Day 46

 

No Wasted Sorrows

 

"...the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God"

 

2 Corinthians 1:4

 

There was a lady in our church whose goal in life was to live long enough to take care of her husband. Her husband was in advanced stages of a disease that left him disoriented, incapable of caring for himself and with a multitude of medical problems. It was a full time job to take care of him and she was determined to do it herself at home.

 

The problem was she was in poor health as well. Most of her problems were heart related. I visited her in the hospital on several occasions when she was in heart failure and she told me of her prayers to recover and take care of her husband. God answered her prayers.

 

About a month after my wife died this lady's husband went into the hospital. He was put in an ICU in the same hospital my wife had died in. I went up to the hospital to be with her and the family.

 

It was decided that they would take her husband off of life support and let him die peacefully. The family invited me in to the ICU with them and the life support devices were turned off. This dear woman looked at me and asked, "What do we do now?"

 

Just one month before I had been in that same hospital in that same situation. I knew what was most likely going to happen. God was not letting my sorrow and suffering go to waste. I was to use it to help that family.

 

I encouraged them to tell him good bye and that they would see him again. He was unconscious but you never know what they might hear or sense. And as that wife told her it was okay to go I watched the line on the monitor go flat. 

 

In 2 Corinthians Paul talks about how God is the "God of all comfort." And God comforts us not so we can hang on to that comfort selfishly but so that we can, in turn, comfort others. When God says, "All things work for good of those who love him," he is letting us know that even our sorrows will not be wasted.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read 2 Corinthians1:3-7

 

• Besides Paul calling him the "God of all comfort" what other comforting title does he give him?
• What is the comfort of God supposed to produce in us?
• Why is Paul's hope for the Corinthians firm?



Day 45

 

Joy Comes In The Morning

 

Weeping my remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

 

Psalm 30:5

 

 

When Ethan was about 6 months old Cathy began to have problems. She began to have severe headaches that turned out to be a side effect of one of the medications she was on. Her new heart was doing fine but she started having trouble with being immunosuppressed, again because of medication she was on. The medicines had to be taken though or her body would reject her heart.

 

She went into the hospital in late summer and was in most of the fall. On the transplant floor no children were allowed so she could not see Ethan. Once in a while they helped her go to the hospital lobby where I could bring Ethan in to see her. At Halloween I dressed Ethan up in a pumpkin costume and she was able to come down to the lobby and see him.

 

Around Thanksgiving her health improved enough for her to come home. At Christmas, though she was very weak, she took Ethan up to Missouri to her home town to show him off. Even then I sensed it was some sort of a "farewell tour." The girl that had left Missouri at 19 with incurable cancer had come to show how she, with God's help, had overcome cancer, lived to get married and had a child.

 

In early January she was back in the hospital. Every time she had been in the hospital before, even leading up to the heart transplant, I had always been confident of her recovery. She had always been such a courageous fighter but something had changed. She was tired. She had accomplished so much after being given a death sentence at age 19 and she had just seemed to have finally lost that special spark that drove her to conquer death.

 

Her condition declined. It was getting desperate and I began to feel her slipping away. In late February she went into a coma. After about a week she woke up. She spoke of a vision of heaven that she had but really couldn't talk about it because of the emotion involved. The next day was Ethan's first birthday and I told her I would take him to the livestock show in the morning and videotape him with the animals. In the afternoon I would bring the video tape and get a TV and a VCR in her hospital room so she could see her baby. She said to me, "Take care of our son." It was the last thing I would ever hear her say.

 

By the time I got to the hospital the next day she had gone back into a coma. She was in liver failure and was transferred to another hospital that had an ICU just for patients with that problem.

 

A CAT scan was done of her brain one day and everything was clear. Two days later another was done. The second scan showed what looked like a large tea stain on her brain. It was some sort of fungus I was told. It was irreversible. They asked me if the need should arise should they resuscitate her? I told then no - no more medication, just keep feeding her. Two days later I was called early in the morning and informed that all her brain activity had ceased in the night and that I needed to come and give them permission to turn off the machines. Her parents and I went to the hospital and said our goodbyes. They turned off the machines and her heart beat lasted for a few minutes more and then she was gone.

 

Anticipating her death was actually worse for me than her dying. God gives us grace when we need it. Cathy was 31 years old, we had been married for 7 years. She had been given a death sentence at age 19 and lived to give me the greatest gift (outside my salvation) I have ever received, my son. Her courage and love that led her to risk her life so that he might be born was unfathomable.

 

In a picture frame on my son's wall is her picture and a poem she wrote when facing death at age 20.

 

At death remember my life.

Remember not how soon I died

but how long I lived.

 

The quality of live is not in the number of days one lives

but in living those days to the fullest.

 

When you look back on my life

don't be sad ...

Be happy, I was happy.

 

Life is good. Life is worth living.

 

"Joy comes in the morning."

 

Cathy 1984

 

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read 1 Corinthians 15:50-58

 

• What metaphor does Paul use when he describes the change that happens at the resurrection?
• Who gives us victory over death?
• Therefore, in light of the promise of the resurrection, what should we do? 

 

 

Day 44

 

When They Don't Believe You

 

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff.

 

Luke 4:27-29

 

She kept telling them that she was having severe headaches and needing something for pain. They did not believe her. She did so well after the heart transplant that first year. She had got pregnant, carried a baby to term and done well for a few months after Ethan was born. Then the pain started.

 

She had gone to the hospital; they had examined her and could find nothing wrong. She kept insisting that she was in pain and that something must be wrong but she got nowhere with the doctors. I called a doctor and demanded to know why they were not doing anything for her pain. I was finally told that it was that they thought she was complaining just so she could get pain meds.

 

I was angry, very angry. They did not know Cathy like I did. She could deal with pain and not ask for pain meds unless it was needed. She had been through chemo therapy, limb salvage surgery and a heart transplant. She understood the difference between pain and discomfort.

 

As angry as I was I understood why they though she just wanted pain meds. She had been addicted to pain meds once before. It was no fault of her own. When you go through as much as she had been through for as long as she went through it you get put on a lot of medication. She had become addicted to a pain killer and we had to go through the steps to get her off. Now they thought she was just trying to get back on them. They were wrong. She had a child at home she desperately wanted to care for, the last thing she wanted was more drugs and more hospitalization.

 

It is so frustrating when people don't believe you or understand you. Maybe they have good reasons not to believe you or perhaps they evaluate the facts differently. Sometimes people don't believe because of their own shortcomings. It may help a little to understand why people don't understand you but it is still difficult to deal with.

 

The good news is that Jesus understands. Jesus had to deal with not being believed and understood. His own family didn't understand him at first. Jesus took years teaching his disciples and they never really understood some things until after the crucifixion and resurrection. The people of his home town of Nazareth did not believe to the point of that they drove him out of town and tried to throw him off of a cliff.

 

Now this misunderstood, not believed in Savior is in heaven at God's right hand. And when we pray he intercedes for us because he knows what it is like. He understands.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Luke 4:14-30

 

• How was Jesus received at first?
• What was it that made the people so mad?
• How did Jesus escape the crowd?

 

Read Hebrews 4:15-16

 

• Why can Jesus sympathize with us?
• Because Jesus does understand what should we do? 

Day 43

 

God Loves You and has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life

 

"Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife."

 

Proverbs 21:19

 

 

It was 1:00 a.m. and my pregnant wife woke me up and told me she was hungry. She was on steroids after the heart transplant, so being hungry was not unusual. What was unusual was her request for the food she wanted. She was craving chocolate French silk pie.

 

I told her it might be a while before I could make a chocolate French silk pie, since I didn't have the recipe. I was even contemplating singing MacArthur Park like Richard Harris and warbling out, "I don't think that I can take it because it took so long to bake it and I'll never have that recipe again. Oh no, oh no." For once I kept my mouth shut but still I was warned not to be a smart aleck and to get my clothes on and go to the store and buy a chocolate French silk pie from the frozen food section. It doesn't pay to get a pregnant woman on steroids angry, so I got dressed and headed for the store.

 

In Houston, Texas a store parking lot at 1 in the morning is often times not the safest place to be. I was cautious as I parked my car and headed for the store door. I had only taken a few steps when I saw 2 rather large young men headed my direction. I thought, "Oh great. No good deed goes unpunished."

 

I braced myself for the confrontation. I made a fist with my keys poking out between my fingers. I figured if it came to blows I would pop in one quick one then run like crazy. (Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, run like a cheetah).

 

I held my ground as they approached. They stopped right in front of me and one of them said, "Do you want to hear the good news?"

 

I thought, "What good news? Are you just going to rob me, not kill me?" That is what I thought, but what I said was, "What good news?"

 

The reply was, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life."

 

A wave of relief washed over me. I told them, "You have no idea how aware I am of that at this very moment."

 

I was at the store in the middle of the night because my pregnant wife had a craving and was on steroids and I didn't want to make her mad. She was good natured usually with just a bit of a temper but on steroids it could get rather unpleasant. She would get really mad and then really sad that she had not been able to control her emotions.  She hated being that way, to have little control over her anger. I tried to be understanding, knowing the cause, but it could get real old real quick.

 

I have heard some women say with seeming pride, "when Momma ain't happy; nobody is happy." Maybe the mean it innocently enough but I don't find it amusing. All of us, men and women, need to control our anger, not be controlled by it and certainly not make others miserable simply because we are miserable.

 

Solomon had enough wives that he was bound to have 1 or 2 that were angry women. Perhaps they were angry because there was so many wives. In his great wisdom he says he would rather live in a desert than with an ill tempered wife. I'm sure wives feel the same way about ill tempered husbands. Maybe that is why so many people live in Phoenix. Whether you are a man or a woman it isn't funny making other people miserable because you are an angry person.

 

A Special Note on the Medicinal Quality of MacArthur Park as sung by Richard Harris:

 

If you are having a bad day, battling depression and just need something to pick you up and brighten your day then listen to Richard Harris sing MacArthur Park. Your depression will melt away as he sings of how depressed he is because "someone left the cake out in the rain" and the "sweet green icing is flowing down." So take heart and rejoice because as bad as your live may be at least you are not Richard Harris singing the worst song ever recorded.

 

Physicians warning: Repeated listening to MacArthur Park  can lead to blurred vision and loss of cognitive skills.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Jeremiah 29:11-14

 

• What kind of plans did God have for Israel?
• What was Israel's response supposed to be when God carried out his plan?
• When we seek God with all our hearts what happens?