Category: courage

Nov 07

Nothing Can Steal This Clown’s Joy

My friend Bunnie is a redheaded, retired heavy equipment operator with a delightful New England accent who loves to laugh. On weekends she “clowns” around at the local Dairy Queen whipping up balloons and smiles for children. On weekdays she takes off her clown make-up and cooks hot meals, which she joyfully delivers to the homeless folks in a nearby neighborhood.

Did I mention that she has stage 4 tongue cancer, carries her portable oxygen tank everywhere and is on hospice?

The year before her diagnosis, Bunnie moved to Florida and wondered what she would do in her post-retirement life.

“I was laughing so much, I dreamt I should be a clown,” she recalls with a chuckle. Bunnie Googled “clown schools,” found one only two hours from her new home, took the courses, and became a member of the Fellowship of Christian Magicians.

Then she began volunteering at her local Dairy Queen, performing magic tricks and twisting balloons into animal shapes. While the children enjoyed their ice cream, she shared character-building stories and told them about God’s love for them.

But in August 2013, the shows stopped when Bunnie was diagnosed with inoperable tongue cancer. Doctors told her that without chemo and radiation, she probably had six months to live. She was devastated with that prognosis, but resolute in her faith: “You can even take my tongue, and I’ll still find a way to share the gospel,” she announced to her doctor.

Bunnie had thirty-five radiation and eight chemo treatments. Following a two-week hiatus, she was back clowning at Dairy Queen.

After she read a copy of my first book, When God & Cancer Meet, Bunnie felt as if God were telling her to share her story by giving away copies of that book. So she bought dozens and passed them out to cancer patients and caregivers.

Then in May 2015 more bad news–a scan showed the cancer had spread to her lungs.

“I was really, really devastated for a little while—for maybe an hour or something,” she told me, chuckling on the phone, after we became Facebook friends. “The Lord said, ‘You’re still here for Me and I’m going to use you right here at the cancer center.’”

She headed back for more treatment and armed with more books (a final total of 425, she says!).

Think about it…Bunnie had every reason to be bitter—a devastating cancer diagnosis in a new state with no family nearby, just when she was ready to relax and enjoy retirement. Cancer of the tongue when she loves to talk fast and laugh often.

But Bunnie knows what I hope you do too—that your purpose in life never changes. It is the same whether you or your loved one has a lot of cancer, a little cancer, or no cancer. Your purpose in life—and mine—is to know God and love Him more, and to help others know God and love Him more.

Bunnie says her life verse is the same one I have chosen in my retirement:
“My life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the task assigned to me by the Lord Jesus
—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God.” Acts 20:24

As long as you have breath (even if it’s from an oxygen tank), God is not finished with you!

Excerpted from Peace in the Face of Cancer ©2017 Lynn Eib. All rights reserved.

UPDATE: In 2018 Bunnie passed away, 4.5 years after her initial diagnosis.
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Please enjoy the incredible testimony and original song “These Walls” from Jason Davis, the pastor who lost 80-percent of his tongue to cancer.

May 10

Why We Don’t Lose Heart

A few years ago when my grandson Ben was only 3, we chatted while browsing my wedding album from 1973.

My engagement photo

ME: Do you know who that is?

BEN: Grandma.

ME: That’s right. Grandma when I was young.

BEN: Why you turn out not young anymore?

ME: That’s the same thing I’ve been wondering.

 

“Where has the time gone?” is just one of the many things I wonder about these days as my 70th birthday nears.

I wonder, too, about scientific things, because despite my father teaching high school biology, I find much of science mind-boggling—especially the fact that most of this world is invisible to us.

The only portion of the electromagnet spectrum that the human eye can detect is visible light, but we sure depend on the rest of those electromagnetic waves to get us through the day. Very long radio waves allow us not only to listen to the radio, but also watch TV, use the microwave, and talk on cell phones. And at the other end of the spectrum, short X-rays give us useful information about our health, while even shorter gamma rays make possible specialized radiation treatment.

And much of the world isn’t just invisible, it’s inaudible, too. The human ear only can hear a portion of sounds—those in the 2-20 kilohertz range. Dogs can hear much higher frequencies (up to 60KHz,) as can cats, who always pretend they can’t.

A 2016 CNN report described a dog named Lucy, who was kicked out of guide dog school because she was too distracted by odors. So her owners decided to take advantage of her sniffing prowess and train her to find malignancies. Lucy was reported to correctly sniff out cancer 95-percent of the time over a seven-year period. 

Other dogs have accurately identified melanoma by sniffing moles and prostate cancer by taking a whiff of urine. (We already have CAT scans, why not DOG sniffs?)

And if you really want to blow your mind about the invisibility of our world, check out all the scientists and science writers who say what we can see is only a fraction of the whole universe. Most of them say the stars, planets and galaxies that can be seen make up only 2- to 4-percent of the universe. The remaining 96- to 98-percent can’t be seen, detected or even comprehended by astronomers!

Nature reminds us that what we see is not all there is.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away,  yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.   For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18

All of us truly are visibly “wasting away”—either from the effects of disease, or because you, like me, inevitably are closer to “turn out not young anymore.” Yet deep inside our invisible souls, God is able to renew and refresh.

And when we see Him one day face-to-face, the incredible joy, love, peace and glory awaiting all Christ-followers will make cancer and every one of earth’s trials seem like “light and momentary troubles.”

Don’t fix your eyes on what is seen. Don’t fix them on pathology reports, news headlines, statistics or anything else you can see. No matter what this life brings, fix your eyes on what is unseen. 

Now may the LORD of peace himself give you his peace at all times and in every situation.
The LORD be with you all. 2 Thessalonians 3:16 

Excerpted from Peace in the Face of Cancer, Lynn Eib ©2017.
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Open in your browser to enjoy  “God of Wonders” with Third Day.

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.

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.