I have this picture in my office of a hand pointing at a fork in the road as though the person were deciding which path to take and then thinking about how tragedy can put all of us in a dilemma. We can all be marred by tragedy by choosing the wrong path. On the one hand we can choose to be bitter by always dwelling on the negatives and the wrongs of this life. We lose a child and we can dwell on hating the system we believe harmed us. Refusing to give up the anger will cause us to develop ulcers, chest pains, underlying cancers when the bad hormones take over our immune system. Giving up the anger and embracing the joy of the Lord will result in the good hormones taking over thereby preventing the ulcers and underlying cancers from taking over our immune system. The choice is ours to make Not an easy choice when you are so convinced that you had been wronged!
I was remembering my last conversation with an attorney who happened to be Jewish. To this day I am convinced that God brought me to him. I was hoping that he would see enough there to bring a wrongful death case against our deceased child's doctor and medical hospital, but after reviewing the same evidence the other attorneys had reviewed he told me that although the medication she was on was something she could not metabolize it was a medication that is routinely used in the medical system. He then told me that I had a choice to make. I could hang on to my anger and keep searching for an attorney who just might be willing to take our case, but the chances were he would look at the same evidence, talk to the same experts and likely would come to the same opinion which was this would be a hard case to fight and decline to take the case. In the course of that decision I will have destroyed my family and wreck my marriage. Then he added that I could choose the route his wife and him did after their less than one year old daughter, Ashley, died which was to honor her memory by doing positive things in her name. Bitter or Better. That was the question,
That was the beginning of the healing point of my grief. I chose to pursue the better path. That path lead to writing a letter of forgiveness to our daughter's doctor, having a reconciliation meeting with him, and traveling to Guatemala on a short term missions trip Bitter or Better. That lead to the healing of my grief and restoring my relationships with my wife and son. Bitter or Better. That lead to learning to love life again by ball room dancing with my bride of 23 years. Bitter or Better. That lead to my son seeing me as a healthy role model for handling grief.
I have no regrets for laying down my anger because I know that Jesus Christ demonstrated the power of forgiveness through his death and resurrection on the cross. Christ showed me through this Jewish attorney that Better is the Better path to pursue.
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