Category: suffering

Aug 14

How God Transformed a Valley of Trouble into a Gateway of Hope

As I was reading in the book of Hosea about how God promised to “transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope,” I couldn’t help but think 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 the valley of trouble that you or your loved one faces is a lot smoother ride than Lauren’s, but just in case you hit a bunch of bends in the road, I thought you’d like to hear 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 after 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 he still had a lot of active disease.

The transplant involved Lauren receiving an intravenous lethal dose of chemo and then being “rescued” from death with a transfusion of an anonymous 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.

“Many times I was about to throw in the towel, but my wife kept telling me ‘Don’t give up’!” Lauren recalls. “ When my faith was weak, the faith of others helped hold me up.”

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. Nearly a decade later, Lauren and Joan have welcomed several  grandchildren into their family and he continues to get clean bills of health from Hershey.

 

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

“I kept thinking about the verse in Psalm 23:
‘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 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
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Excerpted from 50 Days of Hope, copyright 2012 by LYNN EIB

 

 

Jul 31

Walking with Friends in the Dark

 

In those nerve-wracking few days between my diagnosis and my surgery, I announced to my husband, “We need a pastor—and I don’t mean you!”

I think he could tell by the distraught look on my face that I was serious, so he called our good friend David Dunn, pastor of a sister church in a nearby town.

In my mind’s eye I can still see the moment David and his wife Carolyn walked into our family room. David headed straight for Ralph and Carolyn moved toward me. Her extended arms enveloped me in a warm embrace as I lay my head on her shoulder and released my soul-aching sobs.

I can’t tell you how long the four of us stood there huddled with only wordless weeping. David and Carolyn did not try to cheer us up in their delightful Maine accents. They did not quote any of the hundreds of Bible verses they knew so well. Neither shared any wisdom garnered from living longer on this earth than either my husband or I had.

Instead…they felt our pain. Their embraces spoke volumes to us: we love you and we are here holding you up as long as you need us.

I count that as my first lesson in learning how to be a patient advocate and walk with a friend in the dark.

My friend Ken says the presence of a friend usually meant much more to him than the words of a friend when
he was facing a diagnosis of tongue cancer  many years ago.

His advice to friends and family of patients facing serious illness is to “just BE!”

“Be a friend,” he says, “Be a shoulder. Be a hugger. Be an asset.  Please just BE there and God will BE there. If you do this, you will BE the giver of the greatest gift a suffering friend needs—presence without fixing; love without agenda,” he adds.

 

 

Helen Keller walked in the dark from the age of 19 months when an illness struck her blind, deaf and dumb.
She later did learn to speak, but lived the rest of her nearly 88 years without benefit of sight or hearing. Still Helen prized friendship so much that she thought it preferable to be blind and have true friends, than be sighted and have none.

Won’t you pray today for God to send true friends into your life? Whether you are the patient or the caregiver, resist the urge to go it alone. You need a loyal friend who will love you regardless of your situation. Swallow your pride and allow people the privilege of walking with you in the dark.

And if you are the caregiver for someone facing a life trial, won’t you please pray to be the kind of friend who offers your presence as the most important gift? Don’t be concerned that you might not know what to say to your hurting friend or family member. Your actions will say much more than your words as Proverbs 17:7 makes clear:

A true friend loves regardless of the situation,
    and a real brother exists to share the tough times. (The Voice Bible)

Friends love through all kinds of weather,
and families stick together in all kinds of trouble. (The Message Bible paraphrase)

And never forget that God longs to walk with you in the dark and empower you for your journey.

You light a lamp for me.
The Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.
 In your strength I can crush an army;
with my God I can scale any wall.
Psalm 18:28-29 New Living Translation

Excerpted from Peace in the Face of Cancer, copyright 2017 by Lynn Eib
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View in your browser to be able to hear the music video below “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” by Matt Maher

Jul 03

So Many Unanswered Questions


Twenty-nine years ago if I had heeded this quote from the creator of Peanuts, I could have saved myself many sleepless nights.

I was pretty consumed back then with trying to figure out how a healthy-eating-and-exercising-mom in her thirties could get cancer. Especially colon cancer for crying out loud! Colonoscopies aren’t even recommended for the average person until age 50.

I never smoked. I wasn’t overweight and worked out regularly at the local Y. I ate a high-fiber, low-fat diet including all our homegrown pesticide-free vegetables. In my mind someone who leaves the skin on their mashed potatoes and who shakes wheat germ on everything should not get colon cancer! Besides my little girls needed their mommy and my husband already watched one wife die a slow, debilitating death.

How? Why? What if?

Any unanswered questions keeping you awake at night?

If you’re trying to figure out exactly why you or your loved one is facing a trial right now, I’m afraid you won’t get any explanations from me. I don’t believe we can make sense of another person’s suffering—only our own. People often want to try anyway and they’ll preach and tell you why it all happened, but they’re not God and they don’t really know. It might make them feel better to think they have it all figured out, but I doubt it will do much for you.

And if you are the loved one of someone facing really difficult circumstances, please don’t tell them “everything happens for a reason.” Such a comment minimizes the sufferer’s feelings and implies that there’s a good, rational justification for what has occurred. I won’t be uttering that phrase to my daughter’s friends who have a 5-year-old  with  spina bifida and  a 7-year-old with an aggressive brain tumor. Instead I will pray that these dear parents, who love their sons and their Lord will run with their sleep-interrupting questions to the One who knows them best and loves them most.

I waited a long time for the Eternal;
He finally knelt down to hear me.
He listened to my weak and whispered cry. Psalm 40:1 The Voice Bible

Hear me, O God, when I cry;
listen to my prayer.
You are the One I will call when pushed to the edge,
when my heart is faint.
Shoulder me to the rock above me. Psalm 60:1-2 The Voice Bible

I’ll never know the answers to your questions or all of mine, but something I read in a book by C.S. Lewis has helped me to be more at peace with not knowing.

It’s found in a scene from The Horse and His Boy, part of Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series. These classic children’s books (loved by adults, too) are set in the magical land of Narnia, which is ruled by a powerful lion named Aslan (who represents Jesus). At one point Aslan explains to a rich runaway girl named Aravis why some of the awful things that happened to her had to occur. She then asks Aslan what will happen to her stepmother’s slave, who was punished for falling asleep after Aravis had drugged her.

“Will any more harm come to her by what I did?”

“Child,” said the Lion, “I am telling you your story, not hers. No-one is told any story but their own.”[1]

 

Are you trying to understand your story? Take your questions to your Heavenly Father, who will either give you the answers you need…or the peace to live with the questions.

[1]C. S. Lewis, Horse and His Boy (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 202.

Excerpted from Peace in the Face of Cancer. Copyright 2017 by Lynn Eib.
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Be sure to open this blog in your browser to hear the music video below “Hold Me Jesus” by Rich Mullins.

May 08

Do you pray desperate prayers?

 

Have you ever prayed a desperate prayer? You know, the kind where you cry out to God because there is absolutely nothing you can do to “fix” the situation?


I’ve prayed plenty of those.

I remember a time I was trying to get to the grocery store for some needed supplies before a snowstorm hit. As I drove down a small hill near my home I didn’t realize it already was a solid sheet of ice. I started sliding and there was no way I could control my car as the glassy surface spun me sideways. I was on the wrong side of the road and headed straight for a large tree at the pavement’s edge. A crash was inevitable.

So I took my hands off the wheel, lifted them toward Heaven and audibly cried out “Help me, Jesus!”

The car turned 180 degrees and came to rest on the road heading back toward my home. Needless to say, groceries were forgotten and I slowly drove to my house. It was a desperate prayer and God had answered.

I’ve prayed other desperate prayers which God dramatically answered, although not quite as quickly:

Jesus, we need the money to pay this bill.

Father, please spare Beth’s life.

Lord, deliver our friend  from his addiction.

And still other desperate pleas which were never answered the way I hoped:

God, don’t let these dear friends’ marriage fall a part.

Lord, please heal Doris’s brain tumor.

Father, don’t let little Dominic die.

How about you? When was the last time you prayed a desperate prayer? Perhaps you are even praying one today.

“Most of us have been to the emotional depths,” says bestselling author Chris Tiegreen. “We’ve been desperate about a situation–relational, economic, physical, spiritual–and we’ve cried out to God with every ounce of energy we have.”

How did you feel at the time? Embarrassed to be so needy? Worried that you weren’t a very good Christian? Concerned that you were bothering God when He had plenty of other things to take care of?

Did you ever feel like you were worshipping God?

You were.

“Desperate prayers are, in fact, one of the clearest ways for us to honor God,” Tiegreen says. “Saying ‘Lord, I need You,’ acknowledges His importance to us. He is essential, after all, and the desperate soul is not afraid to say so.”

Psalm 42: 1-3 The Voice Bible
My soul is dry and thirsts for You, True God,
as a deer thirsts for water,
I long for the True God who lives.
When can I stand before Him and feel His comfort?
Right now I’m overwhelmed by my sorrow and pain; 
I can’t stop feasting on my tears.

Psalm 86:6-7
Listen closely to my prayer, O LORD; hear my urgent cry.
I will call to you whenever I’m in trouble, and you will answer me.”

Psalm 69:1-3
Save me, O God, for the floodwaters are up to my neck.
Deeper and deeper I sink into the mire;
I can’t find a foothold. I am in deep water and the floods overwhelm me…
Answer my prayers, O LORD, for your unfailing love is wonderful.

Every time you utter a desperate prayer, you admit to God that He is all you really have. So go ahead and cry out to Jesus, as the song below says. Your desperate plea is an act of worship and that is music to His ears.

 

 

Apr 24

Why Does God Allow Suffering?


This has to be one of the most difficult questions we can ask.

Why do children get cancer?
Why does a young woman fight for her life while an elderly woman prays to die?
Why do brilliant minds get dementia?
Why does one person walk away from an accident unhurt and another is paralyzed for life?
Why do some people have so many trials and others have so few?

Volumes have been written on this topic and I have been enlightened especially by the works of C.S. Lewis and Philip Yancey. But because neither of them is available today to write this blog 🙂 I’d like to share three reasons God may be allowing suffering in your life or the life of someone you love. (Based on the book For Those Who Hurt by Charles Swindoll, copyright 1977,  published by Multnomah Press.)

Why God Allows Suffering in Our Lives

  1. That we might be prepared to comfort others.
    All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 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

2.  That we might not trust in ourselves.
We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we never would live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead. We have placed our confidence in him and he will continue to rescue us. 2 Corinthians 1:8-10

3.  That we might learn to give thanks in all things.
And you are helping us by praying for us. Then many people will give thanks because God has graciously answered so many prayers for our safety. 2 Corinthians 1:11

I certainly can’t make sense of your/your loved one’s suffering for you, but I hope you will ask God if one of these is might be “the reason” for that suffering. I believe that knowing our suffering has a purpose can make it easier to bear. 

Perhaps Shannon Wexelberg’s words in the music video “Different Kind of Miracle” will resonate with your weary heart: If I had my way every time I called to Heaven, would I know Him like I know Him today? While I’ve waited so long, He’s been working all along…Could it be He is using all this in my life? Could it be this prayer I’ve prayed is not quite what He’s after? And I will find He’s done a different kind of miracle in my life.

(Be sure to open in your browser to enjoy.)