Have you ever had a hospital "waiting" room experience?
I've had several in my life, and I've found that the worst waiting experiences for me have been the waiting on news regarding how a surgery or other procedure has gone. Waiting to hear if it's a boy or a girl, waiting for someone to be discharged, waiting for paperwork, or waiting for a procedure is fine. But, waiting to find out if things are okay or not? It's a prime time for thoughts to run amok... That's when the questions start to come... What if...? What would...? How will...?
My husband needed a brain scan...an MRI... Yikes, right? It doesn't get much more "real" than when they want to take a look at what's going on up there! Concern for whether or not a brain injury caused some eye related issues was the reason it was prescribed. (In January, he had eye surgery, and they wanted to make sure there was nothing more serious going on than what he had already experienced. So, he was in a tube with dye injected into him, and I was, well, waiting).
To keep my brain from imagining the worst, when, in reality, we did not know anything more than that he needed a scan, had had eye issues, God is in control no matter what, and we can trust Him, and that this was the extent of the "real/actual" information that we had at that point, I had to make a specific decision. It was something I had to consciously choose to remember:
There is nothing scary based in fact and truth that I am aware of right now.
The techniques that I used were as follows:
- Thought stopping of the imaginary "what ifs;" staying in the here and now truth
- Consciously relaxing my body muscles to be at peace in the present moment
- Sending my cares up to God and asking for His help; remembering that He has good for us
- Finding something more productive and in my control to distract myself with
I had to reign it in. Sometimes, we all need to do that to grip onto present moment truth.
