A Birthday Surprise

27.  A Birthday Surprise

 

“I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”[174]

 

“Personally I think birthdays and anniversaries are like menstrual cramps, a regular pain in the ass that’s somehow connected to birth.”[175]

 

A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.[176]

 

“How many observe Christ’s birthday!  How few, His precepts!

O! ‘tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments.”[177]

 

We celebrated birthdays a little different than most.  Vic and I loved surprises, and we wanted to surprise each other on “the day.”  By this time we had been having birthday parties earlier and earlier, days before the day because we were wise to each other, so birthday celebrations had morphed.  Now they were week-long affairs filled with flowers, cards, small presents, and lots of fun.

November 22, 2000

Lowell has given me an unexpected gift!  For my birthday (and three days early so I would be totally surprised … again) he told me that he’s planning to take me to Hawaii in February!  He told me that I’ve always talked about seeing the whales, but I’ve never been to Maui during “whale season.”  Claudette and Gene are helping him with the planning, so it should be lots of fun.

One thing that came to mind when he was telling me about Maui was this cancer.  The tumor is protruding quite a bit.  I have to wear stretchy pants or sweats all the time now, so I was wondering if I’d be able to take such a long trip.  But I’ll make it!  Cancer or not, I’m going.

 

My family hadn’t received good news about Vicki’s condition for quite a while.  Now Vicki and I had two “surprises” to share with them on Thanksgiving Day – that Vicki would be healed, and that we were going to Hawaii.  My Dad’s smile virtually matching the one I had seen on Vicki’s face three days before.  Healing and Hawaii – what a great combo! 

Our special Thanksgiving Day pre-dinner prayer turned out to be conversational, as each family member who wished to added their grateful thoughts to the others.  There was a pleasant and refreshing atmosphere in the house and around the table.  As my Dad was concluding our prayer time, I glanced over at Vicki.  She was looking at me.  A little tear was trickling down her face and she had a sweet smile that communicated, “I’m going to be around for a while.”

I knew it was true … one day soon we’d be calling everyone and saying, “God did it!”

November 24, 2000

Lowell and I shared with his family all that God has spoken to us recently.  We rejoiced together at God’s faithfulness.   I don’t know His timing on healing, but my trust is in God to do it in His perfect timing.  My focus is changing.  I have such a strong confidence that my healing is already accomplished “in heaven” that I no longer need to pray for it.  Instead, I’m praising God for the answer as He told me to do way back on May 30th, 2000.  (It’s taken me all this time to really do it, but I’m finally there!)

Now my prayers are more about keeping my focus on God AFTER my healing.  This has been a wonderful time of complete dependency on God. 

How can I make sure that my heart stays centered on Him?  I don’t ever want to slip back into the self-centered lifestyle I lived BEFORE my cancer.  But I also know God doesn’t want to allow me to stay sick in order to keep me dependent upon Him.  I can continue to grow deeper in love with Him, and more dependent upon Him, if I build into my life the discipline of staying in His Word.  His Word is the key to revealing His heart to me.  It will lead me to His power, His will, and His purposes for my life.

I feel so weak and so incapable of staying centered on Him, but I am determined to stay connected to the only source of my strength, the only hope of my salvation, Jesus Christ.  I have to choose a life of discipline and obedience.  If I don’t, I know I’ll quickly slip back into complacency.

 

December 4, 2000

In Romans 4:17 Paul says, “… the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.”  Paul goes on the speak of Abram’s faith in God’s promise to make him a “father of many nations.”  So Abram believed God, and began to call himself Abraham (“father of nations”) before that promise was realized.  He believed God so much he considered himself a father, and spoke of its reality, even before Sarah became pregnant.

I’m believing that my healing is already DONE (also Mike Barclay’s) because I feel God promised it, and He cannot lie.

I want to be like Abraham, who, “… did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.”

I don’t believe it’s God’s will for me or Mike to die “prematurely” (even though I believe there is no such thing as a premature death when it comes to God’s timing), and that God will respond to our faith with healing and compassion.  It will be so glorious.

 

The congregation of Trinity gave Vicki and Mike Barclay pre-Christmas gifts of extraordinary value.  Someone had created a 3-foot diameter drawing of a clock on stiff poster board.  Like slicing a pumpkin pie, the clock was divided into 24 equal segments, each representing an hour of a day.  The 24-hourly segments were divided into four 15-minute segments, and in each one volunteers had inscribed their names.  They called it a “Prayer Clock.” 

The people of Trinity had committed to pray for Vicki and Mike around the clock – every day – until they were healed.

What great gifts!

Starting at midnight, Vic slowly looked over the list of people who had promised to pray for her.  “Oh, Lowell … there are so many people who wanted to pray for us, some 15-minute slots have two … no, three people!” she said.  We discovered some names we didn’t know; we were told that they didn’t attend Trinity – they were people from across the nation. 

Vicki began reading out loud, “Janet Campbell at midnight, Evelyn Guess at 12:15, Robert Martin at 1 … Oh, look Lowell, Jim and Dolly Gilbert are going to pray at 1:45 … Jason Stickles at 4:15 … Patricia Reeves at 7:45, Susan Sundance at 9:30, Greg Kessel at 11:30.” 

Then the tears came, but she didn’t stop reading.  “Linda Crostic and Robin Frary at 3:15 PM, Cheryl and Bob Willoughby at 4, Sue Spencer at 5, … look, Monica Mera and Jennifer Rice at 8:45, Terry and Idit Knesic from 9:30 to 10, Paul Vorster at 10:30 … Karen Martin at 11:15 …” 

The look on Vic’s face said it all.  “Lowell, they love me …”

December 12, 2000

Just a little more than a week later, and I’m tired physically (lots of pain lately). 

I’m also tired spiritually.  I’m tired of waiting and wondering when we will see the glory of God revealed.

Jason and Melissa Stickles are here, being considered for Youth Pastor.  (The contrasts are upsetting because Brandon isn’t pursuing God’s calling on his life.  Let it go, Vicki!)

Chris is on his way to China for ten days, and that is wonderful … and a little scary.

Here I go again.  I’m vacillating again between confidently expecting my healing and wondering why it’s taking so long.  And I’m blaming things on people.  I’ve wondered, “Is the delay because there’s something Lowell or I haven’t done?” or “Have the people at Trinity not responded to this crisis properly?”  Why is God delaying the answer for both Mike and me?

I don’t understand me.  I think it’s the pain talking.  I know God cannot lie, and He has promised that He will destroy this enemy (cancer) and win the victory.  I just wish it would be sooner rather than later.

 

Vicki was in the midst of another desperate time, looking within and without for reasons for the delay of her healing.  I think it’s fair to say the pain was talking.

Pain takes a mighty toll on our spirit.  Pain is more than a physical phenomenon, but is somehow tied to every part of our being.  Having done some carpentry many times, I believe I’m an expert of sorts.  Instead of driving a 16 penny nail into the wood, I’ve pounded my thumb nail with the hammer.  My thumbnail was the focal point of the attack, and it was physically damaged, but the pain went from my head to my toes, disabling my mind.  Time would stand still, the pain was so intense.

The great English philosopher C. S. Lewis, in his book The Problem Of Pain, and speaking as a representative of the human race, poses the following argument at its beginning:  “If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished.  But the creatures are not happy.  Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.’  This is the problem of pain, in its simplest form.”

Pain will make you question whether or not God is good, and wonder if He really loves mankind.

Lewis then tackles the problem of pain by pointing out that because God is good and powerful, He gave mankind the gift of choice – and man’s choices open the door to pain.  Only a Being that is almighty can GIVE such a gift, and only a loving Being would think to give the gift of choice – that is, freedom to act on one’s perceived best interests in one’s own way.

Lewis spends much of the book addressing choice, goodness, love, power and ultimately physical pain.  In speaking about God’s goodness he states, “Any consideration of the goodness of God at once threatens us with the following dilemma.  On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judgment must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil.  What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to be evil may not be evil.”

That is an arresting idea.  The Bible puts it this way:  “His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways.”  He and we are “other.”  Contrary to a host of Eastern mystics, Joseph Smith – the founder of Mormonism, and modern New Age thinkers, what God is we are not, nor can we become what He is. 

Vicki and I firmly believe that THE God of the Universe is the God of the Old and New Testaments.  And so we believe that this biblical God is wiser than we are, more loving than we are, and “other” than we are.  He is transcendent – beyond us.

This is important:  we must talk about pain.

C. S. Lewis, after examining the nature of THE God, and taking the reader logically through the arguments that He is good and almighty, comes to a conclusion.  He says that pain rouses us to understand that “all is not well,” but there is One who invades our painful existence will “healing in His wings,” and rescues us from the consequences of our unwise choices.  The logical conclusion of Lewis, and the concluding statements of the Bible, lead us to this truth:  Pain will not be done away with on Earth, but in Heaven.  So Paul writes, “ … the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us” when we cross the threshold of Heaven, and come, literally into the presence of the Almighty.

We don’t like it, but here, and now, we have pain.  Then, and there, we will not be in pain – not in His presence.  That is a Christian belief, and is so because it is Christ-centered.  Jesus said, “‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God; trust also in Me.  In My Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am.  You know the way to the place where I am going.’

“Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we don’t know where You are going, so how can we know the way?’  [And] Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”

The “Father’s House” and “the place” being prepared for us is Heaven, and there is no sickness, disease, pain, sin, or evil there according to the Bible.

The truth is, pain can make you forget about the promise of Heaven.  Pain does some important things.  It reveals our weaknesses, and shows us gaps in our faith.   I’ve said it before but bear repeating:  anyone can have “faith” when everything is going great.  It’s when the going gets tough that our faith, weak or strong, is revealed to US.  We then discover the maturity of our faith.  God already knows.  He allows pain to inform us of what He already knows.

Pain is also a tool, or weapon, that God’s enemy – Satan – uses to serve his purposes.  His goal is to separate us from God.  He hopes that we will turn our pain into anger, and our anger into rejection of God.  Satan’s greatest tactic for building a wall of separation between God and us is the lie that God withholds good things from us.  Satan used that ploy in the Garden of Eden.  He told the first couple that the knowledge of good and evil could be acquired by eating God-forbidden fruit.  He told them that God was holding out on them.  In the very same way he uses pain to convince us that God is still holding out on us – this time, comfort and healing.

It’s important, then, to note that Vicki did something brilliant, and different than most.  She turned her pain-filled anger toward the cancer and Satan.  In Vicki’s case, Satan’s ploy backfired.  Vicki didn’t turn away from God, but toward Him.  As she said on different occasions, “Pain can be my friend.”

December 15, 2000

During my prayer time God began to stir up a deep hatred and repulsion for this vile and evil cancer within me.  I am a child of God, a temple for the Holy Spirit and filled with God’s Spirit.  Something that lives to destroy and steal life from me should not be allowed to thrive in my body.  God’s light dispels darkness.  Christ came to destroy the works of the devil.  A house divided against itself cannot stand. 

As I was praying against this cancer and commanding it to leave, I began to see a parallel in my spiritual life.  I have allowed darkness and sin to exist in my life.  When I allow myself to compromise (watch R-rated movies – those that tend to cheapen life and promote an anti-God lifestyle, with anti-God values, entertain ugly thoughts about others, etc.), then I am allowing darkness to push back the light.  Every bit of darkness in my life allows that much less light to shine in and through me.  A bright chandelier shines into every corner of a room, but if a dark cloth is draped over part of it, then the light is diminished.

If I am so determined and convinced that this dark, evil cancer has no right to exist in my “sanctified body,” then I need to be equally determined that no dark action of thoughts have a place in my “sanctified spirit.”[178]

I repented of my divided heart.  I want it only filled with God’s light.  I am determined to not allow sin any place in my life.  For example, I’m not going to any more ungodly movies (and I love movies), and I’m not going to excuse negative/critical talk, or any unkind actions.  No more excuses.  I want God’s light to dispel the darkness in my body, soul, mind and spirit.

Satan, you are a liar!