RESTORING THE YEARS THE LOCUST HAVE EATEN

Thirty-eight years ago yesterday, I gave birth to my daughter Amy.  When we were first married, at the age of 23, neither Jim nor I thought we wanted children.  But by the time we had been married seven years, I had changed my mind.  It was a long time before I was able to get pregnant, but then came that glorious day when I was.  It was an awesome pregnancy and I was so excited at the prospect of being a mom.
 

I remember the night after Amy’s birth, sitting on my hospital bed, staring into the eyes of this little blond, fuzzy headed baby, my heart filling with gratitude for God’s goodness to me.  Later at home, when I was rocking her to sleep or feeding her, the joy of this great gift from God just could not be contained.

Amy was a delightful baby and an easy child to raise.  However, I know she would agree with me that her teen years were very hard on our family.  I’ve come to appreciate her “marching to the beat of a different drummer” personality now, but back then, I had no idea how to parent her.  

She loved to take risks.  Even at the tender age of two or so, she’d fearlessly climb to the top of the highest monkey bars, or stairs, without a sense of the danger.  As an adult, her risk taking has served her well, giving her the courage and determination to apply for a job she was sure she could do, though she didn’t have the required degree to qualify.  And she GOT the job too!  And most recently she moved across country, all on her own, to settle in Phoenix.

In addition to that quality, she is outgoing, gregarious and the life of any party.  Her personality is very different from the other three of us who are decidedly introverted.  We’d rather skip the party altogether.  While we are introverted and sedentary, she loves being with people and is always on the go.  

While we are content with reading and other quiet pursuits, she has an interest level that is just off the charts.  At different times in her life she has hiked, drawn, and made her own cards.  As an adult, she’s recently purchased her own power tools so she can make furniture, and built a chicken coop in her back yard for raising her own chickens.  She’s done demo on various apartments and then installed appliances and kitchen cabinets.  Whatever of her various interests I can remember, it doesn’t do justice to all the things she’s done that I can’t remember.

Given the differences between her personality and ours, maybe it’s not surprising that we would butt heads when she reached her teens.  I don’t need to give details, but suffice it to say that those years were terrible – scary, discouraging, angry, depressing and disappointing years.  Our mother/daughter relationship was strained and hard.  I wasn’t sure we’d ever get over it.

Amy moved out at 18 and started a life of her own.  It wasn’t easy for her, but her risk taking personality and her fierce independence carried her through – and she not only made it – she succeeded and thrived.  And somehow, so did our relationship.

This week Amy found herself in the hospital in Phoenix with pneumonia.  Since we were in New York City for what was to be a life threatening surgery for my brother, we flew our younger daughter Becky out to be with Amy for the weekend.  When Becky had to go back home to work, Jim and I were able to fly out to be with her.  

On the way out I was a little apprehensive.  I wondered whether, once Amy began to feel better, her independent personality would make it hard for her to accept my help as she recovered.  That didn’t happen.

She was obviously sick.  She was suffering from pain in her back and chest and discomfort from a chest tube they inserted before we arrived.  She wanted someone to stay with her at night to provide comfort, so Jim and I took turns at that (he more than me!).  

On the afternoon of the day when she was finally able to go home, I found her vacuuming some area rugs out on her porch and I did what I typically don’t do with her.  I laid down the law.  I said, “If you’re not going to let me help you, I’m going home.  That’s what I’m here for.”  Amazingly, she listened to me!  And she did let me help.  It was wonderful.  I cleaned her house and she let us chauffer her around to run errands and drive her back and forth to work for a few hours.

Yesterday morning, the morning of her 38^th birthday, we prepared to leave.  It was a tearful goodbye, leaving us both sad and longing for more of one another.

On the way home, I began to think of a Bible verse someone taught on years ago.  It’s from the Old Testament prophet Joel.  Joel was prophet to the nation of Judah, warning them of impending judgment because of their sins and urging them to turn back to the Lord.  He speaks of an invasion of locusts – very likely a real invasion – but likens it to the devastation the Lord will bring on the land if Judah does not repent.  Then, in speaking of a future time of repentance when the Lord will restore her prosperity, Joel says this, in chapter 2, verse 25:

He will restore to you the years the locust have eaten.

 All I can think of this morning as we sit at the airport waiting is that the Lord has done this for Amy and me.  These new years with Amy are the fulfillment of that verse.  All those damaging, difficult, barren years have been restored and filled with love and joy as we relate to one another in a new way.  

I have seen it with my own eyes.  The Lord has done great things. 

POST NON-SURGERY

The afternoon of the day of my brother’s non-surgery, we bought tickets to return to Florida the next day.  By evening, all of his sons, his wife, and Jim and I were sitting in a restaurant having a dinner we never expected to be having and I was rejoicing over the great thing the Lord had done, and then we got the phone call.  Our daughter Amy, instead of leaving the hospital, would now have to have a chest tube inserted to remove fluid in her lung.  So, we canceled our plans to go home and booked a flight to Arizona.  I was so grateful that I could comfortably leave my brother and be there for my daughter.

I was on SUCH a spiritual high on that travel day, so in awe of what the Lord had done, that I did a few things not totally comfortable for me.  While waiting for my husband, who had made a trip to the rest room, I sat alone at a table when a homeless man came up to me asking for food.  When Jim came back I went to find him and bought him a meal.  Before we parted, I told him about Jesus, and prayed with him.

Then a lovely African American woman named India sat beside us.  She was returning to Florida to visit her son who was in the hospital.  She was not a religious woman, but she allowed me to hold her hand and pray with her for her son.

We spent the rest of this week with Amy in the hospital while the doctors treated her pneumonia and addressed the stubborn fluid in her lung.  Surgery was discussed but never happened, thank the Lord.

While there, I had a wonderful opportunity to share what Jesus had done in my brother’s body with another couple and they shared with me their own story of miraculous healing.

Since then, I’m feeling pretty tired, emotionally and physically.  I’m anxious to get back home to contemplate and wrap my mind around what the Lord has been up to these last two weeks.  I’ve often thought this week that I wished I could SEE the supernatural events God is doing around us and in lives.  I may have to wait for heaven to finally see it, but I can believe now, by faith, that it’s awesome!

EXPLAINING THE UNEXPLAINABLE

How does one explain the unexplainable?  

 

Back in the fall, my brother George had what he thought was a sinus infection.  When he went to an ear, nose and throat doctor, the doctor discovered a tumor in his sinus.  The tumor was removed, and biopsied, and the doctor suspected he was dealing with something very serious and knew he was in over his head.  He referred George to a surgeon in New York City.  What followed was months of tests, more consults with surgeons, and ultimately a diagnosis of adenoblastoma.  

Adenoblastoma is, as one of the doctors explained, an eyelash away from being cancer, while not actually being cancer.  Adenoblastoma is very rare, with only 500-600 cases diagnosed a year.  It’s believed that the disease begins in the teeth, primarily in the lower jaw (even more rarely in the upper jaw, as George had it), but goes undetected, sometimes for decades, because it doesn’t show up in dental x rays and grows slowly.  Since it doesn’t respond to chemotherapy or radiation therapy, the only way to treat it is through complete removal of all diseased tissue, as well as some of the adjacent healthy tissue.

My brother’s surgery would involve the removal of nearly all his upper teeth, including the bone to which they are connected and the palate that frames the mouth.  In order to rebuild the jaw bone, an artery and bone from his leg would be removed for grafting into his jaw.  The surgery would require a team of doctors, one for the leg surgery and two others to remove the blastoma and then reconstruct the jaw. Dental implants would come much later.  Obviously, the recovery process would be long and painful.  And there was no way in advance of the surgery to anticipate the potential facial deformity or impact on quality of life.  

In addition to the blastoma, there was a concern over my brother’s cardiac health.  A heart attack a few years ago and the presence of seven stents to keep his arteries open, created some fear that he might not survive the ten hour, extensive surgery.

If you have ever faced a serious illness, you know that it takes time to wrap your mind around it and grapple with all the ramifications that lie ahead.  When hit with this kind of news, we ask questions like:

How can something so horrible be happening to me?

What if I don’t survive?  Am I ready to die?  How will my family manage?

What if I don’t die?  How will I manage the pain? Will I be able to go on working?  What will my life look like after?

Over the weeks before the planned surgery I spoke with George a lot.  He asked all those questions and more.  He planned his funeral.  He talked with his sons.  He wrote letters to them.  He arranged to take a medical leave.  As he is a pastor, he got someone else to cover a wedding and preach at his church in his absence.  He was thinking about what he would do if he couldn’t work again.

And because he is a Christian, he prepared himself spiritually.  The faith he lived by and preached became more real as he thought about the possible outcomes of the surgery.  When the time for the surgery drew near, he was fully prepared for whatever the outcome might be.  He said to me:

If I wake up and see Jan (his wife), I’ll be happy.  If I wake up and see Jesus, I’ll be happy.  It’s a win, win.

The weekend of the surgery arrived.  My husband Jim and I flew up from Florida, George’s sons came in from Oregon, New York State, and Pennsylvania.  My sister in law’s brother and his wife drove in from upstate New York.  We all checked into apartments the hospital keeps for families of relatives scheduled for these kinds of serious surgeries.  

The night before, we had dinner together.  Before we all went to bed we prayed and had communion. George explained to us that he was in complete peace, kept so by the Holy Spirit, and that he counted it an absolute privilege to go through the surgery and whatever opportunities the Lord provided to bring Him glory, whatever the outcome.  

The morning of the surgery arrived and we all made the trek across the street to the hospital.  We said our final goodbyes to George, fully expecting that it would be some ten hours before we heard anything, and we settled down to wait.

It wasn’t much more than two hours later when both the primary surgeons responsible for George’s surgery arrived.  They faced my sister in law with unreadable faces. Not knowing what was coming, but seeing them so soon, she expected the worst.  What she heard was this:

We took George in and sedated him.  We reviewed all the scans and began taking biopsies.  When the results were in, we reviewed the scans again, and then took more biopsies.  What we found was NOTHING.  There is NO sign whatsoever of ANY blastoma.  

When my sister in law asked how that could be, their response was:

We don’t know.

What do we do when God does something that blows us away?  I can tell you what we did.

At first we acted with stunned disbelief, like the believers who answered the door to the miraculously, freed from prison, Peter.  They prayed for his deliverance, but when it came, they didn’t believe their eyes.  It had to be a ghost!

Then our minds tried to find logical explanations.  There must be some mistake.  If ONE MRI tech, or one pathologist, or one doctor, or one doctor with less experience blew it, we could understand how that could happen.

But so many people had been involved:

·       MRI techs in various locations that spanned months

·       Pathologists in New Jersey early on, and pathologists later in New York, months and weeks before the surgery date, and on the day of. 

·       Not one doctor, but a team of 10 doctors, all prepared to do what they do BEST

How likely is it that all of them could have been wrong or missed something?   

And then there was finally the faith reaction.  The Lord healed my brother.  

The doctors may not have known what happened, but WE did!  This is a work of God!

Which initiates new questions:

Why?

Why George and not one, or even ALL, of the other patients who filled those pre-surgery cubicles that day?

The answer is.  I don’t know.  I can’t explain the unexplainable.  But when all the usual explanations are found lacking, what other explanation is there?

For some there was reluctance to embrace the faith explanation because of these unanswerable questions.  Every time doubt was expressed, I cautioned – if we just focus on the unexplainable and the unanswerable we minimize the greatness of our God who is able – and in this case, also WILLING - to do such things.

George and I talked a lot about this and about what his response would be when he was asked how he might explain what happened to him.  He decided he would give the explanation given by the man born blind, whom Jesus healed, recorded in John’s gospel, chapter 9, verses 1-41.

Jesus’s disciples pointed out this man, blind from birth, as they walked along the road and they asked:

Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus replied:

Neither this man nor his parents, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.

Then Jesus healed the man and needless to say, everyone took notice because everyone in the town knew him.  Since Jesus healed the man on a Sabbath, when it was forbidden to “work” (healing was considered work), it wasn’t long before the religious leaders of the day heard of it, became outraged, and called the blind man in to explain.

After a lengthy interrogation, not only of the man, but also of his parents, the religious leaders had one last go at the man.  Referring to Jesus, they wanted the blind man to admit that He was a sinner in league with Satan, and this was his reply:

Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know.  One thing I do know, I was blind but now I see!

George’s diagnosis, whether we understand the why of it or not, was for the glory of God.  God would have been glorified whether George had died (because God is merciful), or whether he had lived and gone on to a very long road of recovery by the grace of God.  But because the Lord chose to heal him of blastoma, he can now say with the man born blind, who was also healed by Jesus:

I don’t know why I’ve been healed.  One thing I DO know, one day I had blastoma and the next day I didn’t.  Glory be to God!

Like ripples in a pond, many, many people that day – in every state represented by us family members and beyond – heard about what the Lord had done for George.  Many, many others also gave Him glory and praise.  Those people told people, until everyone who heard was praising God together.  

How does one explain the unexplainable?  Sometimes there is no answer but this: 

God, the One who is sovereign over all, and Jesus Christ who sits at His right hand – THAT God, OUR God, reigns!  Praise God!

Ephesians 3:20-21

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.