Being a “Thriver” (4)

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Lynn

Things get real simple when one is faced with a cancer diagnosis. All of sudden all priorities in my life shifted. You realize that survival is the most important thing. But I was not the only one who received a cancer diagnosis…my whole family did. You see, when one family member experiences cancer, the whole family goes along on the journey with you. Charles felt the helplessness of not being able to fix my cancer. My children also had to face seeing me sore from surgery, sick from chemo, and too exhausted and weary to care for them like they needed.

Despite that, cancer changed me for the better. Knowing that I had no one to turn to except God, the one thing that happened almost instantaneously with my diagnosis was my realization that I was as far away from God as I could get and I needed Him now more than ever. I had failed God so miserably but when I cried out to Him He was there.

I felt Him close. I asked for Him to miraculously heal me, but He didn’t. Instead He sustained me through the cancer journey and I experienced God in profound and dynamic ways throughout that time. It’s interesting, I never once blamed God for my diagnosis, in fact, I truly think cancer was God’s way of getting my attention. God allowed me to experience cancer not only to awaken my spiritual passion again, but to change me physically, mentally and emotionally so He could refine me to be the woman of God He had always intended me to become.

I did not have long to prepare myself for the battle ahead of me. Henry Blackaby was preaching at our church the Sunday I went forward and told my church family that I had cancer. God had led me to scripture in Isaiah 38:9-20 and I read this lengthy passage to my church family. Throughout the next two years I returned to that scripture daily.

I don’t know what happened next exactly, but my church family suddenly became this mighty army of prayer warriors, and angels of mercy. No sooner had I returned home from the hospital than my refrigerator was bulging with food. Car pools had been set up for my kids to get them to school and after-school activities. Women were jockeying for position to clean my house…wish they still did that :)…hint, hint.

People started to send me emails, jokes, anecdotes, cards, letters, and I was overwhelmed with all the care and attention I was receiving. It was the koinania I had read about but now saw in action. The church family loving on me, ministering to me in ways I never imagined. Being a writer, I started writing about my experiences and I journaled and I spoke and gave my testimony and I had opportunity to pray with doctors, nurses, technicians and share the Gospel with other sisters of breast cancer.

That said, it was a long journey and one I would not wish to repeat or have it experienced by anyone else. Chemotherapy was the low point for me. I was disfigured from the surgery (gone was my vanity); I was bald (gone was my beauty); my identity as a woman was marred…and I wondered if Charles would ever look with the same eyes of love at me again.

I needn’t have worried.  I don’t think I honestly knew how much Charles loved me, until he tenderly bathed me a week after I was out of the hospital, because I could not lift my arms above my head after my operation.  Feeling vulnerable and self-conscious with my scars and deformity, I could barely look at myself in the mirror.  But my sweet husband told me I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. When I started losing my hair in clumps after my first chemo treatment, he was the one who shaved my head bald.  I laughed but he cried.

It was a two year battle. I have battle scars for sure but I am here to testify to God’s faithfulness and His protectiveness of me throughout the battle. He showed his love through the people of God. He cared for my children and reached out to my husband. Scripture became nuggets of gold to be cherished and pondered upon. I heard God’s voice more clearly then, than at any other time in my life and I trust Him more now than ever. I appreciate life more; it is God’s gift to me. I appreciate my church family so much. My church family had no idea how much phone calls, cards, loving on my kids,cleaning my house meant to me at the time, but I pray that they do now.

I believe God has allowed me the opportunity to come alongside other women who face breast cancer, and show to them in a tangible way through my experience that there is life after cancer. God is faithful.

I know that every day is a gift. Cancer free today, does not necessarily mean I will be cancer – free tomorrow. That said, I believe God has a plan and a purpose for me yet and I will follow wherever He leads.

It’s all about thriving, not just surviving!

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Being a “Thriver” (3)

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Lynn

I was (am) a woman of pride. I pride myself in my family. I have the tendency to take pride in my accomplishments. I pride myself on looks, material possessions. I struggle with pride daily.

At that time shortly after Carmen was born, I was living a life of storing up all treasures on earth and I was falling more and more away from God. I became focused on myself, I lost my dependency, or better put, I was not desperate for God. I was involved in numerous activities at church, but a personal quiet time with the Lord was not on my agenda. I rarely picked up my Bible. The world started to lure me in and lull me into complacency. Slowly, gradually, I started to become dissatisfied with my life. Believe it or not, with all the blessings God had given to me, I started to complain and I began to fall into a spiritual valley. Several years went by and I lost contact with God and as a result I started to question whether I even believed in God. I stopped praying. I wore a mask at church…no one suspected I wasn’t the perfect Christian wife. Yet at home, my true self showed, to my kids, and to my husband. Charles watched me build a wall between us. I became disillusioned and continued to feed “self”. I was losing touch with my husband, and my children experienced my cutting tongue and biting criticism more often than a hug. I was a good actress at church, a terrible actress at home.

As I recounted before, we welcomed in the New Year in 2001 and Cathey led us in prayer just after midnight. Her words prophesied change in the New Year and one thing she said impacted me profoundly. She said that as we start the New Year, we look at the hope a New Year brings, but we recognize too that it could be a year that could change our lives forever. She seriously looked into the faces of those young people and said, this could be the year of decision for some to follow God, to rededicate their lives, this could also be the year where someone in the room could become ill, or be involved in a car accident and we would have to surround that person with the love of God not only during good times but also during those trying times too. She also said that perhaps one of us right here in this room would not be with us next New Year alluding to the fact that God is control over our lives and he might move us to a new home, or we might follow Him to a heavenly home.

The year began in 2001 with my taking down the Christmas tree and putting away decorations, to my rebooking a missed routine mammogram appointment because I had been sick with the flu most of the Christmas holidays. Little did I know then how significant that “wait” would be until I had my mammogram done a month later and the technician discovered a problem in my right breast.  Cathey’s words echoed in my head when the technician turned to me and said, “There could be a problem”.  “I see something…” she said, “…probably nothing…it’s so small, barely detectable. Certainly I wouldn’t have seen anything if you had come in a month earlier, but I think we should investigate further,…just in case.”

An ultra-sound and within a couple of weeks, a biopsy, confirmed her initial suspicions. I was diagnosed with Stage 2 of 4 Breast Cancer. (There are four grades of Cancer…grading from 1-4 determines how aggressive the cancer should be treated. In my case because of the 2 of 4 staging and the fact that I had actually two malignant sites in my right breast, my surgical oncologist recommended I undergo a mastectomy of that breast followed closely by chemotherapy.)

I can’t describe the numbness one feels after hearing the diagnosis of cancer. Both Charles’ mother and my mother had died of breast cancer. I faced the possibility of dying.

Many women when faced with this diagnosis as well as surgery begin researching their options. I was no different. When we, meaning my husband and me, asked our doctor how long he considered my survival if we opted to have a less invasive surgery or not have surgery at all, he bluntly replied, “One year.”  So we elected to be as aggressive as we could with the treatment based on that prognosis.

On March 6, 2001, I underwent surgery followed by four cycles of chemotherapy treatment. Two weeks after my first chemo treatment, I began to lose all my hair. Every three weeks between March and the end of June that year I submitted to the chemotherapy. Since many wonder and ask, I will relay that the treatments are nasty…no doubt about that but I thought of it as a race with four separate sections. It’s an endurance race and if I focused my eyes on the finish line, I was better able to handle the course.

 

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Being a “Thriver” (2)

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Lynn

I did not grow up in a Christian home. I think I believed more in angels than I did in God most of my life…thinking that I was blessed with guardian angels but never really associating them with God. Many times I was spared hardship and injury especially during my teenage years when I clashed with my authoritative father and rebelled against him repeatedly. I see it was in those years especially when I seemed to be on a self-destructive mode that God had His hands upon me and would not allow me to take my rebellion to a point where the consequences of my sin would cause me grief all my life. Even with my never realizing God even existed, He had a plan and a purpose for me and I believed He had His protective angels watching over me. Still I was a long way from God and it wasn’t until university that I realized I was just going through the motions of life and I was missing something.

My best friend, Jean, who has been my friend for over 30 years now, grew up in a Christian home and attended church. She would invite me over to her house and I longed to have the closeness of family that she had with her family, especially the model father-daughter relationship she had with her Dad. I was too ignorant of God to realize that they modeled Christ in their lives every day. I saw them pray, I saw their Bible on their table but never made the connection until in university I met a man who modeled the same behavior and I fell in love with him.

Charles and I met in the army reserves. He was my commanding officer if you can believe it, but we did not date until we met again in university after the summer reserve program was over. In fact, I had no idea he was a university student. What attracted me to Charles was the fact that he never raised his voice in anger. He never swore…and in the army that is a very noticeable omission. He had a peace of spirit that I lacked and longed for. When we met again on campus months later, I learned he was a Christian and he started to teach me what that meant. When our relationship grew to love, and we talked marriage, Charles shocked me by saying that he could not marry me if I was not a Christian. In fact he said, “as much as I love you, I am willing to let you go because I believe that us not sharing in a common faith will forever be a wall between us.”

Well I was furious. I couldn’t believe that God was standing in our way to get married. This was the most trivial thing in the world to me. And yet as I raged at God while standing on a beach off the west coast of Vancouver Island I was struck by the truth of what Charles said. I remember the sky was grey and the seagulls screeched all around me and I lifted my fist in the air and yelled at God. I fell to my knees and it was as if the world stopped spinning. The waves stopped crashing along the shoreline, the seagulls hushed and the sky lightened. I felt a peace like I had never felt in my life. I went back to Charles and putting my hand in his, he prayed with me as I accepted Jesus into my life.

That was in the fall of 1978. We were married in June 1979 and moved from Vancouver Island to Calgary where I finished my Bachelor of Education degree and Charles started working in the oil patch. We chose for our life verse: Prov. 16:9 “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” We realized early in our marriage that God was in control. We were attending a church in Calgary, and I was very involved in the women’s and children’s ministries there.

In 1984, God blessed us with our first child, Laurelle. She was a miracle child because I had a lot of problems during the pregnancy and we were told at one point that if we got through the pregnancy at all, we might never be able to have another child. In 1990 God called us to find a new church home and we became members of Bow Valley Baptist Church. It was there that we felt a sense of family that we had never experienced before in any previous church we had attended. For the next four Sundays we were invited to a different person’s home for lunch. It was amazing.

After years of trying to have another child, God gave us our son, Brett through adoption in 1992. We rejoiced in our children. We had a great church family, a lovely home, material wealth, status, health. We settled in to what was for a while an idyllic lifestyle.

Carmen was our third gift from God in 1995, indicating to me particularly that God has a great sense of humour. We had all but given up on having any more children and at the tender age of 37 I was expecting a child. In fact, my friend Connie threatened to throw me a Sarah and Abraham baby shower!

All was well with the Doves…or so it seemed….

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