After struggling in ICU for about two weeks, mother-in-law passed away last Wednesday.  While everyone including me prayed that she would recover, I am personally uncertain if this would have been best outcome for her if the recovery was only partial.  The worst case possible would have been one where she made it out of ICU, but was paralysed in half her body from stroke and unable to talk, with kidney failure necessitating dialysis for the rest of her life, and with one or both legs amputated due to the lack of blood flow to her legs for an extended period of time while in ICU.

Yes, she was suffering that horribly.

In the course of my mother-in-law’s illness I kept asking myself if my lack of faith was a / the reason for the absence of a miraculous recovery.  This being the second time that I had experienced a family member struggle with a terminal illness — the first being my deceased father’s struggle with cancer — I told God that my faith could not handle another "disappointment".  Therefore, in some ways my mother-in-law’s struggle with her illness also became a struggle for my faith.

After spending many days wrestling with this issue, the answer finally came while I was in the ICU room one evening.

"Faith looks beyond the immediate". 

Meaning that while healing in this lifetime was what we hoped for, the absence of immediate healing does not mean negate our faith.  Rather, faith looks beyond immediate healing, believing that there will be healing beyond this lifetime.

The next morning I opened the Bible to Hebrews 11, which is the passage which I recalled talks about faith in some detail.  It confirmed what I had heard the day before.

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see".  (Hebrews 11 : 1)

Meaning, in the present case, that faith is being sure that there will be healing, even if we do not see such healing immediately, in our lifetime.

"All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.  And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. … they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them".  (Hebrews 11 : 13, 15)

Meaning, that God had given many Christians certain promises, but not all these promises were fulfilled in their earthly lifetime.  Instead, these promises were to be claimed in heaven, and these Christians continued to persevere as they were in faith looking beyond the immediate.

Similarly, healing need not take place in our lifetime.  If so then in faith, we believe that complete healing and restoration will take place in the life beyond.  Also, while we hope and pray for immediate healing, we should not be consumed with a desire to see healing take place in our lifetime.  We are all just visitors ("aliens and strangers") on earth, and it is healing in heaven that we should look forward to both for ourselves and those whom we love.

Having heard from God in the ICU and through Hebrews 11, the question of healing (or lack thereof) has lost its theological and spiritual sting, and what remains is for us to allow time to assuage the present feelings of loss.

We, and in particular father and brother-in-law, are in the process of building a new home.  It is a new beginning without the physical presence of mother-in-law, but touched by how she had loved them while she was alive.  There is also a new hope, that we will all get to see her again when our time on this earth is up, complete, healed and whole.

(For an account of my mother-in-law’s struggle in ICU, and her funeral, please read my brother-in-law’s blog here.)

The past week has been terribly stressful.  My mother-in-law sufferred a stroke Wednesday two weeks ago, and what I think it is most appalling medical mismangement at the hands of the hospital to which she was first admitted (blow by blow details recorded by my brother-in-law at his blog here).  It has been a total roller-coaster, and there is no end in sight.