Will They Believe Me?

Isaiah 52:12 - But you will not leave in haste or go in flight; for the LORD will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

Let’s say you’re driving down the road and all of a sudden your car starts making an unusual sound. You pull over, open the hood and take a look at the engine. At first glance you can’t see anything wrong, but truthfully, unless someone taught you the basics about a car’s engine you probably won’t know what’s wrong. You get back into your car and decide to risk driving it down the road and to a automotive show to get it checked out. The problem is, when you get there, you turn off the engine and when a technician comes out to check on your car after it’s started there’s no noise coming out of the engine. Your shoulder’s slump. Here we go again.
 
He doesn’t believe what he can’t see.
 
You’re at your kitchen table working on your budget when suddenly; your refrigerator begins to make a load banging noise. So you pick up your phone to call a repair shop and just before the repairman arrive, the noise stops. Great, you think. Now he’ll never believe me that my frig is broken.
 
He doesn’t believe what he can’t see.
 
This line of circumstances can be applied to any number of vehicle or appliance issue where they have made a strange noise or broken down suddenly.
 
But did you know that this same line of thinking can apply to your health or a chronic pain condition? Here are some examples:
 
Your leg has been hurting for over two weeks. It hurts when you stand on it, so you decide to make an appointment with your doctor. At your appointment, the doctor begins to examine your leg. You explain that it only hurts when you walk on it. The doctor orders some x-rays, but the films show no sign of broken bones or torn tendons. He comes back in to tell you the results and you slowly shrink inside.
 
He doesn’t believe what he can’t see.
 
This type of appointment can apply to any number of things that can go wrong with your body that you can’t see with an x-ray or an MRI. A disease may be diagnosed with further testing, such as blood tests, which can come back positive for an active illness. Your doctor believes you.
 
He believes you because he can see it.
 
But what about conditions such as fibromyalgia or other chronic pain conditions. These often have no tests that can prove what is going on. So you try to explain to your doctor your symptoms, but you can see the way the doctor looks at you and you slowly shrink inside.
 
He doesn’t believe what he can’t see.
 
Let’s take a look at ways to prepare for the appointment so that your doctor will believe you. Bupa.co.uk posts the article, “How to Prepare for Your Doctor’s Appointment,” in which they give some clues to be better prepared such as talk to the doctor about one thing at a time. Many doctors are limited in the amount of time they have with a patient and may only be able to handle one problem per visit. In the article, it discusses that if you need to cover more than one problem, write them down in order of importance. Also they recommend a list of questions to ask the doctor about your health issue.
 
Sometimes we get frustrated when trying to convince a service repairman of our doctor that there really is a problem because they don’t believe what they can’t see. But all they really need to do is look a little deeper. Take a look at the Bible verse above. The Israelites were in danger, but God comforted them by telling them that he would go before them and would also be their rear guard. God also goes before me and you, and when someone doesn’t believe us because they don’t see a problem, God will always have our backs and give us the wisdom we need to walk through our circumstances. God helps us to know that though no one may believe us, God always will.

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