Category: faith

Apr 12

An Amazing Story of Beating the Odds

 

 

 

 

 

Are you praying for yourself or someone you love to be cured? Are the odds stacked against that prayer? Or have doctors even told you not to expect it to happen?

I have an amazing story for you today about a man who was given no chance for survival, but is still beating the odds.

When my friend Jim was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme (translation—the deadliest brain cancer) in July 2006 at the age of 59, no one gave him much hope. The golf-ball sized tumor affected his left side and he had to learn to walk and talk again after surgery. When the tumor recurred just four months later, no one gave him any hope at all.

But Jim, a Vietnam veteran with two Purple Hearts was desperate to live as he was caring for his wife Jean, who had advanced cancer. When I saw him in our office, he told me the doctors at Hershey Medical Center thought he might have only three months to live. I suggested he “try to defy the verdict” and set some goals for himself.

“What would you like to be alive to see?” I asked him, thinking he’d choose something happening in the next few months.

“I want to see my son Travis graduate from college,” he quickly replied.

“OK,” I said. “What year is he now?”

“A freshman.”

Uh, oh. I suggested that perhaps Jim should pick a closer goal so we could celebrate sooner (while thinking there is NO way this patient is going to be alive in four years!)  So, we decided on his daughter Abby’s wedding in six months. Realistically, there was no reason to expect Jim to live even that short time, but it was a good goal and I told the radiation tech next door that Jim wanted to walk his daughter down the aisle in the spring.

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that after looking at his tumor,” the tech honestly replied.

Jim got radiation and oral chemo, but the mass persisted. Every time I saw him over the next few months, we talked about the impending wedding and prayed for Jim to be there—even if his hair wouldn’t. On May 12, 2007, the prayer was answered and Jim brought me the wedding photos to prove it!

Then a couple months later, he went on a clinical trial drug because there was no other treatment available and set a new goal of holding his son Ryan’s first child due in October. Both Jim and Jean got to hold that little grandson, and an MRI in January showed Jim’s tumor had decreased slightly. But the joy was short-lived as Jean passed away in August 2008. Our clinical staff bemoaned the fact Jean’s four children undoubtedly would be burying both parents in a short span of time. But Jim continued to defy the verdict. He set another goal of seeing Abby’s first child born (she wasn’t even pregnant yet!)

Bi-monthly MRIs continued to show Jim’s tumor shrinking and in May 2009, he joyfully announced that Abby’s little daughter, Lillian Jean had arrived. Then an unexpected joy came: the next month’s MRI showed the tumor was gone! That fall Travis entered his senior year of college and Jim set his sights on seeing that graduation.

In May 2010, despite all odds, Jim was there to watch his youngest son awarded his college diploma.

But then he faced a new problem.

“What’s my goal going to be now?” Jim asked me afterward.

“I guess you need to see Travis get married and have some kids,” I volunteered.

“Sounds good,” he replied.

And Travis did.

And Jim was there.

As I write it’s been almost 11 years since his diagnosis and Jim remains in an unexplained complete remission. I’ve honestly lost track of how many grandkids he has now and I’m thinking we may need to set a goal of him seeing his great-grandchildren!

When Jim was first diagnosed with a brain tumor, he was angry, disappointed and frustrated, especially over the fact he was told he had such a short time to live. What gave him hope, he said, was hearing about others who had survived brain tumors or had lived much longer than doctors expected.

“I thought if they can do it, why can’t I?” he recalls. “I was most thankful for people encouraging me and telling me there was still hope. And without my faith in God, I don’t think I would be here now.”

 

I can’t promise God will answer your prayers exactly as he did for Jim, but I can promise that He hears the longings of your heart and wants to show you His great love today. He may do the impossible in your or your loved’s one’s situation or He may do the impossible in your hearts about the situation. And as you face an uncertain future, whatever your goals are, “let love be your highest goal” (1 Corinthians 14:1 NLT) and believe that “the impossible is possible with God.” (Luke 1:37 The Voice)

 

(If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy and paste this link to enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKjcyiXAMSs )

 

Mar 29

Nothing Surprises God

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t think most people are truly prepared to get bad health news. Instead we hope against hope that things will not turn out as we fear and the whole nightmare will go away. Right up until I saw the look on my gastroenterologist’s face after my colonoscopy in June 1990, I had hoped—and believed—there was nothing wrong with me. So much for the power of positive thinking!

I don’t know if your or your loved one’s diagnosis has taken you by surprise, but I guarantee it has not taken God by surprise.

 

He is all-knowing.

He is all-seeing.

He is all-powerful.

He is in control of ­every­thing.

He knows what you need and when you need it.

You may feel unprepared, but God is prepared and He is preparing things for you—good things—things that you can’t even imagine.

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. 1 Corinthians 2:9

And I believe He literally goes before all of His followers into each new day to provide what we’ll need for that day. Hear His promise through Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 31:8 (as expressed in three different Bible versions):

“The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” NIV

God is striding ahead of you. He’s right there with you. He won’t let you down; he won’t leave you. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t worry. The Message

“Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you.” NLT

Authors Henry and Richard Blackaby explain God’s promise this way:

“God never sends you into a situation alone. He always goes before His children as He did with the children of Israel when He led them with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. . . . He always precedes you in any situation you encounter. God is never caught by surprise by your experience; He has already been there. He is prepared to meet your every need because He has gone before you and knows exactly what you will need for your pilgrimage.”[i]

And the really good news is that He doesn’t just go on ahead of us, He stays with us, too, ensuring we are never alone.

“Not only does God go before you, but He also stands beside you and behind you, to provide protection and comfort,” the Blackabys add. “If you are going through a difficult or confusing time, know that the Lord has gone before you and He is present with you. He is fully aware of what you are facing, and He is actively responding to your need.”[ii]

God knows exactly what you need to be prepared for today.

It’s okay if you feel disbelief or shock or unprepared for whatever’s next. Perhaps you would like to pray with the Psalmist today from Psalm 25:5:

Lead me by Your truth and teach me, for You are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in You. Amen.

 

[i] Henry T. Blackaby and Richard Blackaby, Experiencing God Day by Day: Devotional (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 1998),  94. The story of the Israelites being led by God with a cloud and a fire pillar is found in Exodus 13:21.

[ii] Ibid.

If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy and paste this link to enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by6no4QTU_g

Mar 15

Is Heaven on Your Mind?

 

 

 

 

How much do you think about Heaven? A lot? A little? Not at all?

Whether your earthly life is close to it’s end or you have many decades still in front of you, I hope your thoughts turn often to Heaven because that eternal perspective lifts the weariness we all face. One of my dear friends who thought well and often of Heaven was named Melina.

Melina was a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty (think, full-blooded Italian parents!) She and her husband Brian met in 1988 and married a decade later. Together their love produced two adorable little girls, Cecilia and Olivia. Melina was a mortgage broker and Brian worked as an electrical engineer.

It was a beautiful world.

But that was before October of 2003 came. And with it a diagnosis for 33-year-old Melina of colon cancer. I had just met Melina’s younger sister Rina through a mutual friend and I sent Melina a little note of encouragement when I heard about her diagnosis. I knew how important it was to hear from other survivors of “your” kind of cancer. I reminded her that I was still alive after having colon cancer spread to five lymph nodes (she “only” had it in two).

After surgery, Melina started chemotherapy, availing herself of the new anti-colon cancer drugs that had not been available to me back in 1990. But in August of 2004, three weeks after doctors told her there was no evidence of disease, she developed terrible abdominal pain: a grapefruit sized mass was on her ovary. Then a PET scan showed tiny cancerous spots in both lungs.

Melina quit her job to stay home with her daughters and for the next nearly three years, Melina fought back against the cancer, enduring such things as a clinical trial that left her bedridden for five months and a trip to Germany for a new laser procedure to remove the lung nodules. She spent two weeks in California learning about organic and whole food nutrition, and traveled to cancer centers in Philadelphia and Virginia to see what they could offer.

Each new approach seemed to knock down the cancer for a while, only to have it rear its ugly head once again.

Like many cancer patients do during their fight, Melina started a web page. She called it “Melina’s Hope.” As an author who appreciates a really great opening thought, I loved the way Melina began the first page of her site: “You might think my hope is to preserve my earthly life…”

That’s exactly what I was thinking her hope would be. But that’s because I was thinking of her cancer diagnosis as the beginning of her story. She set me and all her readers straight right away by explaining “My story begins one Sunday morning in August 2002.

“What a beautiful day,” she writes. “It was the day I accepted the Lord Jesus into my heart. With that acceptance came a promise: if I trust the Lord with all my heart and acknowledge Him in all my ways, He would direct my paths—and that He did in my journey with colon cancer.”

And that is why Melina said her strongest hope was not to preserve her earthly life, “but more important than that, is my hope that my story changes but one heart to accept the love and protection that comes from our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don’t depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do and he will show you which path to take. Proverbs 3:5

That was Melina’s favorite verse—the one on which she firmly staked her life and the one by which she squarely faced her death.

“I can’t abandon the one true healer, Jesus Christ,” she wrote about five months before her passing. “It’s His decision where my healing will take place, here on earth or with Him in heaven. That is where my hope and comfort come from. I trust completely that the Lord will do what is best for me, my family and friends.”

Even though Melina grieved that she was going to leave this earth and not see her little girls grow up or grow old with her husband, she had hope because she knew this life is not all there is.

Hope that she was not saying goodbye forever.

Hope that she was headed to her real Home: Heaven.

Hope that in Heaven she would get a new disease-free body.

Hope that one day there would be a grand reunion of all her family and friends who also trusted in the Lord.

Near the very end of her life, she told her distraught adult family members: “I know you guys don’t want to hear this, but I know where I’m going and I can’t wait to get there!”

Then she added with a smile: “You’ll see me again.”

One of my favorite daydreams is to imagine that upon my arrival in Heaven, Jesus greets me and then takes me to a long line of smiling people: Melina and all of the faith-filled cancer patients I knew. I see that they are physically healed just like we prayed for so many times. We embrace and while there are no sad tears in Heaven, in my daydream I am filled with tears of joy.

But my dream is not just wishful thinking. The promise of Heaven for all who believe in Jesus is real and I know that reunion will really happen.

Another one of the people I look forward to seeing in Heaven is someone I never met on earth: my paternal great-grandmother May Andrews Peirce. She was a prolific poet and I’d like to think my writing ability came down through her genes. In 1928 when she was nearly 60, she wrote a poem she called “HOME.”

In childhood’s days, our thoughts of Heaven

Are pearly gates, and streets of gold.

But in the gathering years,

When time, within its fading leaf

With eyes, perchance be-dimmed with tears,

And hearts oft’ overwhelmed with grief,

We look beyond the pearly gates,

Beyond the clouds of sin’s dark night,

And see a place where loved ones wait,

A place all beautiful and bright.

And over all, we’ll see the face of Him

Who’ll bring us to our own—

Not to some far-off, distant place.

For Heaven is, after all, just HOME.

Today’s song is a real OLDIE (but goodie) from a live performance by Keith Green in 1977. Five years later he was killed in a plane crash at the age of 29. I’ve also included a “bonus,” more contemporary song about Heaven. (If the videos don’t automatically load for you, please copy and paste these links to hear.)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbzJYqj2xC4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1lrfjmSFkU

Feb 15

No more bad news!

 

 

 

 

Would you believe I’m typing this blog at 11:20 p.m. the night before? I was lying in bed thinking about my day: naming things for which I’m thankful and praying for those in need when it hit me: I never wrote a blog for this week! AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!

Part of me thought that I should just skip it–it’s not like the blog police are going to arrest me for failure to write.But I kept thinking maybe there was someone who really needed a Word to the Weary today. In just the last few days so many of my friends have gotten bad news–cancer recurrences, the need for more chemo, the death of a loved one, loss of a job, and the list goes on and on. Maybe you or someone in your family has gotten some awful news too. And even if you didn’t personally get such news, there’s been enough rotten world and national news to discourage even the most optimistic person–me included!

So I decided to get out of my nice warm bed and get my four typing fingers moving and at least write a few words of encouragement to all of us who are feeling the weight of so much bad news. (Now I know why I couldn’t get Psalm 112:7 out of my mind all day.)

They will not be afraid when the news is bad because they have resolved to trust in the Eternal.  (The Voice Bible)

Scripture never promises that those of us who love and follow God won’t get bad news. In fact, it pretty much assures us we will. We can’t really choose whether or not to get bad news–although turning off the TV and not reading newspapers or Facebook might help a little 🙂  It’s when the bad news comes that we have a choice: we get to choose how we respond. And we can decide not to be afraid.

Why can we make that decision? Because we have resolved to trust God. The Google dictionary says resolved means that we have “decided firmly on a course of action.” The Amplified Bible translates that part of Psalm 112:7 as “steadfast, trusting [confidently relying on and believing] in the Lord.” Any way you put it, our minds are made up. We are not budging. We will trust God in spite of every negative, discouraging, evil, disease-filled, sad, depressing circumstance we come up against.

Well, it’s after midnight as I finish typing–I didn’t even stay up this late on New Year’s Eve! I’m not much for New Year’s Resolutions, but here’s the resolution I am making this night: I am resolved to trust in the Eternal God no matter what this life brings (or doesn’t bring). Won’t you join me today, and all the days that follow, in making that same resolution?

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If the video doesn’t automatically load below, please copy and paste this link to enjoy this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXMPNXXnCls

 

 

Feb 01

Can You See Your Shadow?

 

 

 

 

 

There I was staring right into the steely eyes of a hammerhead shark. Then another shark swam toward me. Over my shoulder, I could see a third heading my way.

I never flinched. I didn’t even attempt to run. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience.

Why? Not because I still have chemo-brain and didn’t remember that sharks can be very dangerous. No, it was because I was completely protected from them.

The experience took place at the aquarium in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and I was standing on dry ground watching the menacing-looking sharks swim past me in a huge, wraparound glass saltwater tank. They couldn’t have touched me even if they had wanted to. So you see, it is possible to be surrounded by something life-threatening and yet feel very safe!

The shadow that cancer–or any difficult; trial–casts on survivors and loved ones can at times seem very menacing.

In grade-school science, you may have learned that a shadow is caused by the absence of light when an opaque (not see-through) object has absorbed the light. When the trials of life becomes a shadow in our lives, I believe they’re blocking the light from reaching us.

Another truth about shadows is that they fall opposite their light source. That’s why your shadow is in front of you if the sun is behind you and vice versa. The way we’re facing determines whether or not we can see the shadow easily.

I know this is a simple scientific fact, but it is a profound spiritual truth for those facing tough times. You have to keep facing the light in order not to see shadows so easily. You must keep turned in the right direction.

Do you remember in 1998 when the Galaxy IV communications satellite malfunctioned and rotated out of position, turning away from the earth? In an instant millions of pagers went silent, TV and radio stations couldn’t transmit, and even some gas pumps couldn’t accept credit cards. It all happened because just one satellite in the heavens turned the wrong way and couldn’t communicate with earth.

Perhaps when you first heard the diagnosis or found yourself in a really difficult spot, you got out of position spiritually. You couldn’t figure out how a loving God could allow this situation into your life or your loved one’s. Maybe you even felt at times as if He didn’t hear your prayers. I hope you will check to see which way you are facing. I believe the way to communicate with God is to be turned toward Him, pouring out our hearts to the One who hears, understands, and has the power to respond.

Once we’re facing Him, talking to Him, and listening to Him, we also can choose to live under a different shadow. Now I know it sounds strange that you could find light by being under a shadow, but it’s true.

The shadow I want you to move under—or stay under if you’re already there—is a much, much bigger shadow than any illness or trial’s shadow. It’s a safe, secure, protective shadow. There’s no other shadow that can eclipse this one. And underneath it, we’re not in the dark; we’re supernaturally in the light. You see, while the Bible describes God as light, it also refers to Him as a shadow, protecting us in His shade.

Those who live in the shelter of the Most High
will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. Psalm 91:1

The shadow of the Almighty.

I love that word picture. Can you see yourself with a dark cloud of pain–physical, emotional, mental or spiritual–over your head, as you move under the huge shadow of God Himself? Standing underneath His shadow, you can barely even see the little shadow-speck of the struggle you’re facing.

He has hidden me in the shadow of his hand. Isaiah 49:2

Have you ever put your arms around a child during a storm and drawn him/her close to you, protecting that little one from the rain and the noise? Have you ever seen a mother hen spread her wings and gather her little chicks to safety as danger approached? Those are the pictures that the Bible gives us of God’s love and care for us.

How precious is your unfailing love, O God!
All humanity finds shelter
in the shadow of your wings. Psalm 36:7

May I pray for you? Almighty God, please help my friend to live not under the shadow of illness or any trial, but under the protective shadow of Your hand. And there let my friend feel your unfailing love and find rest. Amen.

NOTE: I don’t usually post songs from live performances, but this was the best version I could find of this song I wanted to use. If it gets too long for you, you can always stop it 🙂 Lyrics also are in SPANISH for all my Spanish-speaking friends to sing along! (We used to sing this at a Messianic Jewish synagogue we attended, so it brought back really nice memories for me.)

If the video doesn’t automatically load here, please copy and paste this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stjOIflP_1g to enjoy!