When Inconveniences Become Providences

 

 We hit the ground running, back into native American ministry--weak as water or not! As we mentioned in earlier posts, instead of flying into Rapid City, Jonathan and I ended up flying into Sioux Falls which is a good bit further from home. 

When Jonathan was trying to get tickets, he was hesitating about the tickets to Rapid City, and later checked into tickets to Sioux Falls, discovering that we would save over $300 by flying to Sioux Falls. It was inconvenient, because of the distance, but it seemed the best thing, and Pastor Ambrose from White River would come with Danny and Hannah to pick us up. 

Little did we know when we got the tickets that SIM President Keith Lavery would be messaging us about our friend Faye from White River. She had ended up at the hospital in Sioux Falls! Might we be able to work in a stop to see her? Might we! We were delighted to agree. Until I remembered that I had just had how many rounds of chemo, my white blood cell count was low, and a hospital was probably the last place I should be! What a bummer! But, especially after finding out it was around Faye's birthday, we decided that Jonathan, Hannah, and Pastor Ambrose could still go in.  So we found our way to Avera Hospital, found a spot for our big van to squeeze in, and the three trailed inside to find Faye's room. We decided that Jonathan would call me from her room so that I could maybe find her window and wish her a happy birthday.

Well, after a bit Jonathan was contacting me and with me standing down below on my phone, I helped the three of them sing "Happy Birthday" to dear Faye, who was very weak and hardly able to talk. ("Where there is a will, there's a way," as the saying goes!) And then I knew that with Faye unable to talk much, maybe I should do more talking to her on the phone--or singing--to help the guys out. Just then I noticed two little brown sparrows in the bushes next to me, and asked Faye if she would like me to sing "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" to her. I could hear the delight as she agreed. So I just started singing--there with my phone on the sidewalk down below the windows of the hospital.

I got most of the way through the first verse when something happened. In that moment, a WHOLE FLOCK of sparrows suddenly winged their way out of those bushes! 

 

I stopped right in the middle of my song and gasped, "There's a whole flock of sparrows!" before deciding to proceed with the song. My voice was wobbling dreadfully until I remembered that I really shouldn't cry, for poor Faye's sake, so I sternly got hold of myself and kept singing.

Several of the sparrows sat on the wall, as if they were wondering what on earth was that new bird on the block with the new sort of bird call?

Two ladies went by, pushing a hospital patient in a wheel chair, and I slipped further under the patio roof and kept singing. I thought they were going to some car down by the street but they turned around and came around by way of the patio behind me, smiling from ear to ear. 

I kept singing, leaving the patio and looking up at the windows above me, hoping that the ladies would understand that I was trying to sing to a patient up there somewhere and not just being totally ridiculous.

And then I told Faye on the phone that we had to get on our way as we had three and a half hours to drive yet, and we had to say goodbye. But me? I still had my phone in my hand and I went across the road to try to get a picture of all those sparrows. Well, that captured more attention as an older couple walked by on their way to the hospital, saw me staring up into the tree, and asked what I was trying to get a picture of. We had a little chat about the song about the sparrow. I love how the Lord leads paths to cross. And it was an incredible joy to be back into native American ministry--even if we did have to improvise how we do hospital visitation!!

 

Uninvited Guest--Shoo!

 This morning I was busy sorting and packing up to move out of this condo back to Gospel Center when to my consternation I discovered an uninvited visitor appearing beside me by the dining table!

 It was the neighbor's dog! We had left both the front gate and the front door open since we were in and out carrying our belongings.

Now there are quite a number of dogs in the area, including a darling lemon labrador puppy just a couple doors down the way that has the cutest long ears and the prettiest taupe and white colors I've ever seen! We often meet that puppy and its owner when we are both out for our morning walk! That puppy never even yips, much less barks or roars like this neighbor dog that had just appeared out of nowhere at my feet in my own dining area of the condo! That puppy would just climb up us and want to lick our face, like a kiss from an angel.

This dog at my feet, however, although perfectly harmless, had not been particularly an angel! Until recently, she usually barked ferociously at me from a distance as if I was some sort of robber or fiend. And when her owner would call her and settle her down, I discovered that the dog's name was Annie, which is awfully close to my own name!

Without further ado, upon discovering my newfound enemy-suddenly-turned-friend in my own home, I began the process of shooing her out! This did not take long, for Annie, the dog, seemed eager enough to go back to familiar surroundings! Out she loped, not quite remembering where the door was, and then out the gate she trotted. I closed the gate behind her, and also closed the front door. 

And that was the end of that! Except that I couldn't help thinking about uninvited guests suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

We didn't invite them; they are just there, like Mr. Wog, the frog sitting there at the river just as we arrived to dabble in Green River a few weeks ago on a hot afternoon. He sat there in his spot under the bank, staring at us as we stared back at him, like staring at uninvited negative thoughts, fears, doubts, worries, emotions. Suddenly, they are swirling in our head or sitting starting at us in our emotions--out of nowhere. 

I remembered the conversation I had with my friend and fellow patient Judy at the clinic. We were discussing the habit the clinic teaches of emptying one's mind by meditating silently, focusing on breathing or a simple thing like a sunset or sound. 

They teach it is necessary to stop thinking to clear our minds, so that healing thoughts of beauty, love, peace, and joy can take the place of the negativity that so often clutters our mind.

If we keep thinking with no stopping, thoughts automatically swirl and are usually negative, which does not help healing.

As a Christian, I told Judy that I had found help through this little secret. Practicing stopping my thinking had often opened my mind to what was good and beautiful and forgiving and healing. I felt we could adapt this concept to be of use in our lives as Christians. 

Then Judy was saying how she had found so much freedom since she learned that often it is the devil that literally injects sinful or wrong thoughts into our minds and then accuses the thoughts as being from our own heart. We need to recognize this, she said, and simply reject those thoughts. 

After my uninvited canine guest this morning, I thought about this conversation again.

Negative thoughts and feelings can even have our name attached. Or a close resemblance to our name--such as Annie versus Anna. But just because the thought or emotion is suddenly there doesn't mean it belongs to us or that it came from a heart that wants to please God.

When worries or fears or anxieties or dread come sneaking into our minds unaware, it is entirely possible to shoo them away.

Whether they come roaring in like a lion or slipping in like the curious neighbor dog, we can choose, rather than petting them to shoo them straight out the door!

As I have heard over and over, there is a saying, "You can't keep the birds from landing on your head; but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair!"

 

Unexpected Rainbow in the Mist

 A couple days ago we were coming home right on the hour when the fountain was going off at the lake.

 

And to our unsuspecting eyes, a rainbow shimmered in the mist! We just had to turn around and go back to watch. 

 

The rainbow would shimmer and then disappear, and then come back again, depending on how the mist blew or whether a cloud wafted over the sun.

And then when we arrived back at our condo, Jonathan was the first to go in and when he came back out to meet me coming in with my load, he waited behind me to snap the picture when I discovered a surprise waiting for me outside the door!

 

It was a bouquet from the doctor's wife and the doctor whose condo this was, to congratulate finishing my time at the clinic!

These are just two more surprises among the many unexpected joys and blessings that happened down here in Arizona. 

How can I ever forget the night we arrived in the 110 degree heat even at 10 o'clock at night?

  

How I had practically curled into a heap on my seat, my head in my lap, filled with utter dread and fear and anguish about ending up down here with no idea how things were going to go?

 

Wondering how I would ever manage in that spot in the middle of the worst section of Phoenix? I would make the best of it, I had determined, but little did I know the surprise after surprise God had for me?

One of the most constant delights has been watching quail families grow up, watching as they come out at both dawn and dusk from the wild area behind our place.  

The papa quail was here on our patio wall just a few evenings ago.  

He was watching over some of his little ones who aren't so little anymore.  

 We watched as they pecked around under the little palm tree. I don't know what they got to eat under there, but they were sure trying!

And of course, there have always been doves. Sometimes flocks of them.

And almost no end of beautiful sunrises. 

 Too many unexpected joys and blessings to name. 

God has been exceedingly good to us down here. 

I treasure these memories in my heart. 

 

You Are Invited!!

You are invited to an online celebration party of praise to celebrate Anna's discharge from Oasis of Healing Clinic!

To the best of our knowledge, according to two separate ultrasounds, there is no sign of cancer in my liver or lymph, and the rest of the cancer is on its way out! 

 

The party welcomes songs, birds, flowers, stringed instruments, horns, family, friends, enemies, clapping, stomping, hugging, and even happy dancing with timbrels and harps! Praise God from Whom all blessings flow! 

 

Even the birds have been celebrating! Every morning recently just before and during sunrise, flocks of ducks and other birds celebrate the good news by flying in circles overhead!  

It couldn't have anything to do with the break in the terrible heat wave, the cooler mornings, or the beautiful dawns and sunrises! :)

I'm sure it's all about God's beautiful healing work at Oasis of Healing where several different women have left in recent months with cancer in total remission. 

Whenever a patient is discharged, he or she is allowed to play or sing a favorite song during a goodbye time. Another Christian lady who had her chair next to me and who left a few weeks ago had chosen to play a Resurrection hymn that she had recorded and sung all four parts for three years ago during Covid. It was outstanding! Another lady played "You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone" while nearly everyone cried and hugged around!

I decided if I was offered the chance, I'd choose "His Eye Is on the Sparrow."

 I hunted in more than one store, and finally found this almost sparrow at Hobby Lobby. And I sorted through several renditions on You Tube before finding a piano arrangement that worked perfectly in a key I could actually sing!

Sure enough, it was announced that Anna would have a song Friday afternoon!

Jonathan, who held the laptop for me with the song and sparrow scene on it while I sang, said he didn't think there was a dry eye in the room when I came to the end of the first verse, and the little Hobby Lobby sparrow found its way into sight in my hand.  

Every time the sparrow was mentioned, the little Hobby Lobby sparrow found its way into the song.

At the end of the song, my sweet Pakistani friends were the first to hug, and the one with my exact kind of cancer clung to me. I hugged all around, and was so touched when more than one person told me, "You've been a shining light here in the clinic!" Different ones wanted to keep in touch.

Today I had one final short treatment at the clinic, and, due to my blood pressure being awfully low, ended up having my port accessed long enough to give me a liter of saline. The hot weekend and two trips to church had taken their toll, I guess! But then I was able to be on my feet all afternoon packing with a clear mind and only stopping to be weak and shaky about once. 

I have to admit I did stop today long enough to blog this post!

Tomorrow we move out of this amazing condo back to Gospel Center to leave our Honda and stuff there for a couple weeks while we fly to SD for two weeks. Jonathan found very inexpensive tickets to Sioux Falls, saving a few hundred that it would have cost to fly to Rapid City. The plan is to come back here to Arizona for an oral surgery to correct some important issues that were probably a root cause for cancer, get a few follow-up treatments, and then drive back to SD in mid-October. 

We will miss the beautiful sunrises and sunsets here--and so much more,

the quails, the doves, the ducks, the fountains, the lake, the trails, the saguaro and barrel cacti, the bouganvillae, the brick patio out back where we watch the sun rise and the moon rise and the ducks circle and the bats swoop.

But God will be with us

where ever we go.

"If You Had Faith, You Wouldn't Be Here"

 "If you had faith, you wouldn't be down here," a certain person told us a couple weeks ago. He was trying to convince Jonathan and me how important and how strong the mind is when it comes to healing.

"You wouldn't be down here if you believed."

I sat back in my chair and said, before I thought, "Well! I guess that puts us in our place!"

Unbelievers.

Faithless!

Wretches!

"You wouldn't be down here at this clinic if you believed. If you believed in your mind and heart, the cancer would go away."

(This was not from any of the staff, the doctors who oversaw my care, or any fellow patients.) 

Soooo......

That was so off the wall that I didn't let it bother me. Or at least I tried not to let it bother me. But when a book sent by a friend of a friend came in the mail written by a godly preacher to whom had been given the gift of healing, and I read story after story in it of healing, I had more thinking to do. Another book had arrived in the mail with no  name attached, no idea where it came from. I opened it up and read on a page that basically if you are sick, there is some sin in your life. If you have sickness in your liver, you have anger. If you have sickness in your stomach, it's some other sin, etc.  I promptly threw the book in the waste basket. 

(Jonathan sneaked it back out later and hid it just in case we'd want to take another look at it. Maybe that was just some of the pages and maybe somewhere else in the book it would have something better to say. Maybe someone we know sent it and would ask about it and how could we possibly tell them we threw it away before reading more than a couple spots?)

But anyway, the book with healing stories was a daily devotional book, but it was more like a story book. Now you can tell me a lot of things, even things I disagree with, if you tell me true stories with it. But I was just fascinated with the messages in this book.  It wasn't preaching at a person that if you have an illness or a chronic disease or cancer, it likely means you have sin or had sin in your life. Instead it was full of stories and examples and Scriptures and true accounts of how different people availed themselves of God's promises in His Word about healing.

The book  brought out verse after verse of Scripture where healing is meant for every believer. And such fascinating stories of healing  whether instantaneous or over time--depending on the faith of the person or on how long God saw fit to test the faith.

It also told about some not healing when they could have been healed. Like two who heard the identical message. One believed and was healed immediately, the other refused and died. 

I couldn't help thinking about godly people I've known who died of cancer or other diseases. Did they not have enough faith or what? I remember talking to the widow of John Durfee who died of lung cancer after just a few years in Ukraine as a missionary. His death--was it a lack of faith when so many prayed and trusted for him to be healed?

His wife had an answer on the tip of her tongue. "It was a perfect healing," she said simply. There was no questioning, no second guessing, no doubting the way things had turned out when they prayed for healing. John's being taken to heaven was a "perfect healing."

And that answer totally satisfied me.

But I was thinking about all these things one day as I was flat on my back with a cancer treatment. (I know, if I had faith, I would have promptly jumped up from my chair in that room that day when that man told me that, and I would have told the clinic I was out of there. I was on my way home to South Dakota, and I believe I am healed! To be honest, I wanted to so badly! No more chemo or queasiness or loss of white blood cells! No more herceptin! No more weekly jabs of pain when nurses had to access my port and hang an IV tube for that week. No more tubes hanging from my upper chest and having to be tucked away inside my clothes so it wouldn't look like a tail hanging out between the buttons of my blouse! No more harsh IVs like Vitamin C and curcumin and chelation. No more colonics or gagging down handfuls of meds or trying to eat mung bean sprouts and green juice and no more hundred-degree weather! Whee! I'm outta here!) 

Instead, the day I was flat on my back, I would be getting another blood oxygenation treatment (meaning another needle poke in my vein) and then later an IV of resveratrol which always left me feeling rather terrible. 

But for now, I had some time to be quiet and still, and I couldn't help remembering what that man had said. 

And what the preacher in that book had said.

And what God's Word itself says.

And I was quite sure my faith was not very big. Maybe I was down here in Arizona because I lacked enough faith for simple divine healing. So many have believed simply and been healed. In that moment of looking at my faith, I really didn't know.

All I knew was that I did have faith.

I did believe.

Even if my faith was as small as a mustard seed. No, didn't Jesus say a grain of mustard seed? One of those teensy, itsy bitsy, wee little grains of whatever inside a tiny mustard seed.

My faith, I knew in my heart, was at least that big.

And according to Jesus, if I had that much faith, it could move a mountain!

It could move the rest of this cancer right out of my body!

I was lying there lifting my hands to heaven as if I had the cancer in my hands. I was giving my cancer to Jesus. 

And I was crying. 

I was bawling because I felt like my faith was so small, but I felt something else besides the sense of a small faith. It was the feeling of love. And flat on my back, I just bawled and said to God, "God, if my faith is small, accept my love! God, feel loved by me!"

And then another verse came silently to me, like a butterfly wafting in on the wisp of a breeze and alighting on a philodendron leaf.

"Faith, hope, love--these three. But the greatest of these is love."

If my faith is small, may my love be great. 

And there was peace.