Category Archives: Life’s disappointments

What’s happening with Mary?

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Rosehill..It’s been 7 months since I last shared an update on my sister Mary and how she’s coping with her pancreatic cancer. With great joy I can say she’s still her same vibrant self, very much “in the thick of things” with family, friends, and ministries. But since readers are asking, here’s the latest.

She said, “Be sure to tell your readers that my blessings outnumber my difficulties, and that God surprises me with his tender care every single day.”

Mary is a realist and freely talks about her cancer and what it’s doing to her. The bouts of fever, nausea, and weakness aren’t the result of having a flu or of not eating properly. She acknowledges that they’re simply the calling cards of cancer. But she’s quick to say she feels tremendous gratitude for each new day God gives her.

Even as she’s thinking realistically about her Stage 4 cancer, she’s remaining future-focused. For example, she’s learning how to use the many features of her new smart phone. And she’s redecorating their Michigan home. And she has scheduled a date for cataract surgery. “I may be gone by then,” she says with a smile, “but I might as well try for better vision.”

Those of us who don’t have a life-threatening disease don’t know how it feels to have a doctor tell you, “We can’t do anything more for you.” Surely it’s tempting to become fearful or to panic, but Mary has refused to indulge in negativity. Actually, just the opposite is true – she keeps a running list entitled “The Benefits of Pancreatic Cancer” in a small 3-ring notebook.

Rosehill

On Memorial Day, our extended family made our annual visit to Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery. After a discussion of the holiday, a couple of family quizzes, and a time of sharing, Mary’s grown daughter Julia said, “I’m just glad you’re still here, Mom. You’re such a good example to all of us, the way you’re handling this.”

Rosehill.That’s when Mary, moved by the Spirit, spoke some powerful words. “Lots of people tell me that,” she said, “but it isn’t really me doing anything special. It’s God inside of me just doing everything he said he would do, supplying supernatural peace in the middle of my cancer. He’s teaching me to trust him more and more and reassuring me that he’ll never leave me, no matter what.”

Mary doesn’t know what the future holds but knows Who has her future in his hands. And that’s good enough for her.

She’s appreciative of your prayers and has asked us to pray for her upcoming doctor’s appointment on July 19. No scans are scheduled, but she’ll have blood tests and will decide then whether or not to “sign off” with her doctor, since no further treatment is recommended.

Her other request is that we pray for weight gain. Though she’s eating well, her weight continues to drop, a result of the inefficient digestion common to cancer patients.

We’ll update you again a few days after Mary’s doctor visit – and maybe then she’ll even tell us what’s on her “Benefits” list.

“I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my song.” (Isaiah 22:12)

Give it a try.

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God has blessed me with 11 grandchildren… so far.

Currently they are ages 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 4, 3, 3, 2, 1, and 6 months. I look at that roster and marvel at the joy and creativity they bring to life.

IMG_1284Most interesting are the ideas they have. Take Micah, for example, age six. During my last visit, we had thrown away a cardboard box, after which Micah had sequestered himself with it. A few minutes later he reappeared.  “Look everybody! I made my own sandals!”

Even one-year-olds have clever ideas. After little Lizzie first spotted her birthday cake, she knew immediately what she needed to do. Wanting to get maximum pleasure for minimal effort, she moved in on the cake in the most efficient way possible: by sucking it. Good idea!

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IMG_0620Emerald, at three, found a new way to play Dominoes – on the piano keys. Or maybe it was a new way to play piano, because she began plunking the new “keys” as soon as she’d finished arranging them.

Skylar at seven initiated a game of hide and seek – with a twist. We were instructed to hunt for items she’d hidden that were, if we looked carefully, fully visible. None of us found this one – her pink purse, camouflaged in a bush of pink flowers. (Center of picture.)

Pink purse hidden

Kids are a fountain of fresh ideas and love to experiment with them. Many turn into failures, but that’s how they learn. We adults monitor from afar and intervene if something has potential to harm.

Grown-ups have plenty of ideas, too, and love to try them out in much the same way children do. But if we’re Christians, we’d better run those ideas past God first, because they can be contrary to what he’s already told us won’t work. Just like children, though, we often try our ideas anyway, sometimes bringing long-term misery. Taking God’s advice over our own is always a better strategy.

Sadly, it’s not easy to adopt another person’s idea over our own, especially if it comes in the form of a warning. It means shifting gears and accepting that his recommendation is better than ours. It’s especially difficult to do that, if we have an emotional attachment to our idea. In that case our hearts try hard to overrule God’s wisdom. We say, “I know you don’t like this, Lord, but I just want to do it!”

Sound like a child?

Maybe that’s why God does, indeed, call us children (1 John 3:1), because we have no trouble acting that way. At least he says we’re his children.

Surely our heavenly Father doesn’t love us any less when we go against his counsel and our ideas fail. Just like an earthly parent, he uses those failures to teach us.

But the best idea of all might be that each time we have “a good idea,” we run it past him before we plunge ahead.

“Be imitators of God, as beloved children.” (Ephesians 5:1)

What’s the story?

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This week God told me a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

I was sitting at a red light facing a stormy Lake Michigan, appreciative of a moment to study the churning water and its white caps. Winds over 30 mph rocked my car at the T-intersection as I waited for the green light.

Still growingJust then I spotted a tree directly across the road that must have been damaged on another stormy day. Apparently winds had been wild then, too, strong enough to twist the top right off the tree, leaving only a ragged stump. Despite such radical damage, it was growing new branches and taking on a new shape.

I snapped a photo and didn’t think much more about it.

Later, in the middle of the night, a loud noise woke me from a deep sleep, sounding like a giant Velcro patch being slowly torn apart. Since my window was open, the strange sound seemed especially frightening. But then came a giant thud, and I knew what it was — a tree that had just been torn apart.

IMG_3257The next morning I pulled on my boots and went looking. Only a few yards behind the house lay a tree that had been ripped in half from the bottom up and in its fall had pulled down a second tree. Both had landed in an enormous tangle of trunks and branches.

As I studied the damage, an old King James Bible word came to mind: rend. That version of the Bible uses rend to mean a tearing away, a ripping, a splitting. It was a word God used to pronounce judgment – “I will rend the kingdom from them. I will rend their wall. I will rend the heavens.”

IMG_3258Taking a mental measurement of the two fallen trees, I thought about how just the day before, and for years before that, both had stood 50 feet tall, strong and straight. And I thought about the stumpy tree at the red light…. and that’s when God told me a story.

“Though I sometimes rend things away, I usually follow that with a rendering.”

I had to head home to dictionary.com to find out what rendering meant and learned it was to provide or deliver. So, to rend is to take; to render is to give.

God was saying, “Sometimes my story-telling in people’s lives begins with a rending as I separate them from something they want or think they need that is really inappropriate or harmful. But my rending is always done with wisdom and an eye toward positive purposes that will come over time.

That was the beginning of the story.

The middle came next. “If you pay attention, you’ll see that I follow each rending with a rendering. I deliver what’s needed to start again, to experience new growth — much like the tree near the lake. I render the ability to do things better, to make different decisions, to rearrange priorities.

“In other words, I’m behind the rending but also the rendering.”

And the end of the story? “That,” he says, “depends on how you respond to the beginning and the middle.”

“[God] will render to every man….” (Romans 2:6)