Category: strength

Dec 07

Missing Someone at Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

I thought it wouldn’t.

But it did.

It happened again this year.

Kenny G was belting out jazzy, holiday cheer. A burning candle wafted a delicious candy cane scent. I was home by myself happily decorating our house for Christmas. I  pulled a yellowed and torn rectangular box out of the large Rubbermaid storage bin and chuckled to myself. This box has to be nearly 60 years old.

Carefully wrapped inside was a slender, shiny tree topper that graced my parents’ Christmas trees for decades. It wasn’t the original which came in the now-yellowed box, but a replacement topper that my folks must have decided to store in there after the original one broke. ( I can just hear my Mom saying: Why throw away a perfectly good box?)

My Dad passed away in 2010 and my Mom in  2013, so afterward my only brother, my three girls and I divvied up their ornaments. I gave my brother the raggedy little cloth Santa figurine we both used to fight about hanging on the tree every year.  My poor Mother used to keep track of whose turn it was. I have no idea why we thought that was the best decoration–I stopped believing in Santa as a 2-year-old when I easily recognized one of my Mom’s brothers dressed up in the red and white suit handing me my gifts. After that my parents apparently didn’t even bother trying to fool my little brother.photo

But he and I  both remembered the tree topper–Dad always put it on because he was the only one who could reach the top of our freshly cut tree. My brother said I could have it–after all, I’d sacrificed the Santa.

So this year, for the second time since my last parent has been gone, I pulled out that shiny green ornament. I  didn’t put it on our tree, but instead lovingly placed it in an antique glass pitcher filled with a bunch of my parents’ old, brightly colored ornaments. I added a strand of beads which used to encircle their tree, stepped back and surveyed my decorating work.

Perfect. Classy. Very antique-looking and out of the reach of our six grandchildren under age six. And then it started. A lump in my throat. I swallowed hard, but it grew. I felt my eyes misting and then quickly hot, tears began to sting as I tried to hold them back. Within seconds I went from happily satisfied to sadly sobbing.

I miss my Mom and my Dad. I don’t want their ornaments…I want them! 

I sat down on the couch and wept. Big tears and loud sobs followed by necessary nose-blowing.

And that’s what grief does to us. It sneaks up on us when we’re not expecting it and it won’t let go until we’ve allowed it to have its say.

**********************************

Have you experienced grief sneaking up on you this season? A sound, a smell, a word, a photo–something– triggers a memory and you come undone.

There’s someone special you are missing this Christmas. 

Maybe it’s the first Dec. 25 that a certain smiling face won’t be in your home or maybe it’s the second or third year you can’t buy them a special gift. Or maybe it’s been 20  or 30 years, but you still yearn for just one more holiday with that loved one around your table.

I get it. I had my parents until they were in the 80s and I was in my  late 50s and somehow I thought it would be less painful to say good-bye. But my love for them wasn’t lessened because of their ages–it just kept growing. And actually now that they’re gone, it keeps growing even more as I realize anew all the things they did for me and I come to truly appreciate the gift of their love. I expect to keep grieving them for the rest of my life.

And if I am feeling such intense grief over my parents, I can only imagine the sorrow some of you face while missing a spouse this Christmas or the deepest, most unnatural pain of all experienced by those of you who have buried a son or daughter.

Or maybe the person or persons you’re missing haven’t passed away, but miles or circumstances are separating you this year. As hard as you try,  it just doesn’t seem right with them not here for the holidays. That’s grief you are feeling, too.

Maybe you can’t even get out the Christmas decorations this year. It’s just too painful. That’s OK.  My friend Connie whose husband Brad literally dropped dead of a heart attack at age 47 recalls that she didn’t feel like celebrating Christmas just three months after his passing.

“I felt horrible because I did not want to celebrate Jesus’ birth because of Brad’s death,” admitted Connie.

But a good friend gave her some insight which really helped her ease that holiday pain.

“Do you know what Jesus is doing this Christmas season?” the friend asked Connie.

Connie shook her head “no.”

“He’s weeping. He’s weeping with you.”

Connie said that mental image of Jesus shedding tears with her helped her to stop worrying about all the holiday celebrations. Instead, she prayed: “Just for today, I need to see Jesus. Just for today, I need to seek Jesus. Just for today, I need to serve Jesus.”

Are you missing someone this Christmas? Jesus–yes, the whole Reason for the season–is weeping with you. Go ahead: acknowledge and feel your grief. Remember that Jesus understands your sorrow (Isaiah 53:3) even if no one else on earth really does. And then join Connie in her prayer that today you will see Jesus, that today you will seek Jesus, and that today you will serve Jesus. It’s a prayer He longs to answer for you.

“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” Psalm 34:18

I’ve included two music videos of the same song below because I really loved both very different renditions. The first is a beautiful harmony by Vocal Point, an all-male a capella ensemble and the second is an angelic sounding a capella boys’ choir called Libera.

(If the music videos don’t show below, please  copy and paste to listen at:

 

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

 

 

Oct 19

Transforming the Valley of Trouble into a Gateway of Hope

 

 

 

A while back I was reading in the book of Hosea about how God promised to “transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope” and I thought of my friend Lauren.

His cancer journey has been an incredible roller coaster with hopes dashed one minute and unexpected new hopes found the next.

I hope your journey or your loved one’s is a lot smoother, easier ride than Lauren’s, but just in case you hit a bunch of bends in the road, I thought you should know his hope-filled story.

It all started in December of 2006 when Lauren, then 54, was diagnosed with a rare mantle cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He began a course of chemo at nearby Hershey Medical Center, but never really got a good remission and restarted more treatment in July of 2008 when more tumors developed.

In November of that year, he walked his only daughter down the aisle (and unlike his wife, didn’t have to worry about how his hair looked that day!) A couple weeks later he headed back to Hershey for a stem cell transplant, because the chemo had not worked as well as hoped and he still had a lot of active disease.

Lauren received his stem cells from an anonymous donor because none of his family was a match for him. The transplant involved Lauren receiving an intravenous lethal dose of chemo and then being “rescued” from death with a transfusion of the donor’s healthy stem cells.

Lauren survived the transplant, but some of the cancer also survived and started growing. The doctors tried a couple of new chemos, which didn’t work and then some radiation, which also failed to stop the tumors growing on his arm.

Finally in October 2009, the Hershey doctor said there was one more hope: a donor lymphocyte infusion. (Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of it—Lauren hadn’t either.) Basically, it involved putting some of the donor’s white blood cells (lymphocytes) into him to see if they could recognize and destroy the cancer cells.

  Lauren was the first to know the procedure was working.

“Within a week I could see the shrinkage in the tumors on my arm,” he recalls.

A second dose was given and the tumors disappeared. As I write, it’s six years later and Lauren has welcomed two grandchildren. He continues to get clean bills of health from Hershey.

When I asked him how he managed to hang on through such a tough ordeal. He says: “My faith and the faith of others was what got me through.

“Many times I was about to throw in the towel, but my wife kept telling me ‘Don’t give up!’ ”

Joan even gave him a quarter-sized medallion with the word “HOPE” emblazoned on it and told him to keep it in his pocket as a reminder that there still was hope for them.

That medallion is “still in there and it’s going to stay in there,” says Lauren, who eventually learned the name of his German donor and could finally write him a heartfelt thank you letter. Lauren included one of the HOPE coins “so I can give back to him what he gave to me.”

He says there were times that he had doubts, worries and fears, but found “when my faith was weak, the faith of others helped hold me up.

“The faith of other people, their prayers with me and the outpouring of support for me gave me hope.”

A few years ago, Lauren and his wife traveled West and stopped in Death Valley.

“I kept thinking about the verse (in Psalm 23:4) ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me’,” recalls Lauren. “I knew I had come through that valley and He was with me.”

As Lauren and I talked on the phone about this day’s writing, he told me he was sitting and looking at his favorite picture in his home. It’s a poster of a craggy mountaintop with this inscription underneath: “It’s not the greatness of my faith that moves mountains, but my faith in the greatness of God.”

Don’t worry, my friend, today if your faith is not that big. Just be sure to put it all in a very big God.

I will…transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope. Hosea 2:15

Lord, I need You to walk with me through this dark valley. Help me not to give up, but to give in to You. I place my small faith in Your great power. Amen.

 

Oct 12

Five Ways to Strengthen Your Funny Bone

 

 

 

About a month before my cancer diagnosis in 1990 I was a reporter for a local paper and writing a story about the new cancer support group at the local hospital. I interviewed the local oncologist, Dr. Marc Hirsh for the story and visited his office. When I walked by the chemo room, I glanced in at all the patients in recliners hooked up to IVs. It was an incredibly scary picture to me. But what was even scarier was that the patients were laughing. I remember thinking: They must not know they had cancer. I went home that day and told my husband, “If I ever had cancer, I definitely would not be sitting there laughing.”

Four weeks later when I was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer at the age of 36, I definitely was not laughing. When I went for my first chemo treatment to that same oncology office, I was so frightened. And I knew I would never laugh while hooked up to an I.V. getting toxic chemicals.

But that was before I met Marc’s head chemo nurse, Ruth, who was with him since he opened his office in 1989. I can’t recall what silly thing she uttered, but before I knew what had happened, she had me laughing too.

There was still nothing funny about having cancer or getting chemo or not knowing if I would see my daughters grow up or if my husband would bury another wife, but every time I laughed it felt so good and reminded me that I was still alive.

So I decided I needed to keep my sense of humor and started to look for funny things in spite of my serious predicament.

One of the first things my family found to joke about was the new chemo pill I took—Levamisole. It was a newly approved oral medicine, and I was the first patient at Marc’s office to take it. I soon learned that in reality it was a worming medicine designed to kill intestinal parasites in sheep and dogs.

Whenever I took a pill, I started barking and chasing my squealing daughters around the house. My husband mentioned to our friends that I had been wormed and he was thinking of getting me a rabies shot too. The pills were very expensive and my husband often suggested we call the vet to see if we could get them cheaper there. (A regular comedian, huh?)

My support groups always have had a reputation for a lot of laughing and every time we laughed together, it reminded us that we’re alive . . . and that always is worth celebrating. If you don’t have a funny oncology nurse or a laughing support group nearby (or a comedian husband!), Dave Dravecky’s Outreach of Hope offers five suggestions to “strengthen your funny bone”:

  1. Start your own comedy collection of jokes and cartoons. Do an Internet search for “clean jokes” and you’ll find some good laughs. Post them at your desk or on your fridge so you can remind yourself to laugh. (Do you know how to make Michigan cookies? Put them in a bowl and beat them for three hours!–OK maybe that’s only funny if you’re a Buckeye like me!)
  2. Get your groceries and get a chuckle by reading some of the tabloid headlines while standing in line. (I just read about aliens with anorexia and manure as a miracle cure for arthritis!) Of course, when I purchase these magazines they are business expenses because I share the stories in my laughter talk 🙂
  3. Hang out at the greeting-card racks and enjoy reading funny cards (wash your hands first and don’t eat an ice cream cone while you do this!). You can even buy a funny card to brighten someone’s day! (One day at work I received a card with an odd-looking old man on the front, which said: “I bet I can still float your boat…even if I don’t have both oars in the water!” It was from my wonderful husband to cheer me up.)
  4. Become a humorous people groupie by hanging out with funny people, like my dear friend “Grandma” Doris, a 79-year-old, three-time colorectal cancer survivor, who often livened up our meeting introductions by wearing goofy glasses or showing off her silly souvenirs. (Either you’re a funny friend or you need one!)
  5. Make the most of embarrassing moments. (Did I tell you about the time a pair of my underwear dropped out of my jeans’ pant leg onto the floor of a Christian bookstore while I was shopping there?……….Never mind.)

In his book The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren writes that our first purpose in life is to please God. Or as Warren puts it, “The smile of God is the goal of your life.”[i]

Cancer or any trial in life can and often take things away from us and from our families, but they needn’t take away our goal in life—to please God—to make Him smile.

No matter what you’ve gone through or what still lies ahead—whether you have no cancer, a little cancer or a lot of cancer; whether your trial disappears, grows more intense or perhaps never leaves—will you choose joy? Will you choose to please God and bring a smile to His face? It is your choice. You can choose to keep (or get) a sense of humor even in the shadow of the darkest trial.

I have a blessing for you from the book of Numbers as you try to find joy today:

May the Lord bless you

and protect you.

May the Lord smile on you

and be gracious to you.

May the Lord show you His favor

and give you His peace. (6:24-26)

[i] Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2002), 202.

 

Sep 28

Flying by the Seat of Your Pants?

 

 

I’ve read that an eagle, like many other animals, can sense a storm before it arrives. So the eagle flies to a high spot and waits for the inevitable winds. When the storm hits, the eagle sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it. The eagle does not escape the storm but simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm.

God has allowed a storm in your life, and He will give you His strength to rise above it until He ultimately calms it.

But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. Isaiah 40:31

If you feel that soaring above the storm is hard work, uncomfortable, and sometimes downright scary, you are right! That’s why I use the analogy of a storm—we might not mind one from a distance, but it’s not exactly pleasurable when we’re smack-dab in the middle of a big one.

In fact, flying in a storm is extremely dangerous. My cousin Jim knows this from his half-dozen years of soaring into hurricanes and typhoons as part of a U.S. Air Force weather reconnaissance team. It was his team’s job to gather weather data so forecasters could better predict a storm’s strength.

As they work, it’s critical that team members trust the “artificial horizon”— a line on the plane’s instrument panel that always corresponds to the earth’s horizon, no matter in which direction the plane is flying.

“When you’re in the clouds and in storms and you can’t see the horizon—the earth the ground, good old terra firma—you have to rely on the artificial horizon,” Jim explains. “You have to trust that it is representing the horizon. You have to trust that it represents something you can’t see.”

Because of the extreme variability of the weather, there are two government ratings for pilots: one group is cleared to fly only when there’s good visibility—following Visual Flight Rules—and the other is cleared to fly even in poor visibility because they can keep a plane controlled solely on the data from their instruments—by Instrument Flight Rules. If you recall after John Kennedy Jr.’s fatal plane crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said the young pilot—who only was rated to fly with Visual Flight Rules—had become disoriented in the night sky and lost control of the plane.[1] Experienced pilots are taught to rely on their instrument panel—no matter how they feel—because they can become so disoriented in clouds or during a storm they may actually think they are flying up when they really are heading down.

In the early days of aviation when aircraft had few navigational aids, a successful flight was accomplished mainly by the pilot’s judgment and instincts; that is “flying by the seat of your pants.”

“All you could do was fly by your sensations,” Jim explains. “If you were coming out of your seat, you must be upside down. If you were pressed down into your seat, you must be flying higher.

“The problem is that [our perceptions are] not always accurate. You can feel like you’re flying normal and perfectly fine, but it’s just that the airplane is falling at just the right speed that feels normal. You have to look at your instruments and believe them.”

Flying by the seat of your pants through your storm isn’t a good idea either. Feelings can be overpowering and paralyzing. You may become so disoriented you don’t know whether you’re headed up or down.

That’s why you need to decide every day to trust the magnetic poles of the earth—in other words, to recognize that God’s Word is the compass on your instrument panel in the storms of life. It is truth, which, just like the pilot’s artificial horizon line, always will point you in the right direction.

When the storms of life come, the wicked are whirled away, but the godly have a lasting foundation. Proverbs 10:25

Put your hope in the Lord. Travel steadily along his path. Psalm 37:34

I love author Max Lucado’s perspective[1]: “Faith is trusting what the eye can’t see…Eyes see storms. Faith sees Noah’s rainbow.”

Dear Lord, It’s hard not to focus on the storm around me. Please help me to trust that the promises in Your Word are more reliable than my feelings. Give me the strength to rise above this storm and even the faith to see a rainbow. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

 

[1] “NTSB: Pilot Disorientation Led to Fatal JFK Jr. Crash,” CNN.com, July 6, 2000, http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/07/06/jfk.crash.report.02/index.html.

[2] When God Whispers Your Name, pg. 214, Max Lucado, Thomas Nelson, 2009.