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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Being a “Thriver”

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Lynn

I am a first generation Canadian, my parents came to Canada from Denmark in the 50’s and I was born in Calgary 6 years after they arrived.  I think as soon as I was weaned from a bottle, I was immediately introduced to coffee.  I don’t mean the Tim Horton’s coffee we know and love now, no, I mean black, thick, strong coffee…the kind of coffee that a spoon would have a hard- time- stirring-through coffee!  When I was about two years old I would get about a quarter of a cup coffee, and the rest of the cup was made up with cream and sugar.  Every year after that the mixture got blacker and blacker, thicker and thicker.  Ever since I can remember I grew up drinking coffee.

It was a cold Sunday morning early into January of 2000 and I was putting on my makeup and fixing my hair and trying to finish quickly so that my husband, Charles and I could have some time to enjoy our second cup of coffee before heading off to church.  This had been our usual custom for 21 years.  As I was combing my hair and looking into the bathroom mirror I heard a distinct voice around me saying: “Would you give it up for Me?”  I thought Charles had spoken to me so I turned around but saw no one.  Then I heard the voice again very distinctly say, “Would you give it up for Me?”  I stopped brushing my hair, and said, “What?  Give what up?”  The voice again said, “Would you give it up for Me?”  I don’t exactly know, but I felt more than understood that I had just had an audible encounter with God and for some reason the Holy Spirit was asking me to give up coffee.

I went downstairs where my husband was and I told Charles what I had just experienced and I told him that I needed to stop drinking coffee immediately.  Charles did not question my sanity, as I thought he might, but he said, “If you think God is telling you to stop drinking coffee, you must stop and I’ll stop too, to support you.”

Well, over the course of that year, many times I wondered why the Holy Spirit had asked me to stop drinking coffee, but I would not question God’s wisdom.   We had the youth group come to our home for a New Year’s party to usher in the year 2001 and as we prayed together, our youth pastor’s wife, Cathey said something that remained in my thoughts for a very long time.  “We welcome in the New Year,” she said, “But even as we do that, we think about how we need to stay focused on God throughout this year.  This might be a year of challenges; of good times and of bad times.  We might be called upon to offer help and support to each other.  We might have to say, Good-bye to friends.  Some right here in this room, may not be here with us next year…”  I thought about those words, and even as I knew that she was thinking more along the lines of kids moving away than anything more ominous, a month later I suspected God used Cathey to prophesy what the future year was to hold for me.

In January of 2001, I had a full physical at the doctor’s and I was sent for a routine mammogram.  The technician normally does not reveal findings to patients but she let on that she thought she saw something unusual in one of the pictures and sent me immediately for an ultrasound.  Three weeks later a biopsy confirmed I had breast cancer and early in March of 2001 I underwent a mastectomy followed by four rounds of chemotherapy.

There are countless of stories I could relate during that two year battle with cancer, where God spoke to me through prayer, scripture, and God’s people…as Cathey had prophesied, the youth group was instrumental in lifting me before the Lord in prayer that year.  Her words were remembered by many of those young people and they banded together to surround one of their own, my daughter, with unconditional support as our entire family experienced my cancer together.  My entire church family ministered to me through random acts of kindness and service, the worship team even came to my home and led a mini-worship for me when I was too sick to venture to church.  I received countless emails from friends around the world and truly God used them all to encourage me through the entire experience.  I could and probably will, write a book someday about my journey with God through that cancer experience, but I know that the first chapter would focus on why God told me to give up coffee in the first place.

I didn’t know it at the time, but doctors, nurses and technicians told me after, that the lumps that were discovered in my right breast at the time of my mammogram were so small that the technician almost missed seeing them.  She had asked me before the test if I was a coffee drinker and I had told her I had given up drinking coffee the year previously.  Again, I didn’t know it at the time, but discovered later that in some women, heavy coffee drinking can cause little fatty cysts to develop in breast tissue because of the caffeine.  This can sometimes throw off a mammogram reading.  If I had not given up coffee, the technician may have thought that those tiny lumps were nothing more than cysts caused by my caffeine intake, however, since I was not a coffee drinker at the time of the test and had been off of coffee for over a year, she decided to investigate those minuscule lumps and as a result that early detection of cancer saved my life.  I was told by my surgeon that my particular form of breast cancer was extremely aggressive and had the lumps not been detected when they were, I would probably not have survived the year.

I have thought often about God telling me to stop drinking coffee.  It sounded like a strange thing at the time but I obeyed without hesitation.  God asked, “Would you give it up for Me?”  The more I have thought about it over the years, the more I am sure that those words at the time didn’t have as much to do with giving up coffee as it was my giving up everything to God.

Henry Blackaby says in Experiencing God that if you have heard from God, what you do next, determines what you believe about God.  The moment God speaks to you is the time He wants you to respond to Him.  I had no idea what was happening within my body, but God did.  His timing was perfect.  Had I disobeyed, I would not have lived out that year.  It was a life or death decision for me and I didn’t even know it at the time.

I have learned since then whenever God speaks to me, He is waiting for me to give Him a “life or death” answer.   I pray that in the large things and small things whenever He asks me to “give it up for Him”, no matter what He asks of me, I will respond immediately, “Yes, Lord!”

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