Category: healing

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 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

Jan 04

How to Have a Close Encounter of the Divine Kind

 

 

 

 

I don’t know if this cancer diagnosis is the first one your family or friend has faced or simply the latest in a string of such bad health news. Lucky me…I was the first in our large extended family to find out my DNA had “slipped up” and allowed cancer to “slip in.” At the time, we had plenty of relatives with diabetes and heart problems, but always thought cancer wasn’t something lurking in our genes.

So, while some folks might suspect they may get a cancer diagnosis some day, I never did. Instead it seemed as if my cancer just came out of nowhere and struck when I least expected it. I hear many cancer patients say the same thing—some of them are even in their seventies and eighties, but have enjoyed such good health, they felt rather immune to cancer.

And then there are those whom I meet who already have had cancer knocking at their family’s door too many times—they’ve watched parents, spouses, grandparents or even their children wage cancer battles and now are discouraged that it’s their “turn.”

I think it’s hard to be the first in your family with cancer and it’s hard to be the latest one diagnosed. Either way this disease is a very unwelcome intruder.

I know that’s how my friend Guy felt when he was diagnosed in December 1993 with what his surgeon later would describe as “Stage D” prostate cancer (and yes, this story has a happy ending!). In 1991, Peg, Guy’s wife of thirty-four years, died from a rare, inoperable cancer, and his middle son, Mike, endured chemo and radiation for testicular cancer in 1992.

Now it was Guy’s turn.

“I ­didn’t get angry,” he recalls, “but I felt very empty and I said, ‘Why, Lord, why?’”

Even though Guy had a strong faith in God before his diagnosis, it ­wasn’t easy for him to face cancer without Peg at his side. But he was about to find out that this unwelcome intruder was no match for the Creator of the Universe.

A radical prostatectomy was scheduled for late January 1994 and Guy remembers the anxious moments before he went ­under­ the surgeon’s knife.

“Before I went into the O.R., they prepped me, and Mike’s minister was up to see me and he asked me if he could pray with me,” Guy says. “Then they took me out of the room and down the hall. Before we got to the [operating room] door, I said, ‘Stop!’” Guy recalls. “The guy pushing me said, ‘What’s wrong?’ but I just told him again to stop.

“I looked up and pointed up and I said, ‘Lord, You know me and I know You—do with me what You will,’” he remembers. “Once I said those words, I was so at peace and I said to the guy that was pushing me, ‘Let’s go!’

“I left [my cancer prognosis] up to God and I ­wasn’t afraid of anything. I had a peace that I can’t really describe.”

I would describe what happened that moment as a close encounter of the divine kind.

As Guy reached out to God, he said a simple prayer of surrender, giving the Master of the Universe permission to have His way in Guy’s life. He did what I believe we all need to do: agree to let God simply be God.

Let Him be the unfaltering, faithful God, willing to strengthen us for any and ­every­ circumstance.

Let Him be the incredibly sovereign God, wise enough to know how and when to answer any and ­every­ prayer.

Let Him be the mighty awesome God that He is, powerful enough to heal us at any and every­ level—powerful enough to heal my friend Guy, body, mind, and spirit.

Have you ever had a divine encounter with the Lord before? If you have, you’re probably already praying for another such special moment. But if you haven’t, you may be a little wary (maybe even a LOT wary!) Personally, I don’t think you have anything to lose—and a great deal to gain—by reaching out to God and saying a simple prayer surrendering your situation to Him. You could pray something like this: Dear God, You know me and I want to know You more. I surrender this situation to You and ask You to have Your way in my/my loved one’s life. I pray this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

P.S. If you want more of the happy ending to Guy’s story, you should know the surgery (which did not remove all the cancer) was followed by radiation and hormone treatments after which he was cancer-free until his death more than twenty years later. Up until that time, he sually could be found spreading cheer as he volunteered helping the “old folks” at a local nursing home!

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

Nov 23

Unexpected Blessings from God

 

 

 

 

I was always amazed when the discussion at my support group meetings turned to the blessings that had come through the survivors’ cancer experiences. Somehow the words blessing and cancer in the same sentence just don’t make sense.

I’m a very logical, rational person and having colon cancer at the age of 36 made absolutely no sense to me. But as the years have gone by, I must admit that God has used this “senseless” experience to bring blessing in my life. If you are facing a trial today that makes no sense, I pray you will believe that somehow, some way God can use it to bring an unexpected blessing.

When I returned for my first checkup in May 1991 after six months of weekly chemo, I was the ­only person who ­wasn’t there for a treatment that day. I knew I should feel happy that I had finished treatment, but I ­didn’t. As I looked around that room of people in recliners hooked up to poles with saline-solution bags, I was overcome with sadness. Some of them looked so thin and ill, and others looked so tired and afraid. I began to weep. I wanted to take away their pain, but I couldn’t. I wanted to give them peace, but I ­couldn’t.

Then God spoke to my heart: “But you know the One who can, and you can tell them about Me.”

“But I just want to put all this behind me and go on with my life,” I argued. “Besides, I ­don’t want to hang around people with cancer. It will be depressing.”

Finally a few weeks later, like a pouting child, I gave in: “I’ll do it, but I won’t like it,” I told Him.

I started the Cancer Prayer Support Group in October 1991 with four people. My intent was to have a one-hour, once-a-month meeting. That ­shouldn’t be too depressing, I figured.

But almost immediately I could see that the people coming to the group needed more support than that. Not ­only that, but I found that I actually felt better after the meetings rather than worse. So we started meeting twice a month and have been doing so ­ever since. And guess what soon became a great source of joy in my life—the support group! As the months rolled by, I secretly began to pray that I would be able to quit my public relations job and volunteer with cancer patients.

In July 1995, on the fifth anniversary of my cancer surgery, I told our congregation how God had blessed me through my cancer experience—through my friends in the support group and through my oncologist, Dr. Marc Hirsh and his wife Elizabeth, who by then had become very close friends and prayer partners with my husband and me.

I concluded with this sentence: “Someday I hope I can quit my job and minister full-time, sharing God’s peace and love with cancer patients.”

I knew it was an unrealistic wish—there was no way financially that we could afford for me to quit my job and volunteer. But less than a year later, my prayer became a reality when Marc offered me a job in his office ministering to his patients’ emotional and spiritual needs.

Since May 1996 until my retirement last year, I was a patient advocate listening to patients’ hopes and fears and praying that God would heal them physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I asked Him to bless each one, and I believed that He would. My position as a patient advocate led to the writing and publishing of several books (#6 comes out in the spring!) and a worldwide ministry to cancer patients and their caregivers.

In the year before that job offer, I had been meditating on Ephesians 3:20 which speaks of our God “who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” There is no doubt in my mind that God has done far more in my life than I could ask or imagine, and I know that He can do that in your life too.

Do I think He’s going to give you a job as a patient advocate for your oncologist? Probably not. (Except for you, Karen Wineholt!)

Do I think He is able to do something equally amazing in your life? You bet I do.

I ­can’t tell you how, when, or where God will bring a blessing through your trial of suffering. But I can tell you why—because His Word promises He will.

Romans 8:28 says: And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose..

God will bring blessing through your trial because you matter greatly to Him and He longs to show you that. He may bless you with physical healing, or He may bless you by healing you emotionally of some deep-seated hurts. He may bless you spiritually with the joy of knowing Him in a way you never have before. Or He may bless others through you in unimaginable ways.

My blessing from cancer is certainly not the one I sought, but because God knows me and loves me, He knew how to bless me.

He knows you. He loves you. He can bless you through your trial. . . if you let Him decide the blessing.

(Don’t miss the song below–it’s a beautiful one and I’ve included the words at the end of this blog.)

 

“Blessings”
Written by Liz Story • Copyright © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Universal Music Publishing Group

 

We pray for blessings, we pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
And all the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love is way too much to give us lesser things’Cause what if your blessings come through rain drops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if every promise from Your word is not enough
And all the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we’d have faith to believe

‘Cause what if your blessings come through rain drops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not,
This is not our home
It’s not our home

‘Cause what if your blessings come through rain drops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near

What if my greatest disappointments or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise

 

 

Sep 07

Finding Treasures Hidden in Darkness

 

 

And I would love for you to meet my friend, Nancy, a 10-year survivor of incurable liver cancer. My Cancer Prayer Support Group meetings always were better when she was there—partly because she’s a wonderful baker (she brought four fresh strawberry pies to one summer meeting!), but mostly because she’s just an awesome person.

Nancy originally was told in January 2005 that she had a “very aggressive” liver cancer and there wasn’t anything anyone could do for her.

“If you have anything you want to do, you should do it,” the doctor told her, adding that she would probably die within a month.

But about two weeks later, she got a call from another physician who said she had been misdiagnosed. It indeed was a rare, untreatable liver cancer, but a slow-growing one, which probably would not take her life.

With that good news, Nancy figured the hard part of her cancer journey was over, but she was very wrong. One of her doctors suggested a new, oral chemotherapy, which just might slow the cancer’s growth and Nancy agreed to give it a try. Unfortunately, one of the drug’s side effects was severe depression.

“When I would wake up in the morning, I thought I couldn’t get out of bed,” Nancy recalls. “Any desire to do anything at all was gone. I would just sit and cry.”

Nancy, of course, stopped the drug, but the depression lasted for eighteen months.

“I felt terribly alone even in a roomful of people,” she recalls. “It was the most horrible feeling I ever had.”

I’ve never experienced that kind of depression, but I believe Nancy when she says it was “worse than being told I had cancer or that I was going to die.”

So why am I telling you this story in a blog about encouragement for the weary? Because Nancy got through her depression and is back to her bubbly self and I want you to know that you and your loved one can survive depression if it should rear its ugly head in your lives.

Whenever a newcomer joined our support group and was struggling with depression, I wanted that person to meet Nancy because she’s “been there, done that.” And most of all I wanted them to hear what Nancy discovered during her ordeal.

“I learned that God is faithful,” she says. “I always believed that, but not to the extent I do now.

“Even though I couldn’t feel close to God then, I always sensed He was there,” she says. “When I prayed to die in my sleep, the Holy Spirit was there with me whispering ‘it’s going to be OK—it’s not over yet.’ God was always there.”

I will give you treasures hidden in darkness—secret riches. I will do this so you may know that I am the Lord God of Israel, the one who calls you by name. Isaiah 45:3

Nancy’s path is not one she ever would have chosen for herself, but she wholeheartedly agrees that the Lord gave her treasures that were hidden in the darkness of depression. Now she eagerly shares those “secret riches” with those she meets who are struggling with their own despondent times.

“When I was down, just a teeny bit of hope helped me,” Nancy remembers. “If I can give that to anyone, I’d be happy.”

I always feel more hopeful when I talk to Nancy as the love and light of God shine through her. She and her incredibly supportive husband Tom recently celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary by taking a trip to Belize—not as relaxing tourists, but to work at the orphanage they helped build.

“I just want to give back,” Nancy explains. “I think that’s why God left me here.”

Father, I pray for anyone reading this today who is struggling with depression or any other dark cloud of discouragement. I pray that they will trust that You are faithful and will see them through. And I pray that one day they can look back and see the treasures You have brought to light through this time. In Jesus Name. Amen.