Category: healing

Feb 28

The Queen of Recycling

Probably not many people outside of my immediate family know this, but…I am the Queen of Recycling!

Yes, it’s true. I attained this title by memorizing what’s recyclable and then fanatically making sure nothing gets missed. I even bring home all the plastic containers from fast-food restaurants so I can rinse and toss everything into the recycling bin (also eases my guilt a little for eating fast-food).

My daughters know that I will be looking in their kitchen trash and recycling containers to make sure items are in the correct bin and will lovingly move them if necessary. However, I do refrain from inspecting friends’ kitchens and making the same adjustments. (Well, maybe I’ve moved a few items at our good friends’ house across the street.)

My obsession got a huge boost a few years ago when our local trash hauler built Total Recycle, a  multi-million-dollar “groundbreaking state-of-the-art single-stream recycling facility.”

Since then we have been able to recycle all kinds of flexible plastic packaging like candy bar wrappers, drink pouches, plastic wrap, and all those bags for chips, pet food, groceries and food storage,

We have weekly, curbside recycling pickup and our big blue pail always is full, sometimes spilling over into two smaller containers. (Disclaimer: I don’t always wear my crown when I take out the bin, but I wanted you to know my royalty is legit.)

Christmas 1980

And why am I so committed to recycling, you ask? I’ve decided it’s in my DNA.

My mother, born during the Great Depression, was the oldest of nine and learned from an early age to salvage, safeguard and save everything possible.  (In photo: my Barbie doll clothes she  made from fabric scraps and I handed down to my girls.)

Mom’s thriftiness carried over into my marriage, especially during those years of me staying home to  raise a family on a not-very-large pastoral salary.  I don’t need to scrimp and save like I used to, but repurposing, reusing, and restoring things (especially OLD things!) just seems to be in my nature.

And that got me thinking about the God I love and serve.

He doesn’t just recycle…He refreshes. He renews. And He restores.

It’s His nature.

And the One sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!”
–-Revelation 21:5

And while much of that promise refers to the final restoration of a new Heaven and a new Earth, there are still plenty of promises that God makes things new right now.

What would you like to see restored in your life? Relationships? Health? Peace of mind? Hope?

What needs renewing in your world? Your marriage? Your thoughts? Your words? Your attitude?

Hear God’s message to you:

Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin anew every morning.
–Lamentations 3:23

So after you have suffered a little while, He will restore, support and strengthen you,
and He will place you on a firm foundation.
–1 Peter 5:10

When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of refreshing springs.
–Psalm 84:6

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away,
yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
–2 Corinthians 4:16

Perhaps  Psalm 51:10 could be your prayer today: Create in me a clean heart, O God; restore within me a sense of being brand new.

And whenever you recycle something, don’t think about me, the Queen of Recycling. Instead stop and thank the King of Creation who can renew, refresh and restore your walk with Him.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I hope you’re blessed by the song “You Make All Things New” by Big Daddy Weave ©2019 CURB/Word Entertainment .

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.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As soon as I heard the song “Desert Road” by Casting Crowns, I thought of my dear friend Carolyn.

Oct 25

Are you a Titus? Or do you need one?

I remember so well the first cancer support group meeting I attended at our community  hospital. It was the summer of 1990.

Fall 1990 reporting on a P. Buckley Moss art show

I was a 36-year-old reporter for a York, PA, newspaper and recently had interviewed Mary Flinner, the new group’s facilitator. When I showed up at a support group meeting a few weeks after my story was published, Mary naturally assumed I was visiting the group as a follow-up to my article.

“How sweet that you would come to our meeting,” she said with a big smile.

“Actually, I was diagnosed with colon cancer last month,” I told her as her jaw dropped.

It was an incredible irony.

I remember that I had to talk myself into attending that meeting because I wasn’t sure I really wanted to be with a bunch of cancer patients. As introductions were made around the table, I happened to be the most newly diagnosed and the last to introduce myself.

I burst into tears before I could even get out my name.

I felt really silly for falling apart like that, but I had been trying to hold it together in front of everyone else for so long that it seemed good to let down my feelings with others who had “been there, done that.”

Daytime Cancer Prayer Support meeting

Before I retired as a patient advocate, I constantly invited cancer patients and their caregivers to my support group meetings, but often people told me: “I’m not really that depressed that I need to come.”

To which I replied, “Great! I need people there who aren’t depressed to support those who are!”

 

What life difficulty are you facing or has God already brought you through? Divorce? Addiction? Cancer? Special needs parenting? Relatives with dementia? Abuse? Job loss? Infertility? Grief?

The list of life’s trials is endless…and so is the grace of God to see us through.

“God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.
He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.
When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”
2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Courtesy MorningbirdPhoto

Don’t waste the pain you’ve encountered by failing to share your experiences with others. The troubles you’ve faced with God’s strength will be a comfort to those facing the same kinds of circumstances.

When the Apostle Paul was down and out, God sent his friend Titus at just the right time to him.

“When we arrived in Macedonia, there was no rest for us. We faced conflict from every direction,
with battles on the outside and fear on the inside.
But God, who encourages those who are discouraged,
encouraged us by the arrival of Titus. His presence was a joy.”
2 Corinthians 7:5, 6

I think each day that you and I fit into one of two categories: someone who needs to be encouraged or someone who needs to be an encourager. Which are you today? If it’s the former, ask God to send a “Titus” your way and if it’s the latter, ask God to show you who might need you to step in and be their “Titus.”

 I pray that we each see one another–family, friends and even strangers–through the eyes of God.  As the beautiful Brandon Heath song below says“give me Your eyes for just one second.”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Oct 12

Two Women (Make that Three) Defying the Odds

This is the story of two women God brought together more than two decades ago, forging a faith-filled friendship which has seen them through incredibly scary diagnoses.

L. to R. Chris, me, Jutta Sept. 2022

Chris’s ordeal began in July 1999 when at the age of 36 she suffered a grand mal seizure while sleeping.

“My husband thought I fell out of bed,” she recalls. “He was trying to get me up, but when he rolled me over I was turning blue.”

Hospital tests revealed a golf ball–sized tumor in the right front area of her brain. Chris remembers nothing of those events until she awoke from surgery and received the shocking diagnosis of anaplastic astrocytoma, which is not usually considered curable.

“I never knew what the odds were regarding survival,” says Chris. “No one ever told me that I only had a certain length of time left. If they had, I think I would have panicked.”

While still finishing radiation and chemo, Chris was befriended by a young mom named Jutta (YOU-tuh), who was leading the women’s Bible study Chris had joined.

“I had so many questions about God and all kinds of spiritual things ,” recalls Chris, who, along with her husband and 2-year-old son had recently begun attending Jutta’s church. “I always thought they were stupid so I didn’t bring them up [before], but Jutta didn’t seem to mind explaining things to me. And she would always give me a hug when I got there and when I left.”

A friendship was easily forged between the two, and Chris’s love for God grew alongside her love for Jutta. On the one-year anniversary of her brain surgery, Chris was baptized in a swimming pool with Jutta cheering her on.

LifeHopeTruth.com

Then in July 2003, at the age of 38, Jutta also awoke from surgery to discover she had cancer.

Doctors initially thought her jaundice was due to a drug reaction, but instead discovered a malignant tumor in her pancreas. Up until that time, Jutta, a wife and mother of children ages 6 and 10, had never even considered the possibility that she might be seriously ill.

But the harsh reality was that she had one of the deadliest kinds of cancer and it already had spread to the lymph nodes.

“The day after surgery, the oncologist came up to my room and said, ‘You better get your act together. You have cancer and you’ve only got two years,’” Jutta recalls.

Hearing that she had such a difficult-to-treat cancer was shocking, but even worse, Jutta says, “was the way I was told.”

“It took me at least a month to get over that,” she adds. Eventually she decided the doctor’s prediction was only that—a prediction—and she would not live believing it had to come true.

“I always prayed that God would use me no matter what, but if I’d have known it would result in this, I wouldn’t have prayed that way,” she adds with a laugh.

Jutta, who still speaks with a rich German accent, believes setting goals is important for survivors.

“Even if my cancer would have been stage 4, I would still have gone for my goals,” she says. “One of my goals is that I want to be an encouragement to other people.”

“You don’t stop living just because you hear that word cancer–that’s the worst thing you can do,” Jutta says.

“I wouldn’t change anything about my journey,” Chris adds, ” because without it, I wouldn’t have met the wonderful friends that I have and I wouldn’t have a relationship with Jesus.”

Recently at a Cancer Prayer Support Group concert we all reconnected–three mothers diagnosed in our 30s, with the survival odds stacked against us.

It was a powerful reminder for us–and I hope for you–that statistics and predictions are no match for our God.

I am the Lord, the God of all the peoples of the world. Is anything too hard for me?
Jeremiah 32:27

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Please enjoy the music video “God of the Impossible” by Lincoln Brewster.

Sep 13

Contentment: My Oncologist Has Cancer (Part 9)

If you’re tired of hearing good news about people with little-to-no medical hope who are amazing doctors by how well they are doing, don’t even bother to read this.

Marc & Elizabeth Hirsh

Okay, because you’re still here, I could not be more happy–and thankful to God–to tell you that my oncologist and dear friend, Dr. Marc Hirsh, had another encouraging scan! This latest 6-month checkup at Hershey Medical comes almost 2.5 years after he was diagnosed with such a serious and rare cancer that he and every specialist consulted thought his death was imminent.

But the large tumor behind his heart has remained stable for the past two years.

“I’m really happy I got a good report–the tumor hasn’t grown and actually is a little smaller (about 5X3 cm instead of 6X4 cm),” Marc told me. “Now I can enjoy another ski season and have time for traveling.

“I’m delighted my short-term prognosis is excellent,” he added with his usual penchant for cautious optimism.

Contentment.

LoveHopeandTruth.com

That’s the word that Marc never actually used in our conversation, but I heard in his voice.

He’s a 71-year-old man  forced to close his successful three-decade-long oncology practice immediately after his diagnosis, and still living in the shadow of cancer…and yet he feels contentment.

“I’m enjoying my life quite a bit,” he said. “I know it (the cancer) may or may not come back, but I’m pretty much enjoying life a lot.”

“Life” includes another cross-country excursion out West this fall to visit older daughter Jessi and family, as well as regular trips to Maryland to help out younger daughter Sarah with her son and two little foster girls. And of course, plenty of physical activities like swimming, kayaking, paddle boarding, jogging, and biking.

And music is still a huge part of Marc’s life. For the past 30  years, he has ministered in song at our Prayer Support Group concerts for area cancer patients, their caregivers, and those grieving someone lost to cancer. After Marc’s diagnosis in May 2020, I honestly thought there never would be another concert, but this past Sunday for the second time as a cancer survivor, he extended healing through his beautiful music and wise words. .

Marc, a Messianic Jew,  began by sharing his personal testimony through his original melody “Jesus Took Away My Blues” and ended with the words of the old song that always bring me to tears:  “And when I come to die, just give me Jesus.”

“Trouble is inevitable, (but) thank goodness we can have Jesus in our life,” he reminded the 65 folks in attendance.

Marc also shared from Psalm 27:

The Lord is my light and salvation–so why should I be afraid?
The LORD is my fortress, protecting from danger, so why should I tremble?…
The one thing I ask of the LORD–the thing I seek the most–
is to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life…”

Before the concert Marc mentioned to me that he really liked the new oncologist he saw at Hershey.

“When I asked him if he had ever seen anyone with my diagnosis who was doing well, he said ‘no’,” Marc recalled. “But he added that nobody has ever had the same treatment (radiation, chemo and hormone injections) that I prescribed for myself.”

And then the new doc reminded Marc of something he knew but was encouraged to hear again: “Even in the worst cancer, there are long-term survivors.”

Marc, we are praying that’s what you will be.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Please enjoy the very short music video of “Hope to Carry On” by Rich Mullins, Marc and Elizabeth’s favorite Christian artist.