed it. Others have said that God healed me. I figure either way he did. But I’m just hesitant to jump so quickly in proclaiming as “supernatural” what could be natural.

Of course some see that as missing an opportunity to give God praise. And I feel like it’s more out of *respect* for God’s miracle working power that I hold my tongue for the times that there is no other explanation. Just like I don’t want to say Criss Angel is demon possessed just because I can’t figure out his tricks, I also don’t want to say that getting better is a miracle just because there’s opportunity to say so. At the same time, I recognize that the desire to maintain credibility in the world can at times be in conflict with recognizing God’s more mysterious daily activities.

Is a miracle determined by the absence of any other plausible explanation? Or is it possible that even God’s true miracles can have a plausible (even if incorrect) explanation for those who are inclined to disbelieve?

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 16th, 2006 at 1:56 pm and is filed under spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.