Homeostasis
It's not like most of us think twice about the fine balancing act our bodies carry out each day for us to create an environment where we can survive and thrive. We are learning a lot the past few days as we rush back and forth from the emergency room after Lori crashes because of the intricacies of how sodium, potassium, cortisol, aldosterone, glucose, water, and the list goes on how all must come together in a happy balance.
Sunday and Tuesday Lori's body crashed so we rushed to the ER. A few hours later after a couple of bags of IV fluids they sent us home to try to figure out on our own. Is your sodium too low, eat more salt and drink less; if too high, drink more and eat less salt. If Lori has Diabetes Insipidus keep up the fluids and salt intake, if she has SIADH slow down the fluids, and if she has low cortisol, take some Hydrocortisone. No daily blood test is recommended for this guessing game, just get to the hospital if the patient crashes.
As I write, Lori seems to be doing a little better this hour, but just an hour ago she thought she was starting to crash again. Maybe the cortisol is working? Fortunately, very few people die of this exercise after pituitary brain surgery, it's just a few really scary hours now and again. Please pray that Lori's body finds homeostasis on its own without the need for testing all the various possibilities and long term hormone replacements.
I cannot help but relate this to my spiritual life. I know I am probably alone in confessing that I am always trying to balance out my life, with one big foot planted squarely in God's Kingdom and the other trying to run around with the cares of the world, and seeking worldly fun and pleasures. For the many moms and wives out there, your balancing act is so much more difficult than mine, and getting everything to line up so that it works the way we want it to seems so impossible... because it is impossible!
If Lori's body doesn't kick in at some point and begin doing its own balancing act, she will be doomed to a guessing game of how much of each hormone or other substance to give herself so that an hour later her bodily fluids and organs are all stable and functioning harmoniously together. It is the head, from which all the signals come that must control the body sending out the ADH, TSH, ATCH, Protactin to tell the body to do its part in producing Cortisol, Aldosterone, T3, T4 which make the body work.
Each day our Spiritual Head, Christ Jesus, is sending signals to us so that me may produce the fruit of the Spirit {which} is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness,goodness, meekness, temperance and faith. If we are not in His Word daily, or continually listening to Him speak, then our spiritual lives and earthly lives soon deteriorate and we need some quick IV's to pick us up, maybe even a transfusion.
There is but one way to gain homeostasis in the Christian life and that is to stop trying and start living as a New Creature in Christ. To believe that the old man is dead, gone and buried with Christ, and that we have risen to a new imperishable life where we can walk with Jesus and talk with Him each and every moment of the day. We are no longer of this world, but we live in a new and glorious kingdom, and no matter what happens around us, no matter how bad our day, no matter how close to death we come, we are His and He is mine. This is not a future reality, this is to be our here and now reality. God in us, the hope of glory takes place each and every moment we believe it to be true.
I like being dead in Christ. Dead things do not care about the things of this world ... so much :) ... but instead when life balance is off, and deadlines are missed; when the hospital bills climb through the roof, and consulting trips get canceled; when babies are breech and Lori is so ill ..., I know that this New Creature lives and breathes Christ Jesus. For how can not we do any other, especially after all the difficulties and disasters of life He has carried us through, and all the myriad of bountiful promises that God makes to us.
The most comforting thing to know, and the truth that must be planted deep within every believing soul, is that God always keeps His promises. On this we can stake our health, our loved ones and our own lives. God will always be true to Himself, and in turn He will be true to us, who He calls His beloved children.
The most comforting thing to know, and the truth that must be planted deep within every believing soul, is that God always keeps His promises. On this we can stake our health, our loved ones and our own lives. God will always be true to Himself, and in turn He will be true to us, who He calls His beloved children.
Whereby are given unto us
exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the
divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through
lust.
2 Peter 1:4
for we are
born again, not of corruptible seed, but of
incorruptible, by the word of God which lives and abides forever.
I Peter 1:23
