E.M. Bounds wrote, "When faith ceases to pray, it ceases to live."
Since faith is the gift of God, it follows that the Lord allows certain things to come into our lives to keep us on our knees, to keep our faith alive. Trouble is not happening to us to get us to give up but for us to rise up in faith, crying out to the Lord for our need. Sometimes, the troubles test us to the point that we may feel that there is no way out, but the Lord always comes through in ways that amaze us. I’ve had many experiences since I met Christ that have tested my faith in His best for my life, but He has never failed me - even when some things looked like He had!
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, Hebrews says, and the evidence of things not seen. To simplify that, God is saying that faith is substance and faith is evidence. I think sometimes we think of the things hoped for as the substance, rather than faith itself. Once we grasp how substantial faith is, we can clearly see the end of every trial. The children’s song says, "Faith is just believing what God says He will do. He will never fail us, His promises are true." But it takes situations for which He alone has the solutions to get us to grow in faith, and it isn’t easy to see all this when things go horribly wrong - it’s hard to imagine that good can come out of a bad situation.
On October 28, 1996, I had the first sign of trouble with my health, when my back started hurting on the way home from a 4 hour root canal. The pain eased when my family prayed for me that night, but the next morning I woke up with severe nausea that lasted 10 days. While the doctors tried to treat me for what they thought was a kidney infection, I was unable to hold anything down, including water. When I finally went to the emergency room at our local hospital, I was shocked to find myself placed in ICU for four days while doctors tried to keep me alive. My kidneys had begun to fail, so tests were sent to Mayo Clinic and the University of Michigan to determine why.
On December 3, 1996, my family doctor got the results back and asked me to come in to talk. I told my husband Steve to go on to work, that 18 year old Chris could take me - no big deal. When I got to the office, I was ushered into a room immediately, and as I sat waiting for Doc, I prayed for strength to bear what was ahead. When Doc walked in, he seemed very grim, and he asked me an interesting question, given that he had known me forever! –
"Carolyn, do you have faith?"
"You know I do, Doc!"
"Well you’re going to need more."
"No, I’m not."
"Yes, you are."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
Finally, I said, "DOC! I eat faith for breakfast!"
That made him smile a little, but then the words that came next were nearly impossible to take in.
"Carolyn, you have a bone marrow disease called multiple myeloma. It is bad; it is very bad. You will need to see an oncologist, and you will be making many trips to Ann Arbor and Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. You will have to have chemotherapy, and later - if you make it - a bone marrow transplant. I'm so sorry."
I looked at him in amazement. My life had never been smooth, but this was impossible. I had way too much to do to stop my life to take care of this! I had home-schooled my four kids all their lives - who would teach them? We had an amazing group of people of hurting people who met in our home for church - how would I help minister to them? My father had just had a stroke and was battling lung cancer- what if I couldn’t help take care of him?
Had the doctor turned out the lights? The room was dark, and I could barely see him three feet away. Where was the air? I couldn't breathe. My future seemed as far away as my nose. Chemotherapy??? Bone marrow transplant? I tried to take in all of Dr Hershberger’s words, but the tears in his eyes left me knowing that this was no mistake. I had a rare, incurable, always fatal bone marrow cancer. I started to get a little teary myself - I felt trapped and very alone.
Then a scripture came to mind: Ps 139! I brightened; light and air came back in the room.
"Doc! This doesn't change my life one bit! Psalm 139 says that the Lord has written all my days in His book before there were any of them! I will get all my days!"
As I walked out of the office, I remembered that Chris was in the van waiting to drive me home. The agony of telling your child that you have cancer is never easy, and I would have to do it 4 times that day. Each child responded according to his or her personality. Chris cried as we drove home, but he tried to comfort me, too. "Mom, when you beat this, it’s going to be the best testimony ever!"
Jonathan was my baby at 11, and his face was stony white. "I'm not gonna cry until you die, and you’re not gonna die, so I'm not gonna cry!" (He told me years later that he cried all night!)
Susan, 13, ran outside in the cold without a coat. Chris found her in the woods hours later, where she had gone to freeze to death so that she wouldn't have to watch me die.
Raychel, 16, always the responsible one, kept saying, "Tell me it’s not true. Tell me it’s a sick joke."
My three sisters screamed and cried. My best friends turned white with disbelief. I can't even describe my husband’s reaction ... I think that telling people was the hardest part - I felt that I was letting them all down.
A few days later, many people from our church gathered in our living room to pray with me. My sister-in-law, who works in a lab, brought me the textbook on blood diseases that the lab techs use, the one with the unvarnished truth that the doctors don't want you to know. I found out that Multiple Myeloma is cancer of the blood plasma, and it eats bone. As the bone dissolves, the calcium clogs up the kidneys, causing nausea, coma, and death. There is no cure, and since it is immune system cancer, a cold or the flu is what usually kills. And I had had teenagers with strep, flu, and mono coming in to visit me, giving me a kiss and a hug, and wishing me well! I had my lab results with me to take to the cancer doctor, so while everyone around the room discussed the situation, I was busy comparing my labs to the charts in the book. I read the description and prognosis of the cancer, and then I got a thrill as I saw the obvious.
"Good news, guys!" Everyone looked up at me. "I am in the last stage, I have 6 months to live, there is no cure, and there is nothing that man can do for me!"
They didn't seem very happy.
"Don't you see??? When the Lord heals me, HE will get all the glory! No doctor will be able to take the credit
!" I really was grateful that I was totally at the mercy of the Lord and not man.
When faith ceases to be grateful, life becomes dark and unbearable. Finding the silver lining to every cloud is another way to keep faith alive in a time of trouble.
And I had a silver lining! James 5:14-15 says, "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. So confess your faults to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed."
So, on December 14th, during a Christmas party at our house that had been planned many months before, the ordained pastor who oversaw our little church came with his wife, along with about 40 of our family and friends, and anointed me, obeying the Scriptures. And my faith soared!
In second stage myeloma, there are options available to patients to help them live a little longer, but in third stage, it's just guinea pig time! So I chose not to do the heavy chemotherapy the doctor suggested, although I would have if the Lord had given me a peace about it. Radiation is only for pain in this case, and I didn't have any at first. In fact, I felt great, and made the 1000 mile trip (by van, with four kids with me!) to my hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, 11 more times to help comfort my daddy before he passed away in October 1997.
But in DEC. 1997 I was in ICU again, a perfect repeat of the Christmas before. But hey, I had made it well past the 6 month prognosis, right? Again I refused the chemo, but this time I did let the oncologist talk me into Aredia, a drug that was supposed to keep my bones strong (It‘s similar to what older women take inpill form to build bone, only far more potent.). Instead, I was highly allergic to it, and it caused full-body Charlie-horses - just a few at first, but later I would have 12 a day at least, lasting 15 minutes each, and this went on for six months after the last treatment in May. Eventually, my family could not touch me or even walk in the room, because the least sound or touch would send me into a spasm. My bones began to deteriorate rapidly on the Aredia. By June 1998, I had to use a walker.
On one of my good days - July 13, 1998 - as I was walking across the floor without the walker to hand Raychel the phone, my right hip broke. I never hit the floor, because she caught me. I had surgery the next day, and I was making a full recovery, but the spasms were still there, and two weeks later I got hit with the worst pain I had ever experienced!
As the pain took over my life, one neighbor kept telling me that I was sick because I didn't have enough faith. It took a lot of faith not to punch her! Instead, I finally asked her if she could weigh a mustard seed, because that is all the faith the Lord says we need. The Lord always gives us strength to deal with people wisely, and she just had a different teaching from her church than I did.
I have to tell you that there were many times when it would have been much easier to give in and give up. The pain was unrelenting, and my poor family suffered so much just watching this, day after day, week after week, month after month, that I often thought that it would be more merciful for them if I just went home to be with the Lord, and there was no question that it would have been much easier on me! Sometimes, I would daydream about being with Christ, seeing His face, and I would get so excited! But He would draw me back to reality. While our desire to be with the Lord is tremendous, the desire to be useful to Him as long as possible on earth is just as much so.
The nurses were always so glad when my kids were visiting, because they had "the touch," as we used to say - they could get me in bed without too much screaming! Jonathan, being the youngest, stayed with me the most. It would take me three hours to get out of the bed, and even longer to get back in it. I remember one night at home, at 4am, looking at the tears streaming down his little face as he held my leg tenderly in his hands and tried to get me up on that hospital bed in the middle of the living room. I said, "Jonny, it’s okay, son. Go on to bed." But he said, "I won't go to bed until you are comfortable and asleep." So I called an ambulance to take me back to the hospital so he could get some rest.
There were way too many days like that one.
While the doctors tried to figure out why my leg felt like someone was sticking a sword in it and sawing, the cancer was raging, and my sisters were called up from SC to say goodbye to me in late August 1998. I don't remember them coming there, but I do remember when they left! My sister Joyce said that while I was out of it, I was moaning in agony, and the morphine wasn't helping at all. So she leaned over me and said, "Carolyn, I asked God that if He wasn't going to heal you and take away your pain, that He would take you home." She said that my eyes got huge; I rose up off the bed, grabbed the front of her shirt and said, "You pray for life! You pray for life!" She said that she never gave up on me again! I must have been remembering what the Lord tells us in Deuteronomy 30:19-20, "... I set before you death and life, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life ..."
Another December, two years after diagnosis, and I was again in the hospital, and again, I was dying. A friend who worked at the hospital walked in the room to visit me just as two of my doctors were telling me that I had three days left to live. I was arguing with them because they kept insisting that I was going to die within 72 hours because my organs were shutting down, and I was insisting that the Lord was healing me and that they needed to let me go home to buy Christmas presents for my kids. Pam prayed with me as the doctors tiptoed out of the room, and a week later I was filling two carts at Best Buy for my kids! Even made it to the mall to get Susan some Tommy clothes!
One week after that Christmas, on December 31, 1998, my labs confirmed what the Lord had told me all along - the cancer was gone. Nine months later, the pain in my leg, which even the infamous Oxycontin couldn't touch, was found to be a severe staph infection in the hip replacement that was eating the thigh and knee bones, and the prosthesis was removed, leaving the right leg two inches shorter than the left one and my knee immovable - but a few months later, I was able to get off the pain meds for the first time in one and a half years. In the summer of 2000, at a healing service where my two sons were instrumental, I put weight on my leg without it breaking for the first time in 2 years, and in March 2001, I had another hip prosthesis put in. The infectious disease expert was sure that he would find the staph infection still in my leg, but the cultures came back negative, which was just as great a miracle in my case as the cancer disappearing. Now I can walk without a cane. although I usually use one in public. I am totally expecting the day the Lord promised me, when He will heal all my bones and the limp will be gone! It will come.
Faith has been defined as going to the end of all the light you have, then taking one more step. You think you'll be stepping into darkness, but the light will glow under your feet, and you will find that every step by faith will give you new ground. Just the impossibility of something stirs up our faith to believe God rather than the world. It was a battle every single day to ignore that little voice hissing, "You’re gonna die!" It took every ounce of faith I had to speak the Truth from the Word of God, especially when there were days upon days of absolute, unending agony that full dose morphine couldn't touch. But I had a promise from God!
Mark 11:23-24 are verses that I clung to daily while I was sick, and I still do. The following is a literal, word for word, translation from the Greek (my own):
"And answering, Jesus says to them, "Have God’s faith. Definitely, for I say to you that if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Pick yourself up and throw yourself into the sea,’ and if he does not put reasonings and arguments in his heart, but if he believes that those things which he says are coming into existence, it will be to him whatever he says."
Another verse in Proverbs says that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks - your mouth shows your heart. That's why Paul said in Romans 10. that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. You see, what we SAY effects what we believe, because we tend to believe what comes out of our own mouths. (If you don't believe me, just ask any person if what they are saying about someone else is absolutely true!) So if we are speaking unfaithful things, things that speak doubt and reasonings and arguments instead of faith, it will wither our faith. But if we speak things that are true and righteous and just and lovely and of good report, we are speaking life-giving faith to all around us.
Jesus continues in Mark 11, "Through this, I am saying to you that all things you willfully request when you are praying, believe that you have received them, and they will be yours (for yourself)."
Do you believe that God will move your mountain? If you know Him as Savior and Lord, He already has - because a greater miracle than any physical healing is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ's finished work on the cross. Physical healing is, in my opinion, just one way to prove that the Lord Jesus Christ really is the Savior of the world. And I'm always on the look-out for those opportunities!!!!
Letting God take care of any situation, no matter how painful, no matter whether it's physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental, is a challenge. But if we don't apply genuine faith to our problems, we will become religious and rigid and critical of others instead of gracious and kind, or we will lose faith in God altogether.
In Matt 11:28-30, Jesus calls us to His side, saying, "Come to Me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light."
A yoke is used to get two animals to work together in a harness to plow a field. Just think of it: Jesus is willing to get in a yoke with you and move as fast or as slow as you do, and to show you the way through the fields of life. But we must be willing to step out in faith - because above all else, it is faith that pleases Him in every situation - and reach out to Him from behind our walls of unbelief, so that He can pull us out of trouble and to Himself.
After all, He is able, He is willing, and He is awesome!
Thank You, Lord!p>
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And now it is our Susan's turn to glorify God through her healing. On Feb 2, 2006, she was told that she had 5 brain tumors. She was married (now divorced) and the mother of two little girls. Thanks to you praying with us, Susan was told on March 3, 2006 - 29 days later - that the tumors have disappeared! Always, please remember, pray for LIFE!
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