Nov 26
Weary…I’m guessing either you feel it or someone you love does.
I looked up the word “weary” in my little Random House pocket dictionary of synonyms and antonyms I’ve had since my college journalism days and synonyms include: exhausted, tired, fatigued, spent, impatient, dissatisfied, tedious, and irksome.
Any of those describe you or your loved one these days?
There are so many things for which I’m grateful, like grandkids nearby (with a cuddly new family member!). And yet there are so many hurts piling up. A cousin enduring chemo; another one awaiting biopsy results. Friends burying their young son. Marriages on the verge of break-up. Christians without compassion for others created in God’s image. A massive stroke paralyzing a wonderful husband and father. And six months of pain/doctors/scans/therapies after my “treadmill takedown.” (But that’s a story for another blog.)
If I‘m honest, I’m sad and grieving in the midst of Thanksgiving week. Yes, I am weary.
Shannon Adducci, a self-described “wife, mom, singer-songwriter, worship leader, trauma-survivor, mountain-lover, and Christ-follower,” 
once blogged about her emotional struggles:
“I have been programmed through the years to think I should just be able to choose gratitude at all times and, in every instance, flip weariness or sadness on its head and replace it with the spirit of joy – with the help of a handy, hip-pocket Scripture, of course!
“And, certainly, there is a place for simply choosing joy and gratitude. I do it often. But it also is incredibly important to honor the deep emotions we might be experiencing, lest they fester unattended and infect our souls.
“So, what if it doesn’t have to be one or the other of these? Not joy instead of sadness. Or recovery in lieu of grief. Or breakthrough eclipsing stuck-ness. What if it is actually OK to be in it all at the same time? …
“What if it could all be one holy, messy struggle and me not feel guilty about it?...
“So, here’s the good news…Even in my utter weariness, Jesus offers me an invitation and not a rejection slip. ‘Come to me,’ He whispers. ‘Not after you recover, but in order to recover.’
“Jesus fully and gently acknowledges exactly where you and I are and encourages us to hang out with Him in our most depleted state.” *
Let’s cling to the truth in the words of the beautiful Christmas hymn, O Holy Night written in 1847 by Adolphe Adam:
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
‘Til He appears and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees; O hear the Angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born
O night, O Holy night, O night divine!
Thank You, Lord, for coming to our weary world and calling us into Your presence where we can find rest.
*©2020 Shannon Adducci. Bold emphasis mine.
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Open in your browser to hear the encouraging words in Shannon Wexelberg Adducci’s song “Whole Heart.”
Nov 12
When Tom Wilkinson* was diagnosed in 2008 with stage 4 head and neck cancer, he never imagined that God soon would use him to encourage his oldest daughter on her own cancer journey.
“He’s my hero,” says Joanna Dennstaedt, second in a family of six born to Tom and Dee Wilkinson. “He was the voice of reason and wisdom for me through it all.”
Joanna–“Jo” to her friends–was devastated in 2014 to get the diagnosis of stage 3 melanoma at the age of 34. Her four children were only 7, 5, 3, and 15 months. Two surgeries, including a complete groin lymph node dissection knocked her off her feet before she even started chemo.
The scheduled treatment was a year-long, weekly immunotherapy drug called Interferon, which had such tough side effects patients were normally hospitalized for the infusions and few could tolerate it for 12 months.
“I made it almost 10 months before it was killing me,” Jo recalls. “My liver was shot, my thyroid was shot and I started panicking.
“I was probably rock bottom and I kept thinking ‘I’m not going to get to raise my kids”,” she adds.
Me speaking at the 2024 Radiant Hope banquet
About that time she met a woman named Ivelisse Page who through her nonprofit Believe Big https://www.believebig.org/ helped Jo find a naturopathic doctor and get complementary treatments to help heal her body. She also gave her a copy of my book 50 Days of Hope.
And then one day a beautiful “sunshine” package showed up from an anonymous person in another state, who had been reading Jo’s blog. The enclosed note explained that the sender and her co-workers “put this box together and prayed for you.”
That’s when Jo knew.
“Why am I not doing this for others?” she asked herself. “I knew I needed to get outside of Jo.”
And the vision for Radiant Hope was birthed–months after Jo’s dad encouraged her not to “waste” her cancer and instead believe God could use “all the good and the hard.”
God confirmed Jo’s idea while at the cancer center one day He spoke to her heart: “You’re not here for you; you’re here for Me.”
“I just felt really called into loving people with cancer,” Jo explains.
And that she has.
In the nine years since the nonprofit https://www.radianthope.com/ was established in Mechanicsburg, PA, it has: 
“I never really wanted to start a nonprofit,” Jo admits. “I didn’t take a single business class in college, so I was wondering what was God calling me into?”
But now she realizes that “cancer has prepared me well to serve others.”
“Radiant Hope started out of my healing journey,” Jo explains. “All I did was say ‘yes’ and God did all the rest.”
“Cancer itself is not a gift, but there are so many little gifts that come out of it along the way,” Jo says. “I thought when my Dad had cancer that it was going to be the worst thing ever, but instead we could walk through my cancer journey together.
“Now I walk with others and encourage them just like he did for me.”
*(If you missed Tom’s story, read my last blog on 10-29.)
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Open in your browser to hear “Wings” (based on Psalm 91) by Lauren Daigle.
Oct 29
It’s no exaggeration to say that Tom Wilkinson is not your average survivor. 
For one thing, he’s a 16-year survivor of stage 4 head and neck cancer. And secondly, he believes he knows exactly how and why he received that diagnosis.
Rewind to 2008 when Tom, then a 56-year-old brewers grains company vice-president was plagued with earaches and a sore throat.
“The antibiotics would knock it out for a while and then it was back,” he recalls.
In August of that year, Tom was ready to lead a team of mostly young people to Germany where they would minister to the locals through a “sports and English camp.” But the day before departure, Tom’s new Ear, Nose and Throat specialist called with his imaging results.
“He said I needed to come in the morning for a biopsy, because he saw a tumor and I probably had cancer,” Tom remembers.
But Tom was a man on a mission–literally–and told the ENT he would get the biopsy when he returned. Ten days later he arrived for the procedure, but while he was away, a lump appeared on his neck and grew to golf-ball size. A biopsy confirmed stage 4 tonsil cancer.
The first surgeon Tom and his wife Dee saw was pretty discouraging, so they sought out a doctor-acquaintance at their church–even though they had no idea what kind of physician he was.
The doctor said Tom “absolutely” should get a second opinion and offered to get him an appointment ASAP at the hospital where he just happened to be head of the ENT department!
An evaluation led to intra-oral surgery, a technique which uses a laser to cut through soft tissues without the usual scalpel trauma. It took 18 painstaking hours to remove his tonsils, resect both sides of his neck and extract 43 lymph nodes.
Tom spent nearly three weeks in the hospital, followed by radiation and chemo which left him “pretty spent.” He lost 30 pounds in a month, but never needed a feeding 
tube thanks to Dee’s excellent management of his liquid nutrition.
At Tom’s 5-year appointment in 2013, his doctor pronounced him cured.
Like other cancer survivors, Tom is extremely grateful for “extra” time to have seen all six of his children married, 15 grandchildren born and celebrated 47 years of marriage.
Doctors said Tom’s cancer was a sexually transmitted one caused by high-risk HPV (human papilloma virus). Nearly all people are infected with HPV soon after becoming sexually active, but most infections are cleared by the body’s immune system. Studies show that multiple sexual partners increases the risk of HPV-related cancers.
“I had been wild and crazy in college (at Virginia Tech) before I came to know the Lord a few years later,” Tom acknowledges. “I had many years of indiscretions as a young man and it came back to haunt me.
“So I never struggled over why I had this: I knew why I had it,” Tom explains. “It was a consequence of my sin. I don’t believe it’s a punishment; it’s just a consequence,”
When I asked Tom what got him through the treatments and recovery, he quickly mentioned Psalm 145.
“Three or four people shared that psalm with us and it became our mantra,” he says. “I memorized it and still recite the first ten verses every day.”
I will exalt you, my God and King,
and praise your name forever and ever.
I will praise you every day;
yes, I will praise you forever.
Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise!
No one can measure his greatness.
Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts;
let them proclaim your power.
Psalm 145:1-4
Perhaps not the average way to start the day…but then, Tom Wilkinson is not your average survivor.
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Open in your browser and click on the “Watch on YouTube” arrow to hear “Praise the Lord (Psalm 145)” by Bishop Jos Tharakan.
Saturday, November 9th
1:00 – 4:00 PM (Doors open at 12:30)
Location: Hanover Community Church
1959 Smith Station Road, Hanover, PA 17331
Cost = FREE! Light refreshments provided!
– Register in person at:
Hanover Community Church
Cancer Care Associates of York (see receptionist)
– Register online at: https://signup.com/go/XWVxWQa
Oct 08
Andrew Sone has met many interesting people–some good, others very bad–in his years as a parole officer, a Megan’s Law predator unit member, a clinical social worker and finally a therapist. But there’s only one person he calls his hero. 
“If anyone asks who’s my hero, I always say ‘my wife’,” explains 54-year-old Andrew, who has been married to Jennifer for 22 years.
To be clear, Jennifer was his hero even before she was diagnosed with cancer last summer, but her cancer journey “has just solidified it.”
Jennifer, 49, doesn’t feel like a hero. She’s physically weak, has trouble concentrating, and still misses her long hair.
Last year, she knew something wasn’t right health- wise, but it took a few months to finally get to the correct medical specialist, who could order the proper tests.
“I was crying when I first saw my scan results (online) and my initial words were: ‘I can’t believe I’m dying’,” Jennifer recalls. “Then a few weeks later when the doctor sat me down and told me it was stage 4, I lost it again.”
Jennifer’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer spread to the lining of the lung, liver and diaphragm “was surreal,” Andrew recalls. “It’s something you never think would happen; cancer applies to someone else.”
Jennifer (before cancer) & her dog Kapua
In the fall of last year, Jennifer had chemo and surgery to shrink the 10-cm ovarian mass. That was followed by HIPEC, an aggressive surgical technique which bathes the abdominal cavity in a heated, concentrated chemo solution designed to kill residual cancer cells. Then she started “maintenance” chemo and a PARP-inhibitor (targeted therapy that helps cells repair damaged DNA)–a regimen scheduled to be every three weeks for two years.
Follow-up scans and blood work continue to deliver good news: NED (No Evidence of Disease).
Andrew credits his hero-wife’s “passionate love affair with God” for guiding her through these difficult months, including her beloved dog passing away.
“Jen’s walk with the Lord is unwavering.”
“God really sustains me,” Jennifer explains. “I just can’t believe all He’s gotten me through. We are all 100-percent in need of God all the time, but (Andrew and I) were just so helpless after my diagnosis, we really felt how much we needed Him.”
Andrew agrees and says it seemed like “the wind was knocked out of me and my faith was redefined to truly understand ‘dependency’.
“Some of the most powerful prayers I prayed contained just one word: Jesus. That one word said ‘I am completely dependent on You’.”
Jennifer acknowledges her share of “crying spells,” but says she always finds strength in Isaiah 41:10:
The couple recently started a “Praying thru Cancer” support group in their hometown of Myrtle Beach in hopes of encouraging others on difficult cancer journeys. They also regularly give away copies of 50 Days of Hope, the book a co-worker gave Jen and which led her to contact me.
Through our correspondence, I discovered that for many years the Sones lived in Pennsylvania and that her parents still live just a few miles from my home. So when the couple came this summer to visit family, we made plans to meet for breakfast.
I’m not sure who was more excited: Jennifer or me!
“I told everyone this is my Make-a-Wish to meet you,” she said with tears in her eyes.
But with tears in my eyes, I knew I had the gift of hugging a real-life hero of the faith.
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Please open in your browser to hear “I Will Fear No More” by The Afters.
I’m a newspaper reporter-turned-author. And I’m a passionate encourager, but always a truth-teller. I worked for nearly two decades in a unique position as a patient advocate in my oncologist’s office and the Cancer Prayer Support Group I founded in 1991 is the country’s oldest such faith-based group.
