Rally in prayer for one of our Elders

This week, our church has been rallying in prayer around one of our Elders, Douglas Coco. As of the writing of this post, he is in the ICU in the cardiac unit of Baylor Hospital in Dallas.

On Thursday, he went to the ER with dizziness that was bad enough that he made the right call and went to the hospital. The first hospital diagnosed him with a serious issue that would need emergency open-heart surgery, so they careflighted him to Dallas. As it was getting late, we were told that he was being prepped for surgery. 

I don't know what all happened with everyone else that night, but I know what the night was like for me. I fell asleep praying after the last text update came out. I woke up randomly at 3 am and checked my phone, expecting to see another update after the surgery, but there was no update. I really started feeling the gravity of what was going on, and I started wondering if no update actually meant something very bad. 

I ended up getting up and reading scripture and praying. I found myself wanting, for some reason, to go to the end of Job, where God comes and questions Job (Job 38-42). The point of that scripture is to show the enormity and supremacy of God compared to anything else. At the time, I didn't understand what was making me want to read that scripture, but now I realize that I wanted to tremble under the weight of God because I was being tempted to tremble under the weight of fear. 

I thought about all the name-it-claim-it theology about drumming up faith to pray for healing, and I felt the futility of it. Why focus on something so pointless as the size of my faith when we were facing something so grave? Something deep in me, probably the Holy Spirit himself, drew my attention to the gravity of God instead. It didn't make me start believing for a miracle, but it made me marvel and wonder, and I began to pray in the Spirit, and I don't even mean tongues by the way. Just deep, Spirit-led prayer.

I can only imagine what that night was like for Doug's family.

Friday morning, we got this text:

"Hey all - so… after hearing from Hospital One that this was super serious enough to careflight him over to Hospital Two for surgery — Baylor (hospital two) did more detailed CT and said the [diagnosis] was misread at Hospital One and actually doesn’t need surgery right now … it is serious and we could opt for [another procedure] but they are thinking [it] will heal with [proper maintenance] - very thankful!!"

The rest of the day Friday was not easy, but it was much better than things were looking yesterday. Thank you, God! 

Here is the Saturday morning text:

"Doug got snatches of sleep here and there so that’s good - he woke up with pain level better - they worked on his bp meds through the night -doing good this morning and then they took him for follow up ct ..now he’s in a little pain and worn out - resting :) the staff here are awesome and really on top of things - he’s very easily worn out understandably - said he’s not up to visitors today... keep praying. Apparently vascular specialist said it’s normal for this process to take 4-5 days in icu

Let's continue praying for Douglas' complete healing.