For a while now, I’ve been contemplating this blog because it is of significance to the professionals who administer medical care to black people who do not divorce the spiritual from the physical. When physicians and others communicate with us about our health issues, they have to understand that where we view our health condition through a religious lens.

I have never sat among a group of black diabetes and not heard about how God saved them. How God provided for them. How the Lord saw fit to allow them to live or get insulin.

I am actually no different. The phrases I was raised with in the church, “Name it and claim it,” were present with me as I grappled with understanding that I have a disease to which there is yet a cure for. That is a very hard pill to swallow when you believe that the God you serve is ALL powerful. That the God you serve has spared your life. That the God you served has made a way out of no way time and time again. That the God you serve can part the seas. That they God you serve made the Heavens and the Earth and knows every star by name. That the God you serve watches over you day in and day out. When you have gone your entire life believing this not as a belief but as TRUTH….it is hard to process that you have a disease and you can’t be cured.

The question for medical physicians should therefore be, “How can I give proper diabetes education within the cultural context of communicating with a spiritual group of people?” I can attest that when sickness arises, our relationship with God gets stronger. We pray harder. We fast longer. We read our Word more. We renew our relationship with God. This is of significant importance because when physicians attempt to discuss our medical situations but fail to recognize the need for spiritual expression, they miss a large part of their patient’s being.

My grandmother told me that she recently had to tell a relative that God was in the medicine. Why? Because this relative was refusing to take it. Why? Because they felt like God was gonna heal them. The point here is, that by recognizing where my relative was in relationship to their spirituality, she was able to do something that people with medical degrees were unable to do…get my relative to take their medication.

This topic is so lengthy and multifaceted, I can go on for days. But I’ll stop here and revisit this topic from time to time.  But, if you ever want to hear about the goodness of God, talk with a black diabetic that has high glucose levels. When they tell you about being asked “Why are you still walking around?” or “How can you be talking?” or “How did you even make it here to hospital?” The replies you’ll get will always reverence God.

I don’t know how I did it, but God…
I couldn’t see, but God…
I was going into a coma, but God…
I didn’t know what glucose levels were, but God…
I didn’t have insulin, but God…
I ran out of medication, but God…

Gospel Travelers by Ernest Watson