A FEW YEARS AGO, I had such terrible pain in my side that I thought I was going to die. When I've been unwell in the past my natural reaction has always been to pray for myself. However, this time I was so overcome with fear, I felt I wasn't able to pray. Finally, after several days of feeling very uncomfortable, I asked my mom to take me to the hospital.
After waiting approximately 12 hours in four different emergency rooms, I was assured by a doctor that I wasn't going to die. As a result, my fear disappeared, and with the fear, the pain. The diagnosis turned out to be that I had kidney stones. The doctor gave me some medicine and told me to go to a specialist to see what had caused the stones, or else I might have the same problem again. But I didn't take the medicine, never went to see another doctor, and forgot quickly about the situation.
Several months later, however, I woke up in the middle of the night with the same painful symptoms. This time I was at college, so my mom wasn't close by. I felt scared and alone. I went to the bathroom and started feeling sorry for myself being so far away from my family. I thought about that medicine the doctor had given me months ago, and I was tempted to take a pill for a quick a fix. But I immediately realized that the pill wasn't going to eliminate my fear, and that my fearful thinking was only making my discomfort worse and preventing healing.
