Category: caregivers

Aug 14

How God Transformed a Valley of Trouble into a Gateway of Hope

As I was reading in the book of Hosea about how God promised to “transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope,” I couldn’t help but think of my friend Lauren.

His cancer journey has been an incredible roller coaster with hopes dashed one minute and unexpected new hopes found the next.

I hope the valley of trouble that you or your loved one faces is a lot smoother ride than Lauren’s, but just in case you hit a bunch of bends in the road, I thought you’d like to hear his hope-filled story.

It all started in December of 2006 when Lauren, then 54, was diagnosed with a rare mantle cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He began a course of chemo at nearby Hershey Medical Center, but never really got a good remission and restarted more treatment in July of 2008 after more tumors developed.

In November of that year, he walked his only daughter down the aisle (and unlike his wife, didn’t have to worry about how his hair looked that day!) A couple weeks later he headed back to Hershey for a stem cell transplant, because he still had a lot of active disease.

The transplant involved Lauren receiving an intravenous lethal dose of chemo and then being “rescued” from death with a transfusion of an anonymous donor’s healthy stem cells.

Lauren survived the transplant, but some of the cancer also survived and started growing. The doctors tried a couple of new chemos, which didn’t work and then some radiation, which also failed to stop the tumors growing on his arm.

“Many times I was about to throw in the towel, but my wife kept telling me ‘Don’t give up’!” Lauren recalls. “ When my faith was weak, the faith of others helped hold me up.”

Finally in October 2009, the Hershey doctor said there was one more hope: a donor lymphocyte infusion. (Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of it—Lauren hadn’t either.) Basically, it involved putting some of the donor’s white blood cells (lymphocytes) into him to see if they could recognize and destroy the cancer cells.

Lauren was the first to know the procedure was working.

“Within a week I could see the shrinkage in the tumors on my arm,” he recalls.

A second dose was given and the tumors disappeared. Nearly a decade later, Lauren and Joan have welcomed several  grandchildren into their family and he continues to get clean bills of health from Hershey.

 

A few years ago, Lauren and his wife traveled West and stopped in Death Valley.

“I kept thinking about the verse in Psalm 23:
‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me’,” recalls Lauren. “I knew I had come through that valley and He was with me.”

As Lauren and I talked on the phone about this day’s writing, he told me he was looking at his favorite picture in his home. It’s a poster of a craggy mountaintop with this inscription underneath: “It’s not the greatness of my faith that moves mountains, but my faith in the greatness of God.”

Don’t worry, my friend, today if your faith is not that big. Just be sure to put it all in a very big God.

I will…transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope. Hosea 2:15
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Excerpted from 50 Days of Hope, copyright 2012 by LYNN EIB

 

 

Jul 31

Walking with Friends in the Dark

 

In those nerve-wracking few days between my diagnosis and my surgery, I announced to my husband, “We need a pastor—and I don’t mean you!”

I think he could tell by the distraught look on my face that I was serious, so he called our good friend David Dunn, pastor of a sister church in a nearby town.

In my mind’s eye I can still see the moment David and his wife Carolyn walked into our family room. David headed straight for Ralph and Carolyn moved toward me. Her extended arms enveloped me in a warm embrace as I lay my head on her shoulder and released my soul-aching sobs.

I can’t tell you how long the four of us stood there huddled with only wordless weeping. David and Carolyn did not try to cheer us up in their delightful Maine accents. They did not quote any of the hundreds of Bible verses they knew so well. Neither shared any wisdom garnered from living longer on this earth than either my husband or I had.

Instead…they felt our pain. Their embraces spoke volumes to us: we love you and we are here holding you up as long as you need us.

I count that as my first lesson in learning how to be a patient advocate and walk with a friend in the dark.

My friend Ken says the presence of a friend usually meant much more to him than the words of a friend when
he was facing a diagnosis of tongue cancer  many years ago.

His advice to friends and family of patients facing serious illness is to “just BE!”

“Be a friend,” he says, “Be a shoulder. Be a hugger. Be an asset.  Please just BE there and God will BE there. If you do this, you will BE the giver of the greatest gift a suffering friend needs—presence without fixing; love without agenda,” he adds.

 

 

Helen Keller walked in the dark from the age of 19 months when an illness struck her blind, deaf and dumb.
She later did learn to speak, but lived the rest of her nearly 88 years without benefit of sight or hearing. Still Helen prized friendship so much that she thought it preferable to be blind and have true friends, than be sighted and have none.

Won’t you pray today for God to send true friends into your life? Whether you are the patient or the caregiver, resist the urge to go it alone. You need a loyal friend who will love you regardless of your situation. Swallow your pride and allow people the privilege of walking with you in the dark.

And if you are the caregiver for someone facing a life trial, won’t you please pray to be the kind of friend who offers your presence as the most important gift? Don’t be concerned that you might not know what to say to your hurting friend or family member. Your actions will say much more than your words as Proverbs 17:7 makes clear:

A true friend loves regardless of the situation,
    and a real brother exists to share the tough times. (The Voice Bible)

Friends love through all kinds of weather,
and families stick together in all kinds of trouble. (The Message Bible paraphrase)

And never forget that God longs to walk with you in the dark and empower you for your journey.

You light a lamp for me.
The Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.
 In your strength I can crush an army;
with my God I can scale any wall.
Psalm 18:28-29 New Living Translation

Excerpted from Peace in the Face of Cancer, copyright 2017 by Lynn Eib
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View in your browser to be able to hear the music video below “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” by Matt Maher

Jul 03

So Many Unanswered Questions


Twenty-nine years ago if I had heeded this quote from the creator of Peanuts, I could have saved myself many sleepless nights.

I was pretty consumed back then with trying to figure out how a healthy-eating-and-exercising-mom in her thirties could get cancer. Especially colon cancer for crying out loud! Colonoscopies aren’t even recommended for the average person until age 50.

I never smoked. I wasn’t overweight and worked out regularly at the local Y. I ate a high-fiber, low-fat diet including all our homegrown pesticide-free vegetables. In my mind someone who leaves the skin on their mashed potatoes and who shakes wheat germ on everything should not get colon cancer! Besides my little girls needed their mommy and my husband already watched one wife die a slow, debilitating death.

How? Why? What if?

Any unanswered questions keeping you awake at night?

If you’re trying to figure out exactly why you or your loved one is facing a trial right now, I’m afraid you won’t get any explanations from me. I don’t believe we can make sense of another person’s suffering—only our own. People often want to try anyway and they’ll preach and tell you why it all happened, but they’re not God and they don’t really know. It might make them feel better to think they have it all figured out, but I doubt it will do much for you.

And if you are the loved one of someone facing really difficult circumstances, please don’t tell them “everything happens for a reason.” Such a comment minimizes the sufferer’s feelings and implies that there’s a good, rational justification for what has occurred. I won’t be uttering that phrase to my daughter’s friends who have a 5-year-old  with  spina bifida and  a 7-year-old with an aggressive brain tumor. Instead I will pray that these dear parents, who love their sons and their Lord will run with their sleep-interrupting questions to the One who knows them best and loves them most.

I waited a long time for the Eternal;
He finally knelt down to hear me.
He listened to my weak and whispered cry. Psalm 40:1 The Voice Bible

Hear me, O God, when I cry;
listen to my prayer.
You are the One I will call when pushed to the edge,
when my heart is faint.
Shoulder me to the rock above me. Psalm 60:1-2 The Voice Bible

I’ll never know the answers to your questions or all of mine, but something I read in a book by C.S. Lewis has helped me to be more at peace with not knowing.

It’s found in a scene from The Horse and His Boy, part of Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series. These classic children’s books (loved by adults, too) are set in the magical land of Narnia, which is ruled by a powerful lion named Aslan (who represents Jesus). At one point Aslan explains to a rich runaway girl named Aravis why some of the awful things that happened to her had to occur. She then asks Aslan what will happen to her stepmother’s slave, who was punished for falling asleep after Aravis had drugged her.

“Will any more harm come to her by what I did?”

“Child,” said the Lion, “I am telling you your story, not hers. No-one is told any story but their own.”[1]

 

Are you trying to understand your story? Take your questions to your Heavenly Father, who will either give you the answers you need…or the peace to live with the questions.

[1]C. S. Lewis, Horse and His Boy (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 202.

Excerpted from Peace in the Face of Cancer. Copyright 2017 by Lynn Eib.
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Be sure to open this blog in your browser to hear the music video below “Hold Me Jesus” by Rich Mullins.

Jun 05

What’s on your to-do list today?

 

My husband has a serious problem.

And what’s worse is the fact he doesn’t even think he has a problem. I have no doubt that when I tell you what his problem is, you’ll be pretty shocked. But perhaps my talking about it in front of hundreds and hundreds of people will help him see what a terrible problem it is.

Better sit down before you read any more.

My husband’s problem (besides eating really blue birthday cake frosting) is  that he doesn’t make to-do lists.I can hear the gasps now. I mean, how can such a wonderful, kind person not make to-do lists? After 45 years of watching me faithfully make these lists and carefully updating them throughout the day, how can he have failed to see the light?

I’ve patiently tried to cure him of this malady by making to-do lists for him. He has responded in one of two ways: either losing the list or failing to cross out any items after he completes them. When I ask him about this latter misstep, he tells me that he knows he has done the task, so he doesn’t need to cross it off.

How can you not cross off a finished task on your to-do list? There is such superb satisfaction in drawing that ink line across the item.

Some of you know exactly what I mean and others of you, I’m afraid, are sympathizing with my husband because you also have a genetic mutation which prevents you from making to-do lists. (And yes, of course I will pray for you–you don’t even need to ask. I’ll just add praying to my to-do list.)

However, my husband is too sweet to tell you (and he doesn’t blog), but I also have a serious problem.

I can get so wrapped up in my to-do list that I may miss something God wants me to do. Or I can be so busy crossing off items that I fail to hear His still small voice.

Here’s what I do to treat my problem. At the top of my to-do list I often write: LOVE LIKE JESUS.  I remind myself that no matter how much–or how little–I accomplish in 24 hours, I always can love like Jesus. While I may have a good plan for my day, He may have a better one. What seems like an interruption or even a roadblock in my day may simply be a chance for me to love and trust Him more. And I may be completing tasks with temporal significance while neglecting ones with eternal value.

So what’s on your to-do list today? How about Ephesians 5:1-2?

Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are His dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ.

Or as The Message paraphrase puts it:  Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

No matter what else gets done today, choose to LOVE LIKE JESUS.
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(Be sure to open in your browser so you don’t miss the music video below: “Love Like Jesus.”

 

May 22

“Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love… The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.” Mother Teresa

 

I’m pretty sure the only thing “small” about Mother Teresa’s life was her stature. Nearly 50 years of sacrificially serving the “the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for” hardly seems to qualify as doing “small things.” But there’s certainly no doubt that this diminutive nun, honored in 1979 with the Nobel Peace Prize, was filled with great love for the poorest of India’s poor. 

Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting you head to Calcutta and take a vow of poverty (although health insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays may leave you feeling as if you have!). But I am encouraging you to ask God to show you some small things you can do with great love.  No matter how uncertain or bleak life looks, I guarantee you it will become brighter as you reach out in love to others in need.

Cindi, a cancer survivor who lives in the shadow of recurring granulosa cell tumors, says she wakes up each day “knowing my life is very different than most people.

“I’m either overwhelmed with thankfulness for still being alive six years past my diagnosis or just the opposite, and I am overwhelmed with fear that I might not be here for my daughter in the future,” she explains.

“The way I try to cope with it is to live outside myself,” she says. “It really helps to get out of my own crisis and reach out and love someone else. I try to offer acts of kindness toward others—visits, cards, small gifts.”

Cindi says she doesn’t have money or energy to do big things for others so one day she bought a bunch of $3 plants at Aldi discount grocery and gave them to folks who “needed cheering up.” Another day she and her daughter delivered bags of Pepperidge Farm cookies to friends going through hard times.

“I would say everyone who got them cried,” Cindi recalls. “You think you’re going to bless this person, but you walk away blessed. The Lord has given me several opportunities to encourage others and in so doing, I’m the one who has been encouraged.”

Doing small things with great love “really helps me to come out of my own health crisis,” she adds.

I realize it might not sound logical, but the next time you are feeling anxious or worried or discouraged or overwhelmed, try living outside yourself. Ask God to show you even one small thing you could do with great love for another person who is going through a hard time.

 

“Come be My light” were the words Mother Teresa heard Jesus speak to her heart as He called her to minister to the poor.

I believe He whispers those same words to all of us today—cancer survivors and caregivers included.

Come be My light to someone else feeling the darkness. Come be My light even if you think your light is a small one, it is better than no light at all.  Come be My light because when you shine it with great love, it is sure to be a blessing.

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.
God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill.
If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you?
I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine!
Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”
Matthew 5:14-16 The Message Bible 

Excerpted from Peace in the Face of Cancer. Copyright 2017 by Lynn Eib.
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Make sure you open this article in your browser so you can enjoy the song below by Kathy Troccoli.