In Full Assurance of Faith | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: In Full Assurance of Faith | Previous Challenge Entry
By Wilma Schlegel
02/26/26
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It was during the epidemic. Chanda’s whole family had driven to the hospital on that cold January evening. Tearfully, they’d hugged her, every one of them. She clutched the gift they’d given, a pair of soft socks they’d all signed and she could wear into the OR. There hadn’t been much that she could bring into the hospital due to the strict rules during the epidemic, and no one could come in with her. She’d be alone, save the names on those socks, and the Lord.

Chanda’s husband, Neal, was the last to let her go, not without emotion, but with much caring and with strength, and yet…with fear he didn’t want her to see. He hugged, he prayed, he held on until she had to go. They'd let go slowly until their fingertips had no longer touched.

“Come in on Sunday evening,” she’d been instructed.

Well, that Sunday evening found the hospital lobby and registration area empty, somewhat dark, a little off-putting. She began to doubt that she’d heard right, that she was supposed to go to the outpatient registration area and that she’d be called back into one of the private rooms. Private? This was like a ghost town. There seemed to be no one there. But then Chanda heard a small voice and a thin, little woman appeared, to usher her to an even darker room in the far back.

Registration began in a completely routine manner. Name? Date of birth? What is your surgeon’s name? What procedure are you having?

Then the phone rang and the little lady held up a finger as she took the call. “Yes,” she’d said, “I need you to forward a copy of the death certificate for…,” she’d given a medical record number.

That had been almost too much for Chanda to take. Odd and poorly- timed as the phone call had seemed, she did not let it compromise her faith. She believed in her surgeon and she knew she needed the surgery. She felt bad and prayed for the deceased.

In her room that evening, she found some solace. The staff accommodated her well and prepared her for all that would come before the aortic repair. Her nurses and each person of the medical team whom she met, were professional, competent, reassuring.

Chanda was transfused with two units of packed red cells. The heart-lung machine required more volume of blood than she’d been able to make on her own. She never expected she’d be so comfortable with a transfusion but trust and faith told her not to worry.

The next morning, Chanda was wheeled, wearing her very special socks, to the OR suite, exactly on schedule. She’d had much time to consider this surgery. She and her surgeon had watched for years as the ‘aneurysmal change’ had progressed to become an actual aneurysm in her ascending aorta. It was time to fix it. Chanda knew there was risk.

In the moment when she knew she was about to go under, her thought, her question was, ‘when I wake up will I be in recovery or… will I be with the Lord, my Lord?’

It was a calm moment. Chanda was so grateful to be saved, to be set apart, sanctified, for the Lord’s work. It felt a bit presumptuous but according to Hebrews 10:22-23, in her NIV, she was to “draw near to God with a sincere heart, in full assurance of faith, (full assurance of faith, she mentally underscored), having her heart sprinkled to cleanse her from a guilty conscience and her body washed with pure water. She was to hold unswervingly to the hope she possessed, for He who promised is faithful.” To do anything less was to question whether what Jesus did was enough. She knew she could never deserve it, but His sacrifice paid everything. Yes, she chose to believe. He’d washed her clean.

For hours, Chanda’s husband walked and walked, the whole family with him, on the trail abutting the hospital grounds. He would not leave until he heard.

The call came around 4pm. Yes, there’d been some difficulty in attaching to the heart lung machine, but they’d done it and the repair, the surgery was successful.

Tears of relief and hugs.

Chanda awoke in recovery. No one could visit, it was during the epidemic, but they called. She was loved and blessed and she knew that her work here on this earth must not be done yet.

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