Category: hope

Jan 14

Praying, Posting and Megan’s Update

So if you knew that there was a very strong possibility someone was planning on breaking into your home and stealing some of your precious possessions, what would you do?

Would you do nothing? Or would you try to prevent this from happening?

Personally, I first would pray.

And then I would get very busy.

Installing dead bolts, an alarm system, security cameras, motion detectors, door/window sensors, timers for lights, and maybe even recording a barking dog! I would spare no expense in making my home as secure as possible. I believe my actions either would prevent a burglar from entering, or at least catch the thief.

When I worked as an oncology patient advocate, I often posed the “burglar” question to those who had or were considering genetic testing. Their results would reveal whether they had an inherited mutation, greatly increasing the risk of certain cancers. I told them that in my opinion, knowing was far better than not knowing because if there was an “enemy” lurking to steal their health, there were steps they could take to eliminate or at least reduce that cancer risk.

Still it’s usually a difficult, scary decision to have genetic testing and then get a proactive plan to deal with the consequences.

And that is one of the reasons I’m so proud of my new Polish friend Megan, who was diagnosed last spring with breast cancer while pregnant with her little girl. Subsequent genetic testing discovered she had inherited a BRCA1 mutation, which led to more tough decisions for the 37-year-old mother of two. Last month after successfully completing her chemo treatment, Megan underwent a prophylactic double mastectomy.

“I am full of hope and I hope to God that everything will work out,” Megan wrote me just before that successful surgery.

I love this sweet young woman’s “Nehemiah” attitude. And by that I mean, she personifies one of my favorite verses:

 But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat.–Nehemiah 4:9

If you’re not familiar with Nehemiah’s story, this verse describes his response to enemy threats to the Jews rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem. He prayed and then he posted people to guard the work.

What a great balance of faith and effort.

“Our prayers do not replace our actions; they make our actions effective for God’s work.”
–Enduring Word, Nehemiah Commentary

 Throughout Megan’s unwanted journey, she has clung to faith and taken steps to protect her health.

I don’t know what threatens your peace, but I hope you will respond like Nehemiah, with praying and posting a guard. Your prayers don’t replace your actions, but they certainly make them more effective for God’s work.

Next week on Jan. 19, Megan will have both her ovaries removed, as she posts another guard. Will you please join me in praying for her?
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Please open in your browser to be inspired by Lincoln Brewster’s “While I Wait.”

 

Dec 31

The 100% True Fortune Cookie

(I’m intentionally keeping today’s blog and song quite short because it’s New Year’s Eve and well, you  and I might have other important things to do…like cheer for my Ohio State Buckeyes in the CFP quarterfinals!)

But I just had to share the fortune I recently received in my cookie:

Yeah, I bet it will. And so will February, March, April, May…and every other month. Finally, a fortune that is absolutely 100% accurate!

I love the idea of spiritual growth and am so excited about my ladies’ Bible study beginning to study the Letter to the Romans next week. When I teach little kids at Refuge Church each Sunday morning, I find myself learning right along with them. Reading God’s Word, singing praises to the Lord and hearing messages of truth are all favorite ways to stretch my faith, BUT…

I must admit that I’m not as excited about other possible avenues for spiritual growth.

Heartaches, disappointments, betrayals, losses–the list is endless. So many difficult situations in which we find ourselves or our loved ones.

Here’s the kind of prayer I have uttered in my darkest days: Lord, I do not understand why this is happening. The pain feels more than I can bear and I can’t see how I’m going to get through it. There’s nothing good that I can imagine coming from this..BUT I choose to trust You even when it doesn’t make sense. And I choose to believe in Your love even though I can’t feel it. 

Yes, January will bring you–and me–opportunities (some happy and some sad) for spiritual growth. I pray I will:


(Happy New Year and GO BUCKS!!!)
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Please open the video in your browser to be encouraged by the acapella group Bliss Zimbabwe singing “Trials Make You Grow.” (3¼ min. long)

Dec 17

You Can’t Really Celebrate Christmas without Easter

Shortly after we moved to this area in 2015, we heard Lee Magness, a guest preacher at our new church say that he and his wife Pat had recently retired and relocated here to be near their grandchildren. I ran up to him after the service, introduced myself and asked if they wanted to join my husband and me in our brand new club: “Retired People Who Moved to Pottstown to be Near Their Grandchildren.”  He said “yes” and our very exclusive club (only four members) has been meeting regularly ever since! 

At one of our December “meetings” (the one after visiting Longwood Gardens for the Christmas lights), Lee gifted us a copy of his beautiful, original poem–(much more impressive than the homemade oatmeal I gave them.) I’m sharing the poem here as my Christmas gift to all of you. (If you were hoping for oatmeal, you’ll have to stop by my house.)

I love how Lee’s poem wonderfully entwines Christmas and Easter. It reminds me of the Apostle John’s description of that first Christmas as the time God encamped, tabernacled, pitched a human tent to make His home among us (John 1:14). I recommend reading the poem slowly to let the power of Lee’s words truly sink in.

ENCAMPMENT
So God stopped time for thirty-three years
And He pitched a tent of flesh
Which He unfolded one night
And enfolded the next

And that moment in which God tread time
Lasting from the darkness to the darkness
From the sunrise to the sunrise
Was called Jesus Christ

In great pain Mary labored over God
And suddenly in merciful agony
A man burst forth from the courtroom
Into the yard filled with a vicious mob

The mother knelt down
To wrap the baby in swaddling clothes
And they ripped them from his body
And kneeling down gambled them away

And because there was no room in the inn
She gently laid him
On the wooden beams of the cross
Where they nailed his reaching hands

And the animals heard the baby
And drew near hoping to be fed
And they bleated and bawled
Crucify him, crucify him

And the shepherds on the hillside
Came to see this thing
Which they thought would soon be past
And asked, Are you the King of the Jews?

And the wise men came to see Jesus
One brought spices, another perfumes
And a third removed his golden crown
And jammed its thorns into his brow

And in that dark Judean night
The new-born baby cried out
Wanting protection from the cold wind
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And as the star stopped over the manger
There was darkness over the whole land
And just before the baby fell asleep
He softly cried, It is finished

And in that moment of ghastly glory
When Mary lay exhausted with an empty tomb
He said, I am the resurrection and the life
And in the next moment He redeemed the time
 ©1975 by Dr. J. Lee Magness

The birth of Jesus becomes worth celebrating when we fast-forward to His death and resurrection and see how He redeems–saves our souls–when we choose to follow Him.

So MERRY CHRISTMAS and a BLESSED EASTER!
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Every Christmas season I listen to all 2.5 hours of Handel’s Messiah on my old LPs…but did you know that George Frideric Handel wrote the 53-song oratorio for Easter, not Christmas?  The premier performance of Messiah was during Lent in Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1742, and at Handel’s request all performance proceeds were donated to prisoners, orphans and the sick.

The “Hallelujah Chorus” was performed for the first time in the U.S. on New Year’s Day 1863  at the Grand Jubilee Concert  in Boston, celebrating the news that Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Please open the link below in your browser to be inspired by the Hallelujah Chorus. (Standing is optional 🙂 )

 

 

Dec 02

Holding on through the Doubts

“Your book has been a ray of hope for me,”  declared the email I received recently from a young woman in Poland.

GOD Wins over Cancer: testimonies of healing

When an international license for a Polish translation of When GOD & Cancer Meet was purchased a couple of years ago, I never imagined I actually would get to correspond with a Polish reader…wow!

But there she was–complete with a photo holding the book.

So today I would like to introduce you to that reader and share a little of Megan’s story–one of honesty, courage and faith…even in the midst of doubt.

After giving birth to a precious daughter this past April, Megan, 37, was diagnosed in May with Stage 2 breast cancer and a BRCA1 genetic mutation. Last month she finished  chemo, but still faces a double mastectomy and removal of her ovaries because of her increased cancer risk.

“This (diagnosis) has been very hard for me,” Megan told me. “Even though I pray and receive so much love and support from my family (including a husband and a teenage son), there are moments when I begin to doubt whether I will have the strength to endure to the end of the fight.”

“Even though I fully trust God and have surrendered my life and everything I love to Jesus, this time in my life is very difficult,” she confided.  “I want so much to live, to stay close to my family, to walk the dog…to simply live.”

 In her first email to me, Megan asked for something that could help her “hold on in the moments when doubt returns.”

What a great desire…not to give up no matter what life dumps on us.

Don’t all of us weary folks need some encouragement to hold on in the hard times? I sure did as a 36-year-old mother facing cancer back in 1990. And now as a grandmother twice that age, I still need uplifting when it seems every month I’m saying goodbye to another loved one, and every day the world feels less safe and peaceful.

Doubts can easily creep in as we wait for God’s timing to heal whatever has been broken or lost.

I believe these are the moments we learn to trust God in spite of, not because of our circumstances.

Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
    and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
    and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
    and the cattle barns are empty,
 yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
    I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
The Sovereign Lord is my strength!
Habakkuk 3:17-19

Dear sweet Megan, as you trust God in spite of your circumstances, I am believing Psalm 94:19 will be true for you:

When doubts filled my mind, Your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer.

Next week on Dec. 11, Megan is scheduled for her double mastectomy and I don’t want her to have any doubts that God will be her strength and His comfort will renew her hope.

Friends, will you join me in praying for my new friend–who lives about 5,000 miles away, but is very close to my heart? And please pray also for the young atheist in the chemo room who received a copy of my book from Megan because as she said: “Who knows? Maybe it will touch her heart and she’ll start to believe.”

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Please open in your browser to hear the powerful words in the song “I Will Fear No More” by The Afters ©Fair Trade Services.

Nov 18

When Life Gets “Really Messed Up”

In 2006 Debbie was the 39-year-old mother of a toddler daughter, and she and husband Karl wanted one more child.

Instead her life plans “got really messed up” when they learned she was pregnant with twins.

“That caused a lot of anxiety because I’m a planner and I was planning on having two kids, not three,” Debbie explained as we chatted recently at our favorite coffeehouse.

She delivered identical twin daughters with a combined birth weight of nearly 14 pounds and settled into caring for two newborns and a 3-year-old. But at 4 months, the twins were not hitting expected developmental milestones.

“Even though the doctor wasn’t concerned, I kept feeling that something was off,” Debbie recalled.

At the age of 1 neither Sydney nor Danielle could stand, and at 2 they still weren’t talking. Evaluations with early intervention and sessions with therapists produced no answers, but every specialist thought they might catch up.

And then Debbie’s life plans got shattered when a new doctor bluntly assessed the beautiful 2-year-olds, saying “they’re not going to catch up.”

Sydney & Danielle, 1 year old

“He took away all hope from us,” Debbie recalled. “Karl and I left that appointment and our world was rocked. I spiraled down to a really dark place with so much anxiety. Medication helped some, but I was waking up in the middle of the night with panic attacks.”

She called an old friend and asked how she overcame her anxiety.

“It’s going to sound silly,” the friend acknowledged, “but I started following Jesus.”

Meanwhile Debbie’s mother-in-law lovingly urged her “to let your worries go to God.”

That created a new problem because in college Debbie had begun questioning God’s existence.

But in spite of her doubts, in 2010 she visited a church near her home. There she joined a small group and was baptized, but privately wondered: if there is a God, why would He do this to me?

Front to back: Kiersten, Danielle & Sydney

In 2013 when the twins were 6, brain MRIs showed an anomaly called polymicrogyria*. Additional testing at 14 found a rare genetic mutation which shed more light on the girls’ intellectual disability, ADHD, speech/language impairment, and juvenile scoliosis.

Then in 2021, while still struggling with all the “normal” things her family couldn’t do, she joined my weekly women’s Bible study to get help understanding Scripture.

“Your group changed my life literally,” she told me. “At some point I started realizing that God has a purpose for everyone and mine is to help my girls become the best they can be.

“My anxiety about the twins’ intense physical and emotional needs is what really brought me back to faith,” Debbie explained. “Now just seeing how much they enjoy life and make people smile gives me great joy.”

“Mommy, look at the moon!”
“Ooooh, look! The sky is purple!”

“They see the beauty in everything of God’s creation,” Debbie said, “especially things we just take for granted.”

Despite the fact the twins will never “catch up,” they continue to learn new skills such as stocking shelves and try new activities like gardening at The Camphill School for special needs students.

2025 Debbie, Danielle, Kiersten, Karl & Sydney

And Debbie is especially grateful for her “unplanned” family of three children because of the twins (now 18) impact on their big sister.

“If Kiersten were an only child, she would be so different,” Debbie said. “Because of them, she has become so compassionate.

“Having special needs twins was never my plan, but now I know God’s plan is for me to help them grow and become all they were meant to be,” she explained. “As long as I focus on that, I can handle the challenges and be at peace with our life, even though it is so different from that of our friends.”
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*Polymicrogyria is a brain malformation characterized by excessive folds in the cerebral cortex. Poly (many)-micro (small)-gyria (folds)

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Open in your browser to hear “Good Plans” by Red Rock Worship  © 2023 Songs of Red Rocks Worship Publishing /Be Essential Songs (BMI) (admin. at EssentialMusicPublishing.com); Redburns (ASCAP)