Twenty years ago this month, my life did an about-face. I hadn’t been feeling well for a long time and I was extremely fatigued. My doctor ran a battery of different tests and all came back negative. Finally, she ran a test for Diabetes and that came back with an A1C of 14.6. (At the time the normal range was 4-6.)
When she gave me the diagnosis, she said I should start on medications immediately. I asked for a month before we started meds and she gave it to me. In that month I researched everything about Diabetes 2 that I could find. I visited the websites of Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic and the American Diabetes Association, to name a few. I read up on medications and their side effects (some were ugly). I found out what Diabetes 2 does to a body (blindness, amputations, kidney failure, heart attacks, strokes). And I learned what I needed to do (change my diet, exercise, and lose weight).
So, I embarked on a new path. I was diligent, almost militant, on what I consumed. I began to walk, initially managing only one block out and back, but before long I was doing three miles on my lunch break. Over the next 12 months I dropped 110 pounds. My A1C dropped the first month to 10.3 (that’s 33 points!), then to 7.6 a month later, and finally settled in around 5.0.
When I look back on that time now, I know my reaction to the diagnosis could have been much different. Many go into denial, some refuse to even try to manage, some head straight to meds. I can actually say that I am thankful for that “bad news” as it gave me a new and much improved life.
Forty years ago this month, I received another kind of “bad news.” I learned that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” That “bad news” that I was a sinner drove me to the foot of the cross, to the “Good News” found in the loving arms of a Savior who was waiting for me there with an armload of grace and a heart full of love. That “bad news” prompted me to find a new and eternal life in God’s Good News. [Romans 3:21-26]
