When The "Faith Rubber" Meets The Road – Our Journey Begins

1/5/2015

I have been writing blog posts about faith and living your life in faith in God for the past nine months. I really believe what I have been writing because I have personally seen the Word of

God and His promises manifested in many lives and I’ve read about countless others both in and out of the Bible. Last year my granddaughter was diagnosed with a bone cancer. She had to endure multiple surgeries and chemotherapy sessions and she is now cancer free. I lead the

adult Sunday morning bible study group at my church, The Church of Divine Guidance, and we just finished a series on faith. Earlier in 2014 we did a long study, Overwhelmed: Winning the War Against Worry.

All preparing us for what is happening now and what I’ll about over the next I don’t know how long. All the sermons Ruth and I have heard, all the study in preparation for my bible study group,

all the preparations for my sermons, all the encouragement that I have tried to give others in walking by faith, all the testimonies we’ve heard have been preparation for just this time.

Do you really believe what the Word of God says about how He cares for us, how he will never leave us or forsake us, all the scripture that we and others quote about healing…or not? Ruth and I believe and, based on the responses to my Facebook and Google+ posts about Ruth’s

diagnoses of lung cancer discovered in the removal of a brain tumor, heaven has been and continues to be bombarded on her behalf. We all want God to heal her, so that she returns to the Ruth that we all know and love. We don’t really care how God does it. He can do it miraculously,

or through medicine. We just want Him to heal her. That is what we want and that is our will for Ruth but we understand that we must submit to the will of God. As Ruth’s nephew, a pastor, said God’s will is going to be done regardless and because Ruth is His child we just pray that our

will lines up with His. These posts will be for you who are going through difficult times, be it your health or the health of

a loved one, financial difficulties, a wayward child, whatever it is we want to share our journey with you. We want to share it to encourage you. I will be real and transparent. You’ll know the times of sadness and disappointment as well as the times of joy and triumph. We fully expect

that Ruth will be healed because we know what God’s plans for her and for us are; Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV) For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD,

thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

For those readers who are not my Facebook friends or don’t have me in their Google+ circles I

need to give you some background because this is the first in what I believe will be many posts about our journey because this is when our faith rubber meets the road.

The Beginning The first thing that you need to know is that Ruth started smoking again, after having stopped for many years, when our son Robert became seriously ill. That was 3 years ago. Over my strong

objections she started to sneak and smoke. She couldn’t smoke in the house or apartment and she had to get others to bring her cigarettes because I refused to buy them, take her to get them, or give her any money to buy them. Now the rest of the story.

For the past several months Ruth started having short term memory lapses. Since she is 69 years old you attribute it to getting older and maybe even the start of early stage dementia or

Alzheimer so you don’t pay a whole lot of attention to it although I did suggest that she mention it to her doctors. She didn’t.

Over the past 3 months the memory lapses became more frequent and, in hindsight because Ruth has poor vision, her vision may have been getting worse. Her eating habits changed and she began to eat very little. She became a little lethargic, although Ruth liked to sleep late and

waking her up in the morning could be dangerous, but nothing exceptional in that. Then Thanksgiving when preparing the meal what she usually did the day before Thanksgiving she didn’t do so I did it thinking that she was just tired. Then Thanksgiving day while the food was

cooking I noticed that she was just sitting watching television like she had forgotten that we were cooking.

The next week we went on a trip with our church and she was moving slowly and by the time we got home she we not feeling well at all. The bus was cold and she caught a cold and we thought that was the extent of it. Then things really started going downhill. The memory lapses got

worse and worse and in the last 3 weeks she started having trouble getting dressed and calling things the wrong name like calling scrambled eggs noodles. I started to get very concerned. Still thinking early stage dementia I realized after talking with my mother that this was happening too

fast to be dementia. On Tuesday December 30th we went to see her doctor. He saw right away that there was a

problem because of the way she was responding to his questions. He sent us to the ER and they did a CT scan and found a mass on her brain. They then transported her to a hospital with a wonderful neurosurgical department where they did an MRI and found a tumor. That tumor was

successfully removed on New Year’s Day. That’s the good news.

The other news is that preliminary pathology of the sample taken during surgery indicates that the tumor was a metastatic tumor, meaning that it did not originate in the brain but in another part of

the body. The hospital and doctors have done other imaging and located a mass in Ruth’s lungs so she has lung cancer and must be treated for that as soon as she heals from the brain surgery.

There is still swelling as I write this post and it should recede over the next couple of weeks. Ruth will probably be in a skilled nursing facility for a couple of weeks before coming home. So the

journey begins and you will be able to go along with us. Some things of things I want to ask of you.

1. If you are a Christian I ask that you pray for Ruth’s complete and total healing and that God’s will be done in her life

2. If you are not a Christian read my posts in this series and the other posts on this blog and consider your own relationship with Jesus Christ

3. Please share your experiences in the comments so that I can share them with Ruth and so that you can help others who are going through overwhelming situations.

4. If you smoke please STOP!! Here are some of the Scriptures that our friends have shared with us and I want to share them

with you: Proverbs 3:5-6 (NKJV) Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own

understanding; 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths. Isaiah 43:1-3a (NKJV) 1 But now, thus says the LORD, who created you, O Jacob, And He who

formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, Nor shall t he

flame scorch you. 3 For I am the LORD your God,

3 John 1:1-2 (NKJV) 1 The Elder, To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth:

2 Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. Numbers 23:19 (NKJV) "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should

repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? Mark 11:23-25 (NKJV) 23 For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be

removed and be cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. 24 Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. 25 "And

whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.

Matthew 18:19 (NKJV) Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.

1 Peter 2:24 (NKJV) who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness--by whose stripes you were healed.

There are many others and I will share them with you throughout these posts.