You ask prayer that God would keep your body’s humors calm in the physician’s presence, that you might avoid the hospital and go straight home. But consider the disorder of the soul that produces this panic. The body trembles because the heart has fixed its hope on earthly safety. You flee the doctor’s instruments as though they were the final judgment, yet you do not flee the occasions of sin with the same urgency. Why should the vessel be more terrified of a mortal man’s verdict than of the wounds that defile the conscience? The devil assails most when he finds a soul isolated and fixed upon itself. Your petition reveals one who has been left alone with her fears, bandying thoughts back and forth, and the enemy has used the solitude to kindle a blaze. Where is the flock? Where are the brethren with whom you ought to be gathered, that the devil might not find you an easy prey?
You ask also that your son be kept safe and happy. True safety is not the absence of bodily trial, but the preservation of the soul from the nets of the evil one. Do you seek for him a happiness that the world gives, a fragile delight that shipwrecks the soul while it entertains the eyes? There is a spectacle far more perilous than any physician’s chamber, where souls drown not in water but in lasciviousness, and yet men call that destruction a pleasure voyage. If you would have your son kept truly, lead him to the spiritual choirs, to the fountain of Christ’s blood, not to the polluted streams where the devil’s melodies are sung with such pleasure. The greater joy in heaven is over one sinner brought back to safety than over many who think themselves secure. Let your care for his soul exceed your trembling for his bodily ease.
Yet you ask in the name of Jesus, and this is well. The blood that was shed without the camp is the only remedy that purges the conscience and silences the tempest within. Not the blood of irrational beasts, which could never perfect the worshipper, but the blood of the New Testament, which was foreordained before the foundation of the world and offered once for all. That sacrifice had no earthly fire, no repeated ritual; it was accomplished in blood, and by it an entire redemption was wrought, that we should no longer be held in slavery to fear. If you would have your panic cast out, do not merely ask that the symptoms flee while the root remains untouched. Bid Christ enter the chamber of your heart first, and He will cast forth the pipers and the noisy tumults that make His presence impossible. When He comes, He turns the water of unstable desire into the wine of spiritual courage. Then the physician’s office becomes no more than a shadow, for you have already stood before the great Physician who heals the soul.
Do not think it harsh when I say that your fear betrays a love still entangled with the things you ought to have slighted long ago. Paul would have chosen to end his life with famine rather than cause a weaker brother to stumble, yet you are cast down by a measuring of the arm and a stranger’s scrutiny. Where is the rejoicing with trembling before the Lord? Where is the doing of all things, whether eating or drinking or suffering the body’s frailty, to the glory of God? The thing you dread is precisely the arena where faith is perfected. If God permits the trial, will you dictate to Him the terms of your exit? Or will you say, as the three children did, that He is able to deliver, but even if He does not, you will not bow to the idol of fear?
Go then to the physician, but go having first drunk deeply of the awful cup that was poured out for the remission of sins. That blood speaks a better word than the anxious pounding in your chest. Look not to the instruments; look to the Cross. If the type under the Law had force to purify the flesh, how much more shall the reality cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Do not pray merely for a quiet blood pressure and a quick return home. Pray for grace to desire God’s will more than bodily comfort, that whether you go home or to the hospital, you go as one redeemed, not as one fleeing a shipwreck. Pray that your son may see in you a mother whose stability is founded on the rock, not on the shifting sands of circumstance. The Father’s good deed is the Son’s also, and He who did not spare His own blood will not withhold what is needful for your soul’s true health.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. God bless me to prosper, walk in excellent health, and never stop growing in the love, grace, wisdom, and knowledge of Christ Jesus. God bless me to know You in truth, fall in love with You with all my heart, mind, soul, body, and strength and never fall out of love with You. God, bless me to have an ever growing closer stronger, more intimate relationship with You. Bless me with the love, desire, strength, and the spirit of obedience to always delight myself in You, seek first Your kingdom, Your righteousness, and to always respect and obey You. Bless me to know You, so that I can trust You with all my heart, acknowledge You in all my ways, and lean not to my own understanding. Bless me with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding in all You have called me to do. 
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