"What are your own reactions as you think about the life beyond this life?"
As you know, Rus, in 1985 a kidney biopsy carried the prognosis of my certain demise, probably within two years. The physician who'd treated me before then told my husband that from what he knew of me and saw, "to expect to bury me within 4 or 5 months."
Well!...I had interrupteded the nephrologist when he was giving me the results of the biopsy to say it was all right - that I knew The Great Physician and Whose Timetable it is.
I genuinely meant that, just thankful I had not left this world abruptly through an accident or illness; and whether it was 5 minutes, days or months or years, I had time to relate what I wanted to say to loved ones and friends. As a Christian, this was 'Crunch Time,' and I stood firmly on knowing whatever was ahead, He would give me the strength to deal with it.
(Having worked in and around medicine for 19 years, I had no rosy illusions about the renal road ahead.)
One of course gives a lot of thought then to such a situation, and I sometimes wrote of "where I was" in dealing with it as the years ticked off and I was still working, despite that and other serious problems - it was 9 years before I was sidelined, by the way - and THAT was 11 years ago.
It now is nearly 20 years since The Sentence!
At any rate, in 1987 I penned something relevant to the Daily Bread message.....
forgetting You
(grieving more than I)
would hold me up
would I
but ask -
Erasing all my fears.
You lit the edges
of my tests
with reminders
of Your infinite love
until my heart came back to rest -
filled with wonder!
and assurances
I grew -
And through the trials
and backward steps,
I knew
that YOU ARE LORD!!
that bends in the wind..
the rainbow hue..
The drop of water that first nourishes
and then moves on in
Your River of Life -
flowing steadily now
back to You...
~ 1978 ~
He still had things for me to do in His Plan for me..:))