Day 40

 

Hope

 

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

 

Romans 15:4

 

 

The first big episode in Cathy's declining health happened when we were on vacation. We had gone with another couple to Washington state and into British Columbia. Cathy had become real short of breath on some uphill hikes, so much so that I had to give her a piggy-back ride a few times. After our trip to Washington she had gone to visit her folks in Missouri and when she got back to Houston she was in full blown congestive heart failure.

 

I had to carry her upstairs to our bedroom that day. She spent about a week in the hospital on that occasion and it happened again and again with the interval of hospital stays becoming more frequent. On one occasion she had to spend about a month in the CCU with a blood clot near her heart. I was told more than once that I should prepare for the worse but I always believed she would recover. She was just in her twenties, I had to believe their was hope.

 

The situation finally became so desperate that we were advised that she needed to sign up for a heart transplant. She met all he requirements for a transplant and she was placed on the list. I remember a bleak Thanksgiving when we shared with my family the need for the heart transplant. Though she was not doing well at all we flew up to Missouri to be with her family for Christmas. Normally when you are on the transplant list you are supposed to stay close to home but the doctors gave the okay for  the trip thinking she wouldn't live long enough to receive a heart. When it came time to leave St. Louis it was an emotional time. She was not sure she would live to ever see her parents again. I held her as she cried all during the flight home. It was about as bad as it could get but somehow I still believed she would make it through.

 

After Christmas she was confined to her bed. We converted a floor lamp into an IV pole and since she was an RN and had a central line for IVs she instructed me on how to hang the meds she was on 24 hours a day. It was a death watch. Would she live long enough  for a heart to become available or would she die first? I could only pray and hope.

 

One morning in January the phone rang. A heart was on its way from Colorado. We had about an hour to make some phone calls and get our stuff together and make it to the hospital. By the time surgery started the waiting room was full with my family and hers plus people from churches where I had served. Churches across the country were praying for her. Surgery lasted about 6 hours. I remember being nervous but confident. My hope, faith and prayers were rewarded. The transplant was a success and Cathy had a quick recovery.

 

I was and always will be grateful for the family of the young woman in Colorado. By her being on the organ donor list and with her family's consent my family received the precious gift of life. I do not know their names but I am so thankful.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Romans 15:1-6

 

• What is one of the purposes of Scripture?
• Who gives the endurance to stand our trials?
• As we join others who have endured what are we to do?

 

Day 39

 

A Filipino Christmas

 

On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and myrrh.

 

Matthew 2:11

 

 

It was not a great start to the Christmas season. My wife had just been in the hospital for a lengthy stay. It was congestive heart failure. She was out of danger for a time but her condition would only get worse. It wasn't exactly the ingredients for a joyful Christmas.

 

We had not put up a tree or decorated or made Christmas cookies; we were in survival mode. I had done some Christmas shopping but it just didn't seem much like Christmas. One night the doorbell rang and when I answered the door there was some Filipino kids from my youth group there with their parents. Another car full of Filipinos pulled up and then another. Soon our house was full of kids and their parents. They did not come empty handed.

 

A tree was brought in and set up. They brought icicles and ornaments and decorated the tree. They had cookies and other goodies. Most of all they brought Christmas.

 

Giving at Christmas time is a tradition grounded in the Christmas story. "God so loved the world that he gave..." The wise men came and they gave. We give gifts to our friends and loved ones. We can also give to God by giving to Christmas offerings for missions.

 

I will never forget how my Filipino friends brought us the gift of Christmas joy. Every year on our tree we hang one of those ornaments they brought alongside other ornaments with their own Christmas story. It is a reminder that friends are precious, God is good and Christmas is a time to give.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Isaiah 9:6-7

 

• To whom is the child given?
• What kind of needs does this gift meet?
• How long will this gift last?



Day 38 The Random Driven Life

 

Day 38

 

Hospital Gowns and Victoria's Secret

 

I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety.

 

1 Timothy 2:9

 

 

One of the things I learned from my wife's many hospital stays was that modesty and hospitals do not go together. When we were just dating she got sick and had to go to the hospital. The doctor came into the little ER room and told her to take of her blouse so I made a hasty exit. Later I asked her if that was kind of creepy and she told me it had been at first but after several rounds of chemo she had gotten over it. I never did. I think if I went into the hospital as a patient I would have to wear a paper bag over my head so I couldn't see the people seeing me.

 

One time she had been in the hospital for a couple of months and I asked her if there was something I could get her. She said, "Yes, I need a new pair of pajamas." I could understand that because she hated hospital gowns. She was a nurse and understood the need for them but as a patient she didn't like them. It's no wonder, they are a little breezy on the backside. I have often wondered if it was Hugh Hefner that designed hospital gowns.

 

So, I accepted my assignment to purchase my wife a new pair of pajamas. The only problem was her  favorite pajamas came from a Victoria's Secret store. Now they were nice, modest, regular pajamas but they were probably the only thing in the store that was modest. Some comedian once said that he knew what Victoria's secret was: that she was a slut. I might agree with that except that it is not a very well kept secret.

 

Not wanting to venture into the Victoria's Secret store on my own, I asked my friend Jack to go with me. We went to the mall, summoned up our courage and stepped into the store. We frantically looked around for the pajamas hoping no one we knew would walk by the store and see us. A saleslady asked us if we needed any help. I toyed with the idea of asking her if she had an outfit that would fit Jack, just to embarrass the stew out of him, but I was already too embarrassed to pull that stunt. So I just asked where the pajamas were and of course they were in the back behind all the lingerie. I bought several pair in different colors because I didn't want to go into the store again.

 

My ordeal was not over though. By making the purchase I got on the Victoria's Secret mailing list and started receiving their catalogues. The catalogues are not exactly appropriate reading material for ministers unless perhaps you are a nun. And somehow I don't think nuns wear things from there.

 

The Bible tells us, "I want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety." (1 Timothy 2:9)  It works for men too. It is not easy being modest in a hospital gown. And it is sure not easy being modest in what you get at Victoria's Secret. It is best to save that stuff for private.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read 1 Samuel 16:1-13

 

• What task did God send Samuel on?
• Why did Samuel think Eliab was the one God wanted?
• Some  things about our outward appearance may be important (like modesty), but what is God looking for the most?

 

  

 



 

Day 37

 

Adoption

 

Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

 

Romans 8:23

 

 

When Cathy and I were married we both knew that her having children was probably out of the question. First of all her heart was damaged from chemo therapy and having a baby would be too stressful for it. Secondly we were not even sure she could have children. The chemo had not only damaged her heart but her kidneys as well and for all we knew her reproductive organs.

 

We both loved kids so we planned to adopt. We were young and naïve and did not have a clue about the difficulty and the cost of adoption. After we had been married a few years we began to look into adoption and were shocked at what we learned.

 

We learned that we had several things going against us. One was her health. We were not sure an adoption agency would think she was healthy enough to raise a child. A second problem was my age. I was in my mid thirties by then and the window of opportunity for most adoption agencies, at that time,  was forty. That meant we had to find one that would take us as quickly as possible.

 

But the biggest hurdle for us was the money. Back then it was going to cost around $10,000. That was approximately $10,000 more than we had. I was a youth minister and that was close to half of what I made in a year. As a nurse she would have made more money than I did but she was sick so often and unable to work that she didn't make that much either.

 

Despite all that I had faith it would work out. We picked an adoption agency, did all the paperwork and had a home visit. I was at youth camp with my youth group when I got a call from Cathy telling me I had to be home the next day because the adoption agency was coming to tell us if we had been accepted or not. I drove home the next day and my faith was rewarded. We were in.

 

There was still the issue about the money though. Where would it come from? I kept reassuring Cathy that we wouldn't have made it as far as we had if God wasn't going to provide the money.

 

My Dad's mom had to be put in a nursing home about that time. My father had to start managing her financial affairs. He was an only child and my grandmother had a brother and a sister who had no children that she inherited from so my father was in line to inherit from 3 estates. As part of managing the estates before he inherited my father had to reduce the estate to keep from paying inheritance tax. There was a law that said that for tax purposes that you could give a certain amount of money away each year to reduce the inheritance liability. Do you want to guess what the amount you could give away to each person was back then? That's right, $10,000.

 

God had demonstrated to us that he was in control and could accomplish what he wanted to accomplish. What we didn't know at the time was that the adoption agency would have to freeze the adoption process because there were not enough babies being put up for adoption. We also didn't know that Cathy's health would deteriorate so much that survival was the main issue, not adoption. And most of all we did not know that God had something even more spectacular in mind.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Romans 8:14-17

 

• What does the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life indicate?
• What does being God's children make us?
• What do we and what will we share with Christ?

Day 36

 

It Is Not Your Fault

 

His disciples asked him, "Rabbi who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

 

John 9:2

 

 

I was in a big hospital room that had 4 beds, though only 3 were occupied. It was a cancer hospital and it was the floor that had teenagers as patients. Some of the kids were there for weeks at a time and their parents might live out of town or for some other reason not be able to be there with their child all the time. My wife, who had been a patient on that floor, was now a nurse on that floor and had asked me to come to the hospital to spend some time with a boy, barely in his teens, who was lonely.

 

So, I was there in the room playing video games with the boy when a group came in to visit another boy in the room. As the boy was explaining to me how to get free lives on Mario Brothers there was a much different conversation going on across the room.

 

The other boy was having surgery the next day. He was telling his visitors there was a good possibility he would lose his leg. That would have been bad enough for a young boy to face but what these people told him could only make it worse.

 

"If you have enough faith," they told him, "you will be well."

 

I don't care what your theology is, how can you say that to a kid? He was being told that the success of his surgery was up to him. If he didn't beat cancer it was now his fault. I was sick and I was furious.

 

What I wanted to do was walk over there and grab one of them by the ankles and dangle them out the 6th story window and say, "If you have enough faith the fall won't  kill ya."

 

I wanted to but I didn't. I know they meant well and they were visiting folks in the hospital and not many people do that. Still, any good intentions they had paled in comparison  to the harmful thing they had said.

 

What they had told the boy was nothing new; people were saying that sort of thing in Bible times. The Jews in New Testament days though if you were sick it was because you had sinned. Sometimes that is true. If you are an alcoholic and your liver goes skunky then there is a good chance it is your fault. But for most of the time if you are sick it is not your fault.

 

Jesus was asked by his disciples why a man was born blind. They wanted to know if it was some sin the blind man had committed or perhaps something his parents had done. The answer, Jesus told them, was that neither one of them was to blame. The man's blindness was an opportunity  for God's power to be displayed as Jesus healed the  man.

 

Sickness and tragedies can happen to anyone, the good, the bad, the ugly, the faithless and the faithful. The majority of the time it is not your fault and you are not being punished. It is not God's fault either. Sin and wickedness entered the world through mankind's actions not God's design. God does allow things to happen and what he wants to do is use your difficulty to work something good in your life.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read John 9:1-27

• Who did the former blind man first tell about how he was cured?
• What were the former blind man's parents afraid of?
• What was the "one thing" the cured blind man knew?
• What offer did the cured blind man make to the Pharisees?   

 

Day 35

 

The Shopping Trip

 

Again the LORD called, "Samuel!" And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me?"  "My son," Eli said, "I did not call; go back and lie down."

 

1 Samuel 3:6

 

Cathy and I had just been married a short while when we went on a shopping trip to the mall. The purpose of the trip was to buy her a new dress. Having sold shoes in shopping malls, working my way through school, a trip to the mall was not the onerous task for me that it is for a lot of men. I actually enjoyed shopping at the mall. I was about to learn that shopping at the mall once you are married is totally different.

 

We went to store after store and Cathy tried on dresses. There were several I thought were fine and I told her so. For some reason I couldn't fathom we kept looking. I would see another that looked okay and would say something like, "That one is pretty good. I like that." But the search continued.

We finally had been to just about every store in the mall and a dress had not been purchased and I did not understand why. Then I saw another store we had not tried. I said, "We haven't tried that store!"

 

Cathy's reply to me was, "Do you think I am fat?"

 

The shopping trip ended and we went home with out a purchase. Later on when I summed up enough courage to ask what had happened I was informed the store was a Lane Bryant store and that it was a store for plus sized women. I had no idea that was the case.

 

Once the dust settled on that I asked how come she hadn't picked out a dress. I was informed that was my fault too. She was not looking for me to say, "That one is nice" or "That looks okay." What she wanted to hear was, "Stop right here! We have got to get that dress. Alert the media! Where is my camera? We have got to get that dress!"

 

Okay, maybe she didn't want me to be that dramatic but to be fair she could have waited a long, long time before I gave her the "Wow!" answer she was looking for. It wasn't that I didn't think my wife was pretty it's just that like a lot of men my "wows" were reserved for the NFL or the NBA.

 

It was a communication problem. I was not communicating with her how I felt about her. She was not communicating with me what she needed from me. She was hoping I would figure it out on my own but I confess that it probably never would have happened. While I am confessing I have to admit that even though I am aware of that sort of thing now it still often times zips by me without my noticing.

 

In one of my favorite stories in the Bible, God is calling Samuel and Samuel thinks that it is Eli talking. Eli has enough sense to figure out it is God talking to Samuel. Once Samuel understands that God is speaking to him he listens to what God has to say. From then on, through out 1 Samuel, we see Samuel and God communicating.

 

I believe God still speaks to us. Like young Samuel we miss what he is saying sometimes. To give us help God has a lot of it written down for us; it is called the Bible. The Holy Spirit can help us understand what God is saying to us inside and outside of his word. And we know that God will never tell us something that contradicts his word.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read 1 Samuel 3:1-21

 

• When Samuel came to understand it was God speaking to him what did he say to God?
• As he grew up how much attention did Samuel pay to God's words?
• How did God continue to reveal himself to Samuel?



 

Day 34

The Taming of The Tongue

 

"But no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison."

 

James 3:8

 

 

In the novel Love Story, the author has one of his main characters say, "Love means never having to say you are sorry." Eric Segal should apologize for writing something so stupid. I have found (as most sane people have) that love means that you have to say your sorry on numerous occasions.

 

I know because I was apologizing while still on my honeymoon. Apparently, "You look good in the dark" does not mean the same thing as, "You look lovely this evening." And apparently it is not a good thing to say on your wedding night. And yes, I really said, "You look good in the dark." Technically and grammatically looking good in the dark and looking lovely this evening mean about the same thing but somehow they don't have the same emotional impact.

 

So, I apologized. It was the first of many apologies. I am capable of saying clever, cruel and just plain stupid things. I learned, when I was in Jr. High and the smallest kid in the school, that my mouth was my best defensive weapon. It was also, often times, the reason I needed to defend myself.

 

I had not intended to offend my wife of a few hours but I had. Words can cut and infect a heart and poison relationships. Because our words can do so much damage we must be careful how we use them. James says, "No man can tame the tongue." That is why we need supernatural help. We need to rely on the Holy Spirit that dwells in us to help us do the things we cannot.

 

One other thing: "You asphyxiate me" and "you take my breath away" do not count as the same thing either.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read James 3:1-12

 

• What objects does James compare the tongue to?
• Though the tongue is a "restless evil" can it be used to do good?
• Where do the words our tongues speak flow from?