Losing Faith
by Mike Litrel, M.D.

As the interview went on, I shared stories from my book about patients who have experienced miracles of healing in their lives, about the relationship between science, faith and health. And midway through the interview, as if in answer to my heart's prayers, my nurse Danielle passed me a handwritten note that Ann had just called and was feeling somewhat better. I told the interviewer what had just happened. Right on the spot he prayed for her and asked his listeners to do the same, and he assured me that people all over Wisconsin were praying at the moment for my wife and her healing.

I have never traveled to Wisconsin, nor had the slightest inkling to do so. But now I find it a place dear to my heart.

Later, the MRI scan showed that Ann had had a small bleed. The bleeding stopped spontaneously so it was not immediately life threatening. But even miniscule bleeding in the brain can cause serious symptoms. Ann's head pain lasted for ten days, and as the blood found its way into the fluid of her spinal column, she was scarcely able to walk. So I spent the Christmas holidays helping to take care of her and wondering whether my children would lose their mother, and me my closest friend.

It was during this period that I fell into the post-book-title bad mood. No matter what I said to myself I couldn't seem to get out of it. I was afraid - and annoyed at remaining so.

Then something strange happened. A patient, bleeding early in her pregnancy, came to see me. Miscarriage threatened, and there was a fifty percent chance she would lose her child. She and her husband were frightened - and they wanted to know why, why was this happening to them? Was it something they had done wrong?

I told them what I have told other young couples uncounted times before. Women lose their babies because there is something dreadfully wrong with the fetus, not because of some imagined thing that the parents have done wrong. God has designed us so that nine months of pregnancy, most of the time, means a healthy child will be born, and that most of the time, a miscarriage means that the child has a significant birth defect. Miscarriage, if it were to come, was God's way of saving her from the greater pain of an unhealthy child. There was nothing for her to do but rest. The three of us would just have to wait, and have faith that God's plan is one of Love.

As I spoke with the young couple, the grief and worry in their faces lifted somewhat, hope and trust stealing in to take their place. And I found to my surprise that the spasm of fear in my own heart began to relent.

As they rose to leave, I shared with them what my wife and family were going through, and that until this very moment I too had lost my faith and trust in God. They didn't seem to know what to say, and a silence filled the room. Then the husband grabbed my hand. "We'll all be okay," he said, as if to reassure me.

And I remembered again, that even Jesus, wrenched with pain on the cross, descended from faith into the despair that is man's curse, crying out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

I watched the couple leave, praying for them that the baby inside her body would be okay. And I prayed for Ann, finally knowing that no matter what happened, she would be okay.

I still think it's true that it only takes ten seconds to happiness. It's just that sometimes you have to wait - for the right ten seconds.

Dr. Litrel is a surgeon in private practice with Cherokee Women's Health Specialists in Canton and Towne Lake, and is a Clinical Professor at Emory Medical School. His new book on faith and health is called "The Eyes Don't See What the Mind Don't Know." It is available at www.doctor-mike.net. Dr. Litrel lives in Woodstock with his wife Ann and their two sons, Tyler and Joseph. You can e-mail him at mikelitrel@comcast.net.

Unexpected changes in my life have arisen since writing my first book, The Eyes Don't See What the Mind Don't Know. Radio stations from as far away as Seattle have called regularly to conduct interviews, and a few TV stations have filmed some spots as well. Overall I've found I prefer radio: from my phone at home I can eloquently expound on the importance of faith to our health, all the while remaining unshaven and in my underwear.

Recently my publicist requested a working title for my next book, so they could begin touting it well in advance of its actually being written. I'd always wondered how these things worked. Anyway, after some soul searching, I came up with what I consider a very Zen title: Ten Seconds to Happiness. Joy in life is critical to our health, and if we could simply focus on the next ten seconds with a spirit of gratitude and faith in our heart, all would be well.

So I sent off the title in an e-mail and walked around feeling brilliantly profound for about an hour. Then I fell into a deep dark depression that lasted roughly a week. Repeatedly I tried to pull myself out of it. "Just focus on the next ten seconds, Michael," I'd say, attempting to pump myself up. But no matter what I said or how often, my reply to myself was inevitably the same: "Shut up, already."

My wife Ann has a large arteriovenous malformation (AVM), similar to an aneurism, in her brain. Twenty years ago, shortly after we met, the AVM suddenly bled, threatening her life. Too large for a safe operation, her AVM was left alone, and it has stood inside her brain like the Sword of Damocles - bringing with it the potential for a deadly bleed at anytime.

Two days before Christmas, Ann paged me with our emergency "911" code. She had a severe headache and nausea, the same symptoms she'd had with her first bleed. I was at the office seeing patients, five minutes from doing another radio interview, this time for Wisconsin. Nothing hurts more than being helpless when a loved one is suffering - a spouse, a parent, a child. I was frightened.

I called a neighbor to check on Ann. I began to cancel my patients and my interview to rush home, but then something told me to stay put and stick with the task at hand. Within a few minutes I found myself on the phone with someone from Wisconsin, giving an interview on a topic that perhaps I more than anyone else needed to hear - the importance of faith.