Bob came to one of my book talks the other night. He waited till the very end of my talk to come forward in his wheelchair. He shared with me that he yearned over the last several years to create a better relationship with his doctor. Bob had no complaints about the medical care he had received from his physician and, in fact, was proud that his doctor was considered one of the best in his field. However, there was something missing. Bob wanted, most of all, to be able to share his religious faith and his belief in God with his physician. Bob needed to have his doctor understand that, as a patient, he saw his surgery, his therapy, and even his relationship with his physician in the broader context of God’s love, not just for him but also for the doctors who cared for him. He asked me to sign a copy of my book. He was going to give it to his doctor. But he said he thought it would be better if, maybe, he passed the book along to a nurse he was friends with in his doctor’s office. “I’ll ask her to make it look like it was a gift that came from her.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why not let him know you got the book for him? You bought him a gift. That’s a very kind, generous thing to do.”
“I wouldn’t want my doctor to think I was critical of him.”
“Because you wanted to talk about God? You think that’s being critical of him?” I was incredulous.
“I want him to see that God is what I need most in my life. I need for my doctor to see that God works through him to help me.”
I was stupefied. Is it really so hard for patients to tell doctors about their faith, their love of God, that they had to go to such lengths to “soften the blow.” How had my profession drifted so far away from our patients that they were afraid we might be offended if they talked to us about religious faith?
Then I looked at Bob and I realized: of course, God is working, through us. And He works as He always does, in every direction at once. I knew God was working through Bob to somehow reach that physician’s heart. That Bob, the patient, was helping to heal the doctor. That Bob was bearing the greatest gift there was: himself and his love of his God.
I couldn’t help thinking that Bob’s doctor was the luckiest physician alive.

San Francisco is a book lover’s paradise. The great independent bookstores thrive here and places like Stacy’s (San Francisco, CA—ask for Ingrid), Bookshop Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz CA--ask for George), and East West Bookstore (Mountain View CA--ask for Lee) fill me with hope that these very special, unique bookstores will continue to flourish alongside the giant chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble. The indie shops have a ‘homier’ feel. It’s like walking into someone’s living room, peeking at the bookshelves and asking, “What does this person like to know about, to think about? What makes this person tick?” The difference between independent bookstores and the chains is personality. Independent bookstores are like homes filled with books and the big mega-stores are like department stores loaded with merchandise. In the indies, books wait to be adopted. In the chains, they’re just sold. In the indie store, every staff member is dying to give you his or her own eclectic list of best great new books that everyone just has to read. Although many of the clerks in the chain stores love books too, they are governed by national inventory measures and computerized stockrooms. The whole Bay area is like a literary wildlife refuge, where the rare but elusive indie bookseller species have been allowed to feed and reproduce unmolested. To see them in their natural habitat, in all their natural glory is a thrill. Go there. Bring your spectacles. See for yourself.

At one of my stops on my book tour, a man told me a story about his own battle with the medical world. He had brought his eighteen-month-old baby to see a neurosurgeon after his child had developed a sudden crossing of the eyes. A CT scan revealed a brain tumor deep in the center of the baby’s brain. The doctor held up the scans and told both parents that it was questionable if the baby would even survive but the most they could hope for, if the infant did live, was a child who would be hopelessly developmentally delayed; in all likelihood, he would require lifelong institutionalization. I cannot imagine the shock and despair of a mother and father hearing that for the first time as they held their infant son in their arms in that doctor’s office. Fortunately, both parents refused to accept the physician’s indictment and found other doctors to help. Eventually a surgeon operated on the boy and removed most of the tumor. The remants of it were eliminated with radiation. The end of this story is that baby has grown up into a wonderful man. He has graduated from college, holds a job, and is raising a family of his own. This is precisely why patients never can permit their hopes, their expectations, and their recoveries to be constrained by physician’s pronouncements of outcomes. We all hope to hear the honest truth but we also truthfully need to honestly hope.