Category: attitude

Apr 26

The Goodness of God and the “Badness” of Life

The other morning as I listened to CeCe Winans belt out the song “The Goodness of God,” I suddenly had flashbacks of “bad” things I’ve experienced in my nearly seven decades of living.

A Mother’s Day miscarriage.

A life-threatening cancer diagnosis.

Untimely deaths of dear friends.

Painful turmoil in churches.

Addiction crises ending in suicides.

Heartbreaking marriage problems in friends and families.

Heartfelt prayers without the hoped-for answer.

I began to feel an overwhelming sadness and asked myself: How can I sing the words “all my life You have been faithful; all my life You have been so, so good” when I know I have seen a lot of so, so bad?

How about you? Have you ever asked the question “God, if you’re so good, why has this happened?” Or ” Lord, why hasn’t this happened?”

I sure have.

Why now, Lord?

Why them, Father?

Why, again, God?

Why didn’t You do what I know You have the power to do?

I don’t think the Creator of the Universe is dismayed at all by our honest questions. Just read through the Psalms and you will hear the writers pleading with God.

Some want Him to hurry up…

Lord, hear my prayer! Listen to my plea!
Don’t turn away from me in my time of distress.
Bend down to listen, and answer me quickly when I call to you. Psalm 102:1-2

Some feel incredibly discouraged…

Save me, O God, for the floodwaters are up to my neck.
 Deeper and deeper I sink into the mire; I can’t find a foothold.
I am in deep water, and the floods overwhelm me.
 I am exhausted from crying for help; my throat is parched.
My eyes are swollen with weeping, waiting for my God to help me. Psalm 69:1-3

During that recent morning of listening to “the goodness of God,” while visualizing the “badness” of life, the explanation came to me.

All of life is not good, but all of God is.

“The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth “is how God described Himself to Moses.

Yes, God is good…all the time. He is good in the good times and He is good in the bad times. He doesn’t prove His goodness by making life easy or fair or happy. We can trust that His goodness is simply His character and cannot be changed.

As author Chris Tiegreen explains it: “Real faith recognizes God’s nature against all visible circumstances and says ‘I know who You are, I know You’re good, even if I can’t see Your goodness right now’.”

And as Psalm 23 promises “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Won’t you join CeCe Winans today and sing about “The Goodness of God”?

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(Be sure to open this blog in your browser to hear the music video.)

Mar 28

Are you in control or out of it?

For me, the best part of playing FreeCell Solitaire is that every single game is winnable because I can use CRTL-Z!Image result

You know what CTRL stands for, right? CONTROL! I’m in control and if the game gets out-of-control and I might lose, I simply undo some of my moves until  everything turns out the way I wanted. (Current win streak is 1,147!) It’s the perfect game for a perfectionist like me who loves to be in control and who hates to lose!

Don’t you wish life had a CTRL-Z button? You could hit it and delete the circumstances that broke your heart. Or you could tap it and erase all the anxiety and the worry. Or you could strike those keys and stop the very first cells from becoming cancerous.  Or at the very least, you could type that command and undo all the treatment side effects. Somehow, some way, you could control a situation until everything turned out just the way you wanted.

Mary, a longtime member of my morning cancer support group, never forgot the out-of-control feeling brought on by her diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer, just 19 months after she was widowed. Not only did Mary feel out-of-control, but the cancer looked out-of-control, as it already had spread to her liver and bones.

However, within a few months of starting chemo and radiation, scans showed the disease was responding. The liver spots disappeared, the bone lesions stabilized and the lung tumor shrunk by half.

“I could just squeal, I’m so happy,” she told me. “I’m so grateful to God every day.

“I have my moments when it’s hard,” she acknowledged. “But my peace comes from knowing God has a plan and He’s way smarter than I am. If I don’t understand it now, I will later.

“We all pray that we get our own way and we think we know what’s best, but He is the one who does,” Mary said. “I know that’s easy to say, but it’s not always so easy to do.

“I find myself asking God: ‘Could I just have a little control? I want your will, but could I have just a little of mine?’” she added with a laugh.

I really appreciate Mary’s honesty and the fact she recognized the humor in desiring God’s will, but on her own terms. *

If like Mary and me, your anxiety comes not from just thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it, I have some good advice for us from Proverbs 3:5-6. Here’s how The Message Bible paraphrases it:

Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
he’s the one who will keep you on track.
Don’t assume that you know it all.

Quit searching for life’s CRTL-Z button and stop fooling yourself that you can be in charge of it all. We never really were in control, so we might as well get “out” of control by doing just as this beautiful song below says:

I lift my hands to heavenHear my heart surrenderI tell my soul againYou are Lord of all
And though the seas are ragingYou will speak and tame themIn You I find my restYou are in control

Adapted from Peace in the Face of Cancer, ©2017 by Lynn Eib

*My dear friend Mary passed away peacefully more than seven happy years after the first doctor told her there was “no hope.”
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Please enjoy the short music video “In Control”  ©2016 Hillsong Music Publishing.

Mar 14

Dancing for “Stable”: My oncologist has cancer (Part 10)

STABLE.

As an adjective, Merriam-Webster defines it as “not changing or fluctuating” and gives it synonyms like firm, solid, steady, secure, fixed and strong.

Those words have positive connotations and especially when applied to a disease not considered curable. Like the very large, very rare, neuroendocrine carcinoma of thymus origin lurking behind the heart of my oncologist and dear friend, Dr. Marc Hirsh.

When I got the good news last week that his scan at Hershey Medical Center once again showed the tumor was stable, I was elated! However, as you can see, my text response was decidedly understated. That’s because I was sitting at a nice restaurant with three women who had driven half an hour to meet me and discuss broadening their cancer support ministry–so, it didn’t seem appropriate to be scrolling through my phone for just the right celebratory emoji!

Marc’s Hershey visit was with a new oncologist (his former one retired) who had mountains of records to read regarding this incredible journey which began in late May 2020. Marc was so sick and the prognosis was so poor back then that he immediately closed his three-decade old, solo-oncology practice.

Because no effective treatment was known, Marc devised his own protocol consisting of monthly hormone injections, daily radiation and an oral chemo.

“So far your regimen is working,” the new oncologist told him.

Marc isn’t ready to give the treatment all the credit because he also believes in the healing power of God.

“Whatever the reason (the tumor is stable), I’m just grateful to have the time,” he told me me on the phone.

So I asked this 72-year-old beloved physician, husband, dad, and grandfather how he uses this gift of “extra” time (besides enjoying family!).

“I read four or five hours a day–books on medicine, philosophy, science and theology; newspapers and magazines,” he replied. “I exercise an hour or two a day, play piano about an hour.”

Oh, and he’s rereading the entire Bible–something he first did in 1973 at the age of 29 after a  good-looking lifeguard at his apartment pool promised him that “if you pray and read the Bible with an open mind, God will reveal Himself to you.”

Marc and the lifeguard have now been married 42 years and shared the ups and downs of life together–including both being diagnosed with COVID-19 in December after attending Marc’s family reunion in New York.

Elizabeth’s symptoms resembled a mild cold. But with the nearly 2.5-inch tumor behind Marc’s heart and one of his lungs damaged from an initial collapse, he fared much worse.

“I had very serious symptoms and was surprised how much pain I had,” he said.

Flat on his back for two weeks, his oxygen levels dropped, but never so low as to need intervention. Both are grateful for vaccinations and boosters, which they feel may have saved his life or at least prevented hospitalization.

Marc admits that he was “slightly worried” heading into this last checkup because of lingering COVID-19 symptoms. But after he and Elizabeth got the good news of “stable” they celebrated.

“When we got home, I poured us each a glass of Moscato (wine) and we danced to some old 45s,” he said. “It was nice.”

Marc, we rejoice with you both that the tumor is “unchanging” and most of all that our God is too.

Jesus Christ never changes! He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. –Hebrews 13:8

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As always, I close with a song by Rich Mullins, Marc and Elizabeth’s favorite Christian artist. This one is called “You’re My One Thing” and based on Matthew 5:8 in the Sermon on the Mount, one of Marc’s favorite passages.

 

 

Feb 14

Shock, Despair, Peace and Hope

Carolyn and Mark, Vermont vacation a few weeks before diagnosis

Last year when my friend Carolyn took ornaments off the Christmas tree, she wondered what changes would come to her family before she unpacked them again.

Never could she have imagined what 2022 would bring.

But neither could she have foreseen what God was going to supply for one of the most difficult years of her 59-year-old life.

First, in May of last year, a freak boating accident claimed the life of her brother-in-law, a respected radiologist.

Then in July after returning from a wonderful Vermont family vacation, two weeks of random stomach pain led her to consult a doctor, who thought she had a gallstone. But a scan showed something much more ominous: advanced pancreatic cancer related to an inherited gene mutation.

“Shock, tears and wrestling to understand, ” Carolyn recalls. “My daily life–and our family’s–as we knew it was over.”

This diagnosis was her “worst nightmare” as her mother died from ovarian cancer when Carolyn was only 9.

Carolyn’s genetic BRCA mutation, (which was found through testing I did with her many years ago at my oncologist’s office) is associated primarily with increased risk of breast or ovarian cancer. She had taken great pains to lower those risks, but now found herself among the 1-to 3-percent of carriers  who develop pancreatic cancer, for which no reliable early detection exists.

Multiple complications and severe chemo toxicity early on in treatment landed Carolyn in the hospital for extended stays three times in only two months.

“One night as I lay awake in the hospital, my left leg twice the size of my right and throbbing from a blood clot, I was trying to pray… pleading with God,” Carolyn recalls.” Was He even there? Had He abandoned me?

“Then these words came into my mind: ‘Are you willing to suffer for My glory?'” Carolyn says. “I knew immediately this was the Lord speaking.”

She didn’t have to think long before whispering: “Yes, Lord, of course.”

The words “for My glory” lingered in Carolyn’s mind because as a longtime journalist (we actually met in 1988 while covering a civil trial in a Harrisburg courtroom), she always has said “my mission with my writing is to use it for God’s glory.”

“Could it be that the best story I would write to showcase God’s glory would be my own?”

Much has changed since the first oncologist didn’t seem to think treatment could help. Seven months later, Carolyn’s tumor marker has decreased by more than 90-percent, the liver lesions have shrunk, and her current oncologist gives her something crucial: Hope. This month she starts a clinical trial with that Philadelphia oncologist who specializes in BRCA-related pancreatic cancer.

“I have come a long way since last fall when I told Mark to put me on hospice,” she says. “I had lost all hope in the midst of intense physical suffering…but God broke through and I was able to feel Him and talk to Him again. I was filled with a wondrous peace that sustains me still.”

Becky, Olivia, Amy & Carolyn

Carolyn doesn’t know what her future holds, but she’s looking forward to May when oldest daughter Olivia gets married and middle daughter Becky graduates from law school.

“It’s pretty hard for a planner like me not to let my mind wander too far down the road,” she acknowledges. “But there is great relief and peace in being utterly at God’s mercy, one day at a time.

“Every day I approach the throne of grace with boldness, asking God to save my earthly life.”

She also ponders one of her favorite Oswald Chambers’ quotes:

“Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God?
Then remain quiet…When you are in the dark, listen and
 God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light.”

I’m trusting that Carolyn’s words will be a “precious message” for someone today.

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As soon as I heard the song “Desert Road” by Casting Crowns, I thought of my dear friend Carolyn.

Jan 31

Do You Have Home-Field Advantage?

Granddaughter Abby, 8, with her sign: “Go Hurts! You’re our #1 guy!”

THE PHILADELPHIA EAGLES ARE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!

And if you’re wondering what that announcement has to do with words to the weary, I must tell you that I started writing this blog in my mind as I lay awake in the middle of the night after the Eagles’ win. So it must be divine inspiration, right? (Keep reading to decide for yourself if that’s true!)

I was a big sports fan even before I graduated from THE Ohio State University. It’s fascinating how schools, especially ones the size of Ohio State and Penn State, have far better winning records at home. Their 100,000+-seat football stadiums filled with cheering crowds give them something called “home-field advantage.” Studies show home teams on average win 55%-70% of the time (and this phenomenon is not limited to football or colleges).

Several years ago the Boston Red Sox started the season 22-5 at home, with pitcher Roy Oswalt posting a 10-0 record at Fenway Park. When our middle daughter played basketball at Houghton (N.Y.) College, her team was 32-0 at home.

Which brings me back to “my” Eagles, who, as the top team in their division, competed at home for all their playoff games.

Sunday Tweet from former Eagle Chris Long

Eagles Head Coach Nick Sirianni predicted the advantage like this: “Our crowd inspires us. Our crowd makes it difficult for the opposing team with how much communication that has to happen…It’s going to be loud. We’ll feed off that…”

Sunday’s Philly crowd of almost 70,000 roared at 95 decibels most of the Eagles’ 31-7 win. (Not to brag, but our family’s “crowd” of 7 adults and 7 children hit 91 decibels during our off-key rendition of “Fly, Eagles Fly!”)

Sports psychologists don’t know for sure why the home team tends to win, but surmise that the presence of people who feel for us and with us helps bring out the best in us. Their cheers convey: “We care. We think you’re great. We’re proud of you.” And athletes respond by giving their best.

It’s the same way when we’re going through life’s trials, (which can bring out the worst in us). Having friends and family “cheer” us on can bring out the best in us: home-field advantage! 

It doesn’t matter how tough, strong, independent we are—the Bible says we shouldn’t try to go it alone.

“Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed.
If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble…
A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer.
Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.”--Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

Bethany’s first (and last!) marathon in 2018 with Bauer, 7, running the last mile while cheering her on

We need to be willing to allow others to come along side and help us even though we probably would rather be on the giving end than the receiving. It’s humbling to let a friend scrub your toilets, mow your yard, or drive you to a doctor’s appointment, but when we turn down acts of kindness, we’re robbing others the joy of giving!

I hope as you face sickness or other life struggles, that you’re welcoming friends and family as your “cheering” crowd. Otherwise, it’s like choosing to play all your games away—no home-field advantage!

And if you’re blessed not to be facing any trials right now, please ask God to show you someone whose load you could lighten by cheering them on–maybe you’ll even hit 95 decibels!
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I hope you’re encouraged by this Michael W. Smith song “I Will Carry You.”