More than just having cancer.

 When you wake up on the day that you have received a diagnosis of cancer, life changes. Your whole schedule changes. Everything you were doing at the time comes pretty much to a standstill. A whole lot of new appointments get scheduled for you and what you were giving your days to; a lot gets put on hold.

When this hit my life, I went about it differently. I refused to see myself being a victim of my diagnosis. I never saw myself dying at any time. I kept saying, “It’s just a thing.” It happened. I don’t know how and that wasn’t the main thought every day. When the first thing I did before I even called 911 was to contact Heaven and see what God had to say, that set my path ahead of me.

I finished the book, Walking through the Valley of Mud the other day and it’s on Amazon. I woke up this morning wanting to come here to add another post about what this past year for me was like.

I thought about the book and realized that there is more about what God did in my spirit and life than what cancer did to my body. I believe that is because I refused to take it into my body. All these months and still today this diagnosis sat outside of me. I know that might not make sense but it’s all I have to share with you.

It’s more than a mindset, although, that has a great deal to do with how you get through your journey. But it has to come from a conviction that God is good and loving, and he doesn’t afflict his children with cancer to teach them something. That’s in complete contrast to who He is.

But He does use these trials that come into our lives for good. That is a fantastic part of my journey; good has come out of it.

Now when I see or hear about other people who lost loved ones to this disease, I can’t help but wonder if they took the word of the medical field over the Word of God? I got told things that sounded like the truth. I was given percentages of 40 or 50 or even 80% of recurrence if I didn’t follow what I was told. And to be honest, when I’d come home from these visits, I’d feel fear trying to overtake me. Where I had been walking in trust from the beginning and knew that I had a journey to take to my Pool where I’d SEE what I was believing; that I was already healed.

I hope anyone reading this will stop listening to the words of fear being spoken over them. Words from any source, friends who tell you stories of people who died from what you have, Christians who say you shouldn’t go to doctors if you are really a Christian.

You have to first stop and talk to God about your individual life. That’s the only voice that matters. He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows the way in which you should walk and he’s not going to get mad at you or deny you access to all His love, grace, and mercy just because you can’t stand in complete faith.

 This was what I needed to share today over just another update on how my journey went. Today I feel closer to the Lord than ever and at the same time healthier than ever. I refuse to live the rest of my life in fear. I have a bright future ahead of me, hoping to get back to Florida when God opens the door, I’ll be ready.

I bless you. 

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B0082D161E 

            Where does your mind go first?

1 Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

Whether we all confess it or not, each one of us has an instant standard of belief—the glass is half full or half empty. We use this standard in various ways depending on the circumstances. To put it in a different way, some people are natural optimists, and some are pessimists. But as Christians we are to first think on whatsoever is true, of good report, honest, and loving. Not just about others but about our own selves.

Proverbs 23: 7 For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.

When my journey toward healing started the very first thoughts I had to accept were about what God said about me. I had to believe God over everything I was feeling and seeing. I had to judge God righter than what my circumstances were telling my senses.

We live in a body governed by five senses. If we can’t see it, touch it, taste it, smell it, or hear it, then it’s not real. That’s what our natural body tells us. But when we become born of the Spirit, our spirit comes alive, and we die to the senses. It’s like a house going from running off electricity to now operating by solar. But we are still living in the same house.

I had to make an instant decision. I could within those first few minutes make a choice. Was I going to believe what I was seeing and feeling or was I going to listen to the voice of God telling me to trust Him and allow Him to show me how He works in this world? I wish I could say that my faith was so strong that I made my choice out of the full knowledge of knowing God, but I’d not be telling the truth.

I can back that up by a recent situation just yesterday. I want to believe that I’m a person who leans toward the positive about things that happen in my life but I’m still learning things about myself—some I need to change.

I ordered a bottle of vitamins and knew that it would be a few days before they arrived. Honestly, I sort of forgot they were coming. When I did remember, I went to the site I ordered them from and there was confirmation that they had indeed been shipped and delivered by FedEx. FedEx has a habit of taking a picture as proof of delivery. But the package hadn’t been delivered to my door, it was left between the two electric doors at the front of the building where anyone could easily take it.

My first thought was anything but true. I listened to that carnal side of my mind and instantly believed that someone had taken it. I became angry with FedEx. Their drivers are the laziest among delivery drivers. I’ve had other items left downstairs rather than them taking the time to do their jobs right. So, in my mind I was out my bottle of vitamins; not to mention the dishonest person who took my package.

But in my spirit, I was hearing something different. I heard, call the office, and see if my package was sitting there that had been delivered two days ago. I didn’t listen. I leaned toward my own understanding and not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is always ready to help us if we will listen to His voice and obey it.

This morning my phone rang and it was the manager calling to tell me that she had a package in the office for me and apologized for getting busy and not letting me know it was in the office. Right then I heard the Holy Spirit’s conviction—not condemnation but loving conviction. I could have saved myself from two days of a bad attitude had I listened and obeyed.

Recently another more heartfelt situation happened and for three days I have been struggling with my feelings over believing what I know is true. Every day we have choices to make. Are we going to walk in our old man or walk in the Holy Spirit? There shouldn’t even be a question but sadly the flesh doesn’t die easily. Even when we have walked with God for many years we can slip up. Thankfully, I’ve learned to turn my heart and mind around much quicker. Years ago, I went months suffering with my feelings. Now it can be as quickly as a few minutes. But in these two back-to-back cases it was three days.

I knew that God was trying to teach me a very valuable lesson. I cannot trust my feelings. I had jumped to conclusions, which shows me that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done inside of me.

Praise God, that the night standing in the shower when it was a matter of my life, I listened. I set my feelings outside of my body and refused to believe what all my senses were telling me. I chose to believe God.

Dear reader, if you have been born again and have the Holy Spirit living within you, you can do the same thing. I had to wake up to a daily choice. I also had to not judge my circumstances before the time no matter what was to come.

Chemotherapy and radiation were soon to be in my future. There would be words spoken to me and over my life that I would either believe or remember what God said. One of the hardest to deal with was knowing that I was to be as the man who Jesus said to go wash in the Pool of Siloam in John 9:7. My healing was going to be a journey even though I knew that the very moment I chose to believe the voice of the Holy Spirit I was healed.

God’s thoughts are so much higher than ours and His ways are not our ways. I want to live and walk by the Spirit about even the smallest things in my life. I got my bottle of vitamins and I’m choosing to believe the best of the other circumstance and about myself. Not making judgments before the time.

I bless you.

 

 

 

 

When unexpected events change what you are praying for. 

While being transported to another hospital there were so many thoughts going through my mind. I had to make myself relax and let God do His work in this unexpected situation. Because for months this certainly wasn’t what I had been praying about. Living in Ohio was a result of my daughter-in-law’s family living here. So naturally, when my son retired this was where we were to call home. We’d been living here for nearly twelve years at this time.

But I had been seeking the Lord about opening up a door for us to move back to Florida after her family had made their unexpected move there. Consequently, we were the only part of her family still living in Ohio. I understood that not having her family here now, she would also want to leave. It really was all right with me and certainly my son as well.

Sometimes it felt as though we had been living forty years in the desert like the children of Israel. It wasn’t home to either my son or me. We were used to the southern hospitality that was sorely missing where we were currently living. With the news that she was eager to move, I fell right into wanting the same thing but for far different reasons. I wanted to go home. Home for me had been around the northern part of the state. I had friends there. Friends that I missed tremendously. A couple in particular that I had recently reunited with was making missing them increasingly harder every day.

As a result, these thoughts had been monopolizing my thoughts daily. We had caught up with one another and been back in each other’s life for about two years and the friendship was as sweet as it had ever been, in fact, I think even sweeter. After being on Facebook and using its message portion daily, Marie and I had rekindled our close-knit friendship as if we had never been apart. Her daughter, Teresa, and I shared the same sort of friendship, laced with a deep affection based on our common faith. God had made us prayer partners, agreeing as touching prayer partners.

Sadly, during the last two years, Marie had become ill and passed away leaving a massive void in the lives of everyone who knew and loved her. A void that it would take many people to fill, if at all possible. She was the hub of her family and the vast community of friends. We weren’t sure that space would ever heal. This left Teresa, her daughter, and I to solidify our bond even more out of a grief that is almost at times inconsolable. Thus, we were praying for my return daily. We had been praying about my return to Florida, perhaps even in or around the same area when I now found myself being shuttled to a hospital late in the evening. Neither of us saw this coming.

My thoughts were interrupted when I felt the ambulance making its turn into the Emergency driveway. I had to bring my mind back to the present moment. I had to begin to listen to that comforting voice I was accustomed to hearing that I know as the Holy Spirit.

It didn’t take long for them to get me settled into my room and begin to assure me that I was in good hands. I knew the Hands that I was already in, but I welcomed the human hands that would be taking care of me also.

Reassured that I was going to be well taken care of, my son was convinced to go home and get some rest. He had worked the prior day and now had been up for over twenty-four hours. I was safely somewhere that if the bleeding became too profuse again there were people around me who would help. Once he was assured, I let myself begin my conversation again with the Lord.

Laying in bed, I took a really deep breath and exhaled as much of the dread of being swept up in the medical world as I could. Hadn’t God spoken to me that He would show me that He could overcome any system? I, being a nurse, myself, was a little in doubt. I knew what it was like. Everything takes time. You have to learn that in the world it’s ‘take a number’ and wait. With the recent outbreak of Covid in our country and around the world, take a number had taken on a much different meaning.

Medical staffing was hard put to be as attentive or answer the many call lights as quickly as usual. I prided myself on being a model patient. I was cooperative and knew that I wasn’t going to be the only one needing attention. That night I resigned myself to doing exactly what the Lord had told me to do—trust Him. Therefore, I relaxed and let myself drift off to sleep; no sense in both He and I stay awake.