Category: healing

Jun 04

Restoring What the Locusts Have Eaten

This is the story of one woman’s pain, her mistakes, and her grief. But it’s especially the story of how God redeemed her heartaches…and her soul.

My dear friend Carmen grew up with an angry, abusive father, whom her mother divorced when Carmen was about 11 or 12. As she looks back on her rough childhood, she believes she suffered from undiagnosed clinical depression from her teens through early adulthood.

“I remember being tired, bored, lonely, and feeling nothing really made me happy,” she recalls.

Eventually she met a handsome star athlete as she was moving into her dorm at Temple University in Philly. They quickly were in a “serious dating relationship,” but before long, he “cheated” on her.

“My depression became worse and I internalized all the hurt,” Carmen says. “I thought the only way out of the pain was to end my life.

“That was the first attempt to take my life and then I compounded the problem by marrying him,” she acknowledges.

The second suicide attempt came after her new husband continued to stray.

“I tried to end my life again, but God wouldn’t have it,” Carmen remembers. “Even then, God had a bigger purpose for my life.”

The infidelity pain was compounded by two tragedies: Before the couple married in 1985, a baby boy born without kidneys who survived a mere 16 hours; then another son born in 1986 with multiple birth defects, who lived only 16 months.

Carmen was devastated.

Renea & Carmen

“I was so angry with God I went to see my friend Renea, who talked about knowing God–and I wanted some answers!,” she recalls. “I always thought she was the best friend and that she would be a really great friend if she’s just quit talking about Jesus!”

But when Carmen took her angry questions to her friend, “she gently and kindly told me about Jesus–a real Savior who wanted a relationship with me.”

The two women, friends since teenagers, started going to worship together, and Carmen still remembers the pastor’s sermon which changed her life. It was the story in 2 Chronicles 20 where the Israelites prayed and “raised a hallelujah,” and God made a way where there seemed to be no way.

“For the first time, the Word of God actually made sense to me,” Carmen says. “I went down front (of the sanctuary) and gave my life to the Lord on January 31, 1988.”

“Since then it has been a beautiful adventure,” she says, “I was miraculously healed of the depression and when my husband cheated on me again, I didn’t blame myself because I knew I was a child of God!

“I looked up and said ‘I deserve better than this!’ and that gave me the strength to leave him.”

Fast-forward to August 1997 when a co-worker introduced Carmen to his friend Greg. It was another whirlwind romance, but Carmen was not the same person.

“My criteria was a husband who loved God even more than he loved me, and I found one,” she explains.

Carmen’s recent 60th birthday party

The couple married in March 1998 and have since adopted two children, son Quinn (now 16) from Ethiopia and daughter Makenzie (now 11) born in the States.

“God has restored everything that was taken from me,” Carmen says. “He completely healed my broken heart over my babies and He’s given me two beautiful children and a wonderful husband…this is a testimony of what God has done!”

No wonder one of Carmen’s favorite verses is Joel 2:25:

I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten.

Carmen has been in my weekly women’s Bible study for almost four years and our group was shocked to learn of the heartaches she has faced, as she is known for her beautiful, glowing smile.

“It’s joy!,” she told us. “It’s not happiness; before I was seeking happiness and now I have JOY!

“I don’t share my story so you will feel sorry for me, but because I want you to know the miracle of God,” she explains. “I know God is real!”

As an adult, Carmen forgave and reconciled with her dad and they had many good years together before his death in 2005.

“He was just a flawed human being in need of forgiveness, just like the rest of us,” she explains. “And like my favorite song says: May my whole life prove that God is good.”

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Please open in your browser so you don’t miss Carmen’s favorite song, “God is Good” by Jonathan McReynolds. “The first time I heard it, I just broke down,” she says.

May 21

All Shall Be Well

Like most of us, Kevin Cross’s life has been full of unexpected twists and turns–many of them wonderful, at least one terrifying. And as soon as I heard his “full-circle” story, I knew I wanted to share it.

The Cross home on the Tred Avon River

His life dream started very young.

“When I was little, I used to play at being a priest,” Kevin, 72, recalls. “I gave my sisters Necco (candy) wafers for communion!”

In college Kevin continued his dream of becoming a Jesuit priest…until he attended a Catholic retreat and met a young blonde named Barbara.

The two quickly fell in love and “that kind of ended that career choice!” Kevin says with a laugh.

They married in 1974 and after earning a Master’s in psychiatric social work, he worked in counseling and human resources for the next three decades.

Then came another unexpected turn when he and Barbara attended a retreat in 2003.

“When we got there, I found out it was a 3-day silent retreat, which didn’t sound that great,” Kevin recalls. “But afterwards as soon as I got back in the car, I started hearing in my head  ‘I want you to be a priest’.”

He wrestled with such a momentous change, but finally decided to go to seminary and become an Episcopal priest.

“Father Cross” has been his calling  ever since.

Volunteer chaplain at the National Cathedral

For the past 14 years he’s been rector at Church of the Holy Trinity, Oxford, MD, on the Eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. (Known as “The Village Vicar” in this community of only 600.)

The most difficult path Kevin’s been forced to take began in 2019 when he insisted his family doctor do some cardiac screening because  he was 67 and “so many of my parishioners were having strokes and heart attacks.”

The coronary calcium scan which looks for plaque in the arteries scored him a perfect zero. But the x-ray images of his heart showed something else.

“You’ve got a spot on your right lung that looks suspicious,” the doctor reported and prescribed an antibiotic in hopes it was merely an infection.

But a few months later the answer came: “It’s grown and you need to have it out.”

Kevin’s right lower lobe lung was removed and the pathology identified melanoma, which meant it was stage 4. (The primary skin site never was found.)

“This whole thing was just a shocker,” Kevin acknowledges. “There were times when I was really frightened and petrified, but my faith is what really got me through–my faith, my family and my friends.”

He began a bi-weekly infusion of immunotherapy to boost his immune system, stopping six months shy of the recommended two years because of adverse kidney effects.

Especially comforting to Kevin have been the words of 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich, who withdrew into solitude for most of her life and wrote Revelations of Divine Love (the oldest surviving book in English by a woman). Her village was filled with poverty, famine and the bubonic plague, prompting suffering folks to come to her cell  for spiritual counsel. 

It was a vision in May 1373 when Julian said she heard Jesus speak the words for which she is most well-known:

“‘All shall be well’ became my mantra,” Kevin remembers. “I obviously wanted to be healed, but I knew if I wasn’t, all will be well.”

Scans every three months continue to show No Evidence of Disease for Kevin.

“It’s always on your mind that it could recur,” he explains. “I can forget about it for a while, but it helps me remember the finiteness of life and appreciate it more.”

Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.
—John 16:33

Yes, in Him, all shall be well.
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For more on the life of Julian of Norwich https://julianofnorwich.org/pages/who-is-julian-of-norwich For more of her quotes https://quotefancy.com/julian-of-norwich-quotes

Open in your browser to hear this short, beautiful arrangement of “All Shall Be Well” by an unnamed guitarist (originally composed by folk-singer Sydney Bertram Carter, best known for “Lord of the Dance”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8c3-GMOs10 )

May 07

Absolutely Beating the Odds

My friend Bill Shrieves, 77,  always has been an overachiever.

A while back he and his wife bought a new in-home care franchise, rapidly growing it into a large, profitable venture. In his younger days, he completed the Marine Corps Marathon three times and just to prove he still could, did it again when he turned 70.

No wonder he decided he could survive a stage 4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

“I never really thought I was going to die,” Bill told me after we met last month at my “Morning of Hope” seminar on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

The medical pronouncement of get-ready-to-die came in January 2011.

Yes, you read that right. As of this writing, Bill is a 13.5-year survivor of pancreatic cancer spread to the liver, making him once again in an elite group as the 5-year survival rate for stage 4 pancreatic is only 1-3%.

Bill’s journey began in November 2010 when an episode of dark urine led him to urgent care where at the age of 64 he was diagnosed with a pancreatic tumor.

The day before Thanksgiving he was at the University of Maryland, Baltimore for surgery called a Whipple procedure which removed the head of the pancreas, the first part of the small intestine, the gallbladder, and the bile duct.  (Only about 20-percent of pancreatic patients are eligible for a Whipple.)

Bill applied to a clinical trial for his post-op treatment, but a CT scan two months after surgery revealed bad news: he no longer was eligible for the trial because the cancer had metastasized to a handful of liver lesions.

“My oncologist told me ‘get your affairs in order because you probably won’t live until the end of the year’.”

Bill started a regimen called FOLFIRINOX, which combines three chemo drugs and a vitamin-B derivative to enhance their efficacy. By mid-March all the lesions except one were gone and in July it, too, disappeared.

After eleven rounds of chemo, Bill’s doctor followed him with scans for several years, but “at the 10-year mark my oncologist fired me!” Bill recalled with a laugh.

However, well before Bill hit that amazing 10-year mark, he was back to achieving again, and in 2013 founded a small nonprofit called Mid-Shore Pancreatic Cancer Foundation midshorepancan.org

“I really wanted to have an impact on pancreatic cancer patients locally,” he explained.

About 15 volunteers offer practical support to maybe a dozen patients each year, and talk or correspond with dozens more around the world who need encouragement. Funds are raised through evening 5K runs at a local golf course.

“We do things like pay bills for them–we even bought a set of false teeth for a lady!,” Bill said.

I asked him why he thinks he has survived when doctors and statistics said he would not.

“I do think optimism is an important thing and I also have a strong faith in God,” said Bill, who along with his wife Jean of 57 years, has two children, three grandchildren, and two great-grands.

“Every day I ask myself why God spared me and what am I supposed to do today,” he added. “I don’t know how someone can face a potentially life-ending illness without faith.”

(For more encouraging pancreatic cancer survivor stories, go to https://pancan.org/stories/)

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Bill loves gospel music and he and Jean attend a small African-American church where they are the only  white folks. The song “Heaven is Looking Down on Me” is one he enjoys hearing his church’s men’s choir sing. So open in your browser, sit back, and be blessed by The Canton Spirituals’ rendition.

Apr 09

Incurable Cancer and God’s Goodness

If you ask my dear friend Pat Magness what’s getting her through a nearly three-year journey with incurable cancer–and remission from it–she will tell you: God’s goodness and Lee’s encouragement.

Both God and husband Lee were in Pat’s life long before the sobering diagnosis, but her love for each has grown much deeper.

Pat and Lee, college sweethearts and retired college professors, have been avid travelers for all their 57 years of marriage–visiting about 50 countries.

But their cancer journey has been the most difficult they’ve ever faced.

“I was diagnosed in July 2021, but I had terrible back pain for months,” Pat recalls, “so I knew something was really wrong.”

An MRI finally revealed the problem: two spinal fractures.

She was directed immediately to another hospital for emergency  surgery to stabilize her back and avoid any paralysis. Meanwhile, Lee was admitted to a different hospital with a “scary” cellulitis (bacterial skin infection)!

Pat’s extensive blood work and bone marrow biopsy revealed the culprit was multiple myeloma: a blood cancer that develops in bone marrow plasma cells.

With two short rods implanted in her spine, Pat left the hospital in a fitted back brace she wore for three months.

When both were released from their hospitals, they spent the next month with younger son Ethan and his family, who live in the same town.

“We had been independent, traveling the world and all of a sudden we couldn’t even take care of ourselves in our own home,” Pat explains.

Chemo began shortly and the cancer responded almost immediately. Soon doctors were discussing a stem cell transplant, even though at 74 Pat normally would be considered “too old.”

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center decided Pat was a good candidate for the procedure, designed to restore the body’s ability to produce new blood cells after treatment with the very high chemo doses.

A transplant is an ordeal lasting several weeks and includes constant monitoring and high risk of infection. Pat and Lee stayed at a nearby apartment and every day Lee insisted they walk back and forth to the center.

“It got really tough,” Pat remembers. “I would say ‘I don’t think I can do that’ and Lee would encourage me to try. We walked every day for six weeks and there was only one time he had to drive me.

“I credit Lee with saving my life,” she continues. “He made the beds, did the cooking and the driving–everything for me.”

Celebrating 2nd transplant anniversary

Follow-ups tests show the cancer to be in complete remission and Pat continues on a bi-monthly “maintenance” treatment. She admits it gets tiring to be “constantly confronting your own mortality–you can’t pretend there’s nothing wrong.”

But in those discouraging moments, Pat recalls the hope promised in Romans 15:13:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him,
so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

When I asked what got her through the toughest times, Pat says it was “songs in the night” (Job 35:10)

A former church pianist, she “began to hear worship music, especially at night–it was so unusual.”

“No anxiety,  I just felt gratitude for life and for treatment,” she adds. “The song I heard most was ‘Goodness of God’.

“When you enter the cancer world, it helps to have things to live for and I just had so many things.”

Grandchildren’s high school and college graduations.  A new ministry praying for cancer patients. International traveling again. And last month accompanying us on our Mississippi riverboat cruise to belatedly celebrate our 50th anniversary.

Yes, the goodness of God.

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Open in your browser to hear Pat’s favorite song in the night–“Goodness of God” with CeCe Winans.

Mar 05

“God was using my hurt to heal others!”

When I met Bre Valenzuela last summer in San Diego at the Bob Goff retreat for cancer survivors, one thing was clear: she exuded joy…in spite of her circumstances.

In the fall of 2022, life had been good for Bre.

She was less than a month from celebrating her 29th birthday and the birth of her first child.  She was happily married since 2017 to husband Cody, whom she met while working at Disneyland.  Together they attended a great church where she was a worship leader, sharing the gift of her beautiful alto voice.

But then she found the lump.

It was a large one on the side of her neck, so she headed to urgent care, which sent her to the ER.  The doctor there told her she had Hodgkin lymphoma (despite the fact there was no tissue sample to diagnosis), but the oncologist she saw next thought it might be simply an infection. When tests ruled out an infection,  doctors decided to induce her at 39 weeks and get a biopsy right after the delivery.

A healthy baby boy named Jace arrived…along with a diagnosis of Stage 3 Hodgkin lymphoma and plans for chemotherapy.

“They let me be a mom for a week,” Bre recalls. ” I was allowed to breastfeed for a week and then I wasn’t allowed.”

Immediately Bre simultaneously began two ernormous tasks : fighting a life-threatening illness and raising a new, little life in her arms.

Worship team members shaved her head!

It was her faith in Jesus–which she “found” in 2019–that saw her through those really tough months.

“Faith showed up in a million ways!” she explains. “People from church would come over and just hold Jace for an hour so I could nap. They brought meals and went to chemo treatments with me so Cody could stay with Jace.”

When I asked Bre in our recent phone conversation how it felt to be a young, new mom facing cancer, she replied : “I had a sadness because I definitely want to see Jace grow up…but I realized I had to surrender all of it (to God) even if the outcome didn’t turn out to be what I wanted.”

It was while singing worship music that she experienced peaceful surrender.

“In the realm of worship, I felt perfectly held by God,” she recalls.

One of the most amazing ways that God showed up for Bre came through some advice given by a mentor-friend , who also is a cancer survivor.

“She said I should view my chemo chair as ‘holy ground’,” Bre remembers. “That seemed really strange, but she said it was the ground where God was sending people to heal me.”

At one point during her 12-treatment protocol, she was hospitalized for a week with a life-threatening sepsis infection.  Soon her hospital room also became holy ground.

“I ended up having four different nurses come in to my room to have me pray with them,” she says. “One even said she switched her shift so she could be with me.

“Now God was using my hurt to heal others.”

Life is good for Bre–follow-up tests show her to be cancer-free and she’s looking forward to her 30th birthday in October.

When she reflects on 2023, she says: “I didn’t know they made years this hard or this rewarding. Cheers to living life open-handed and finding joy even in the darkest of moments!”

Amen, my beautiful, joyful friend.

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.
For you know when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. James 1:2-3

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Please open in your browser to hear the great song “See You Through It” by Brandon Heath. The words speak of trials, and yet the music and whimsical video are full of JOY–just like my friend Bre. (I think the lyrics are clear, but if you want to read them, here’s a link see me through it lyrics.