So I’m a bit lighter than I’ve been…more on that later.
To catch everyone up- Kelly and I got married back in 1996. 3 weeks before the big day, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and she had her thyroid removed. Over the years the tests came back good, we grew in our marriage. Life was good.
All was good in phattyland until last year, when we found out that the cancer had come back. Many of you, I am so thankful, were very much there for us, praying, encouraging, loving as our Christian brothers and sisters should. Surgery was in the spring, radiation was in the summer and I almost lost my job on a revolving basis for what seemed to be an eternity. 2004 sucked hard.
Toward the end of it all, the tests and signs were all starting to point to the cancer being gone and the possibility of life getting back to normal- whatever that means with 2 active kids that are 18 months apart. Life is always crazy now a days.
Late December or early January, it all started to crash again. It wasn’t gone. February we got the news that the cancer was not gone.
Suckage again.
Then the soul searching started. We thought that the first time we searched, and we did. We thought that the second time, 8 years later we searched, and we did. This time it was different though. The doctors are pretty hopeless at this point. Not that the cancer is terminal and that I was going to be a widower before 30 with 2 very young children, they didn’t though I’ve had the fleeting thought. The hopelessness is that we may never be able to totally overcome the cancer; Kelly may have to have surgeries and radiation on a semi-regular basis for the rest of her life they told us.
That doesn’t line up with God’s message. Hope, Joy, Salvation, Healing…so we made a decision. We say that we trust God for this and that. In the past we even prayed when we heard the cancer word. We never sat at His feet and allowed Him to direct us, comfort us, hold us and heal us.
I was in Houston on a business trip when Kelly got the results back in February. I drove to the airport, told God that I was pissed off that we had to go back in and fight this. Told Him I was tired and asked Him to take care of it. I took the next day off from work so we could spend time in prayer, be together and try to make sense of it all.
The kids actually took a nap, we got to spend great time in prayer. We took a stand, basically that this wasn’t our fight, that God is our salvation, our healer, our source. And that we were going to trust him to direct us. It was funny, a couple of weeks earlier, a student in our youth group asked us in Sunday school “what do you do when you know God can do something but don’t know if He will?” my response was “I struggle with this, my suggestion is that you expect God to do what you know He can do, and ask Him to change your heart if He isn’t going to” So there we were. We knew that God could touch Kelly right then and there and take any and all cancer, so we asked. We had decided that we went to the Doctors, did their thing twice, we were thankful for all that modern medicine has to offer but we also know that we needed to be thankful for all that God had to offer even more, and we need to trust Him more than anything. We prayed, “Lord Heal Kelly miraculously or change our hearts and lead us to how you are going to heal her.”
We got real bold then. We asked that he do it, and that he provide a sign letting us know. Since we were standing there with this boldness, we asked for a specific sign- last year, as a result of Kelly’s surgery, she had lost all feeling in the left side of her neck and shoulder. We asked that God restore feeling to the neck. We prayed some more. Then we took a nap.
I woke up to Kelly proclaiming “I can feel on my neck!” it wasn’t a 100% but it was feeling. We took this as a sign from our heavenly father.
The funny thing is that even with everything the bible says; even with the sign- it can still be difficult. Doubt is an enemy that comes scouting for the army of fear often.
One morning Rosalyn was in our room when I was getting ready for work. She had heard Kelly and I talking about it all, she remembered what happened last year and told Kelly “I don’t want the doctors to cut your neck”. Kelly responded, “they won’t have to if God heals me”. The next words I heard from my daughter will always be with me, they are genuine, true, unadulterated faith. She put her little hand on Kelly’s leg, closed her eyes and declared “No more cutting mommy’s neck, AMEN!!”
The doctors wanted to run more tests. They always do. So they did. An interesting thing happened that day, as Kelly parked the car at the hospital, she felt burning on the right side of her neck.
The test results came back, and we went to talk to the surgeon who performed last years operation. The two scans showed pretty much the same thing. The first showed 7 areas, 5 on the left, 2 on the right. The second showed about 5 on the left. “Woohoo!! That burning must have been God touching Kelly and taking the tumors from the right side.” we thought. Then the depressing talk about the fact that this will probably be an ongoing thing, the cancer will come back and they will continue to cut it out.
From our time in prayer, and the sign that God gave us we had great faith, so much that Kelly was telling anyone in her family who doesn’t believe in God about it. Her reasoning was, if God is going to heal me, I want to let people know before I have all the results backing it up, there isn’t any faith there. So we had wondered and discussed how we would handle our Dr., Especially if he wanted to recommend surgery. At that meeting he recommended the surgery and we told him that we were just needing time. That we had asked God to take it all and we just basically needed time to process everything. He was amazingly receptive and told us he saw no need to rush, that we could come back in a few months, retest and reassess and go from there.
In all this time, God was silent. He showed up, responded to us but was silent. I’m always amazed to hear details about other people’s relationship with the King of Kings. Since Kelly is my wife, I get to see on a regular basis the fruit of that relationship and get to hear the intimate details in our discussion about God. One thing that God does with my wife, that I think is really cool is that he will give Kelly a scripture verse or reference that is very appropriate for the situation at hand. But when you get use to it, and it doesn’t happen for a while, it can become uncomfortable. That happened. Kelly was so desperate for God to talk to her like he has done for almost her entire life. Then it broke.
Our church is a wonderful place. Tuesday nights is corporate prayer, which is a misnomer since we have a couple thousand in attendance weekly at the church but probably less than 20 that show up for corporate prayer. None the less it is powerful, God shows up and prayers are answered. We decided that Kelly was sick and we needed to go before the elders to have her head anointed and prayed for. It is in scripture, and I am learning that things are in the bible for a reason, I may not know why. My job is just to be obedient. So we went.
Praise and warship was great, intimate. A single leader with an acoustic guitar singing songs that God had given him probably 30 years ago. It was in the middle of one of those songs, titled Emmanuel, that he paused, asked us to come forward and asked for everyone else to pray. Dr. Fletcher, an amazing man of God, the pastor who heads up the prayer ministry for our church anointed Kelly and prayed while everyone else stood around praying. Then he was done, there was more prayer and a pause, then it was back to the normal service program. I could tell that God was there, He always is, but this was different. There were no fireworks, just worship and prayer but there was something different.
As we left, on the way to pickup our children from the babysitters (ironically the babysitters are the daughters of the worship leader for the prayer meeting, not that you care but I’m the writer and I decide what I write) we talked. Kelly asked who had prayed for her after Dr. Fletcher had finished, my response was, “everyone”. She came back with “no, who was invading my personal space, they came up, put their hands on the side of my face/neck and prayed, standing a little too close for comfort??” I didn’t see anyone. And I would notice if someone did that to my wife. The words to the song we were singing before and after we went up for prayer were simply:
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Your presence is life
Your presence is life
Your presence is life to me!
It truly is, and I believe that Emmanuel, God with us, was with us then and He was that person who stood too close to my wife, His presence is life. We talked about it more and Kelly said “I had my eyes closed when doc Fletcher was praying for me, and then that person came up almost immediately after. I was kind of bothered and thought, I’m going to see who this is. So I opened my eyes but two huge tears formed in the center of each eye, blinding me so I closed my eyes satisfied that I was here to get prayed for, and I was getting prayed for. All I know is that it was a guy and He was taller than me”
That is not all, when we were finished with our time of prayer and up front, after the worship there was a quiet time. Kelly told me that she heard God speak to her, He said “Hi Kelly, I’m going to heal you because I love you”, her response was “where have you been?” he responded “I’ve been testing you. If I heal you, will you fulfill my purpose in your life?”
I am constantly amazed at how I, someone who made it a point to be an enemy of God for so long, can stand in his presence and request things without getting smited. Much less get my prayers answered.
This has been a difficult time, but over the years we have learned that there is no point in wallowing in the bad times, life is going to happen and we need to make the most of it. So we have also sought God in gaining wisdom. Wisdom on how we can take better care of these tents he has given us to travel our earthly lives in, wisdom on how to better serve him. Wisdom on how to know His will for our lives more. In the same ways he has shown up and shared wisdom with us.
Without going into too much detail, we overhauled our diet. For 2 reasons initially, first we wanted to spend time in prayer and fasting but needed to continue being productive members of society, so drinking water for 40 days wasn’t going to do it, but we could restrict what we ate for a period of time and fast that way. Second, as your basic Americans, we eat crap. The stuff that 95% of us eat on a regular basis is either trying to kill us, or is working against the processes God has designed in us to keep us healthy and allowing other things to kill us. Initially we became vegans sort of that also ate yogurt and sometime fish. We focused on whole grains, legumes, nuts, fruits and vegetables. Gone (forever) is table sugar. We got creative, putting my culinary skills and love to the test and ate like kings for 20 days. We got a juicer. We ate food we normally wouldn’t have thought to. At the end of the 20 days I was 20 pounds lighter.
I’d love to go into all the details of what we have learned about food, and the changes we have made but that isn’t the point of this, though at a later date there are things I want to share.
God has been so real, He has given us so much hope and I believe that about 2000 years ago, Jesus hung on a cross and died, then rose again 3 days later. Shortly after that He ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father. When he did that, He healed my wife. He has been revealing that healing to us over the last few months to us and I believe that in May, when we go for more tests, the results will back it all up. To God be the glory, forever and ever, amen!
On a less important note, I mentioned my job at the beginning of this, it has been rough. As of May 9th I will be working in a new position for my current company. In this new position, I think I will be better aligned to match my skills and desires and also I will no longer report to my current boss whom I have had problems with and have in the past felt victim of their attack. God is awesome, he delivered me through trials and is now rewarding me for sticking with it when it was really rough.
Kelly and I always appreciate your prayers. We also hope that you would know God, His power, healing and grace not only through stories like this but through your everyday walk with Him.
To catch everyone up- Kelly and I got married back in 1996. 3 weeks before the big day, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and she had her thyroid removed. Over the years the tests came back good, we grew in our marriage. Life was good.
All was good in phattyland until last year, when we found out that the cancer had come back. Many of you, I am so thankful, were very much there for us, praying, encouraging, loving as our Christian brothers and sisters should. Surgery was in the spring, radiation was in the summer and I almost lost my job on a revolving basis for what seemed to be an eternity. 2004 sucked hard.
Toward the end of it all, the tests and signs were all starting to point to the cancer being gone and the possibility of life getting back to normal- whatever that means with 2 active kids that are 18 months apart. Life is always crazy now a days.
Late December or early January, it all started to crash again. It wasn’t gone. February we got the news that the cancer was not gone.
Suckage again.
Then the soul searching started. We thought that the first time we searched, and we did. We thought that the second time, 8 years later we searched, and we did. This time it was different though. The doctors are pretty hopeless at this point. Not that the cancer is terminal and that I was going to be a widower before 30 with 2 very young children, they didn’t though I’ve had the fleeting thought. The hopelessness is that we may never be able to totally overcome the cancer; Kelly may have to have surgeries and radiation on a semi-regular basis for the rest of her life they told us.
That doesn’t line up with God’s message. Hope, Joy, Salvation, Healing…so we made a decision. We say that we trust God for this and that. In the past we even prayed when we heard the cancer word. We never sat at His feet and allowed Him to direct us, comfort us, hold us and heal us.
I was in Houston on a business trip when Kelly got the results back in February. I drove to the airport, told God that I was pissed off that we had to go back in and fight this. Told Him I was tired and asked Him to take care of it. I took the next day off from work so we could spend time in prayer, be together and try to make sense of it all.
The kids actually took a nap, we got to spend great time in prayer. We took a stand, basically that this wasn’t our fight, that God is our salvation, our healer, our source. And that we were going to trust him to direct us. It was funny, a couple of weeks earlier, a student in our youth group asked us in Sunday school “what do you do when you know God can do something but don’t know if He will?” my response was “I struggle with this, my suggestion is that you expect God to do what you know He can do, and ask Him to change your heart if He isn’t going to” So there we were. We knew that God could touch Kelly right then and there and take any and all cancer, so we asked. We had decided that we went to the Doctors, did their thing twice, we were thankful for all that modern medicine has to offer but we also know that we needed to be thankful for all that God had to offer even more, and we need to trust Him more than anything. We prayed, “Lord Heal Kelly miraculously or change our hearts and lead us to how you are going to heal her.”
We got real bold then. We asked that he do it, and that he provide a sign letting us know. Since we were standing there with this boldness, we asked for a specific sign- last year, as a result of Kelly’s surgery, she had lost all feeling in the left side of her neck and shoulder. We asked that God restore feeling to the neck. We prayed some more. Then we took a nap.
I woke up to Kelly proclaiming “I can feel on my neck!” it wasn’t a 100% but it was feeling. We took this as a sign from our heavenly father.
The funny thing is that even with everything the bible says; even with the sign- it can still be difficult. Doubt is an enemy that comes scouting for the army of fear often.
One morning Rosalyn was in our room when I was getting ready for work. She had heard Kelly and I talking about it all, she remembered what happened last year and told Kelly “I don’t want the doctors to cut your neck”. Kelly responded, “they won’t have to if God heals me”. The next words I heard from my daughter will always be with me, they are genuine, true, unadulterated faith. She put her little hand on Kelly’s leg, closed her eyes and declared “No more cutting mommy’s neck, AMEN!!”
The doctors wanted to run more tests. They always do. So they did. An interesting thing happened that day, as Kelly parked the car at the hospital, she felt burning on the right side of her neck.
The test results came back, and we went to talk to the surgeon who performed last years operation. The two scans showed pretty much the same thing. The first showed 7 areas, 5 on the left, 2 on the right. The second showed about 5 on the left. “Woohoo!! That burning must have been God touching Kelly and taking the tumors from the right side.” we thought. Then the depressing talk about the fact that this will probably be an ongoing thing, the cancer will come back and they will continue to cut it out.
From our time in prayer, and the sign that God gave us we had great faith, so much that Kelly was telling anyone in her family who doesn’t believe in God about it. Her reasoning was, if God is going to heal me, I want to let people know before I have all the results backing it up, there isn’t any faith there. So we had wondered and discussed how we would handle our Dr., Especially if he wanted to recommend surgery. At that meeting he recommended the surgery and we told him that we were just needing time. That we had asked God to take it all and we just basically needed time to process everything. He was amazingly receptive and told us he saw no need to rush, that we could come back in a few months, retest and reassess and go from there.
In all this time, God was silent. He showed up, responded to us but was silent. I’m always amazed to hear details about other people’s relationship with the King of Kings. Since Kelly is my wife, I get to see on a regular basis the fruit of that relationship and get to hear the intimate details in our discussion about God. One thing that God does with my wife, that I think is really cool is that he will give Kelly a scripture verse or reference that is very appropriate for the situation at hand. But when you get use to it, and it doesn’t happen for a while, it can become uncomfortable. That happened. Kelly was so desperate for God to talk to her like he has done for almost her entire life. Then it broke.
Our church is a wonderful place. Tuesday nights is corporate prayer, which is a misnomer since we have a couple thousand in attendance weekly at the church but probably less than 20 that show up for corporate prayer. None the less it is powerful, God shows up and prayers are answered. We decided that Kelly was sick and we needed to go before the elders to have her head anointed and prayed for. It is in scripture, and I am learning that things are in the bible for a reason, I may not know why. My job is just to be obedient. So we went.
Praise and warship was great, intimate. A single leader with an acoustic guitar singing songs that God had given him probably 30 years ago. It was in the middle of one of those songs, titled Emmanuel, that he paused, asked us to come forward and asked for everyone else to pray. Dr. Fletcher, an amazing man of God, the pastor who heads up the prayer ministry for our church anointed Kelly and prayed while everyone else stood around praying. Then he was done, there was more prayer and a pause, then it was back to the normal service program. I could tell that God was there, He always is, but this was different. There were no fireworks, just worship and prayer but there was something different.
As we left, on the way to pickup our children from the babysitters (ironically the babysitters are the daughters of the worship leader for the prayer meeting, not that you care but I’m the writer and I decide what I write) we talked. Kelly asked who had prayed for her after Dr. Fletcher had finished, my response was, “everyone”. She came back with “no, who was invading my personal space, they came up, put their hands on the side of my face/neck and prayed, standing a little too close for comfort??” I didn’t see anyone. And I would notice if someone did that to my wife. The words to the song we were singing before and after we went up for prayer were simply:
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Your presence is life
Your presence is life
Your presence is life to me!
It truly is, and I believe that Emmanuel, God with us, was with us then and He was that person who stood too close to my wife, His presence is life. We talked about it more and Kelly said “I had my eyes closed when doc Fletcher was praying for me, and then that person came up almost immediately after. I was kind of bothered and thought, I’m going to see who this is. So I opened my eyes but two huge tears formed in the center of each eye, blinding me so I closed my eyes satisfied that I was here to get prayed for, and I was getting prayed for. All I know is that it was a guy and He was taller than me”
That is not all, when we were finished with our time of prayer and up front, after the worship there was a quiet time. Kelly told me that she heard God speak to her, He said “Hi Kelly, I’m going to heal you because I love you”, her response was “where have you been?” he responded “I’ve been testing you. If I heal you, will you fulfill my purpose in your life?”
I am constantly amazed at how I, someone who made it a point to be an enemy of God for so long, can stand in his presence and request things without getting smited. Much less get my prayers answered.
This has been a difficult time, but over the years we have learned that there is no point in wallowing in the bad times, life is going to happen and we need to make the most of it. So we have also sought God in gaining wisdom. Wisdom on how we can take better care of these tents he has given us to travel our earthly lives in, wisdom on how to better serve him. Wisdom on how to know His will for our lives more. In the same ways he has shown up and shared wisdom with us.
Without going into too much detail, we overhauled our diet. For 2 reasons initially, first we wanted to spend time in prayer and fasting but needed to continue being productive members of society, so drinking water for 40 days wasn’t going to do it, but we could restrict what we ate for a period of time and fast that way. Second, as your basic Americans, we eat crap. The stuff that 95% of us eat on a regular basis is either trying to kill us, or is working against the processes God has designed in us to keep us healthy and allowing other things to kill us. Initially we became vegans sort of that also ate yogurt and sometime fish. We focused on whole grains, legumes, nuts, fruits and vegetables. Gone (forever) is table sugar. We got creative, putting my culinary skills and love to the test and ate like kings for 20 days. We got a juicer. We ate food we normally wouldn’t have thought to. At the end of the 20 days I was 20 pounds lighter.
I’d love to go into all the details of what we have learned about food, and the changes we have made but that isn’t the point of this, though at a later date there are things I want to share.
God has been so real, He has given us so much hope and I believe that about 2000 years ago, Jesus hung on a cross and died, then rose again 3 days later. Shortly after that He ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father. When he did that, He healed my wife. He has been revealing that healing to us over the last few months to us and I believe that in May, when we go for more tests, the results will back it all up. To God be the glory, forever and ever, amen!
On a less important note, I mentioned my job at the beginning of this, it has been rough. As of May 9th I will be working in a new position for my current company. In this new position, I think I will be better aligned to match my skills and desires and also I will no longer report to my current boss whom I have had problems with and have in the past felt victim of their attack. God is awesome, he delivered me through trials and is now rewarding me for sticking with it when it was really rough.
Kelly and I always appreciate your prayers. We also hope that you would know God, His power, healing and grace not only through stories like this but through your everyday walk with Him.
7 comments:
thank you so much for the update Chris. I've been praying for Kelly and I'm truly excited to hear how God is healing her. "No more cutting! Amen! " so beautiful. I just wanted to let you know how much it ministered to me reading this (I'm having a hard time typing because of the tears). my father has been ill for 2 years now and the doctors don't know what's wrong with him. his health has deteriorated and I've had to take over at his insurance office because he gets so weak and fatigued. we have definitely taken a stand in our faith after the last round of tests - the doctors have no answers and their best guess is MS. all I can tell people is that God knows whats wrong with Him and He has the ability to completely heal him. but discouragement creeps in and when something goes on for so long, weariness can hit you hard. your testimony encouraged me so much & I kno God is honored by your faith and your witness! you and Kelly are still in my prayers-- Brooke Wesson
hey chris, long time - no see. i am very much a "lord i believe, help my unbelief" kind of guy when it comes to healing stuff. i am very grateful that our LORD is so merciful with us. I pray that he would continually provide the comfort and healing that you both need in this time!
let's get together soon, shannon/shiitake.
"When he did that, He healed my wife."
That says it all. I love you, man.
proclaiming God's truth is a wonderful fulfillment of the mandate of Christ. Thank you.
thank God.
Wow Chris, Thanks for sharing. You guys are always in my prayers.
As Tim said, "Thank God."
dude!! stumbled onto your blog by accident (thx to jar for links on his blog), but oh so glad i did!! been wondering how you guys are doing, and throwing up prayers now and then for you as well.
just wanted you to know that you're still being prayed for.
drop a line- say hi- and have an awesome one!
g'night-
drew
Chris, I'm so glad to hear how God is working in your lives. As I've been realizing more and more lately, even when we doubt or have fears, God is always faithful even when we don't understand what the heck He's doing.
You and the family are still in my prayers!
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