Dancing Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

38.  Dancing Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

 

We must dare to think "unthinkable" thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about "unthinkable things" because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.[256]

 

“Do not fear what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will care for you then and everyday.  He will either shield you from suffering, or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.  Be at peace and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.”[257]

 

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.[258]

 

You know that children are growing up when they start

asking questions that have answers.[259]

 

We began to research treatment alternatives in the late fall. 

Radiation was the newest option on the table.  An appointment was made with Dr. Joanne D. Walker (a radiation oncologist) to discuss what radiation involved, and why anyone would or should consider it. 

Super doses of nutritional supplements were back on the table, too.

Vicki and I listened to all the opinions being put forth by our friends, family, and our medical team headed up by Drs. Jones and Welander.  Everything was considered candidly, plainly and frankly.   Some of our team members could have felt like we were interrogating them, but they understood we needed their honest assessment of our new situation, and their preferred recommendation. 

One other option was discussed.  It was the one almost all of us preferred.  It was the one most favored by Vicki and me.  We started referring to it as the “Only God” option.  We desperately wanted God to tell us that He would heal Vicki again, and that we didn’t need to go down any other road.

In that spirit Vicki wrote on December 5, 2002,

We’ve met with a radiation oncologist who says radiation “… is not curative, but for pain management.” 

Looks like a touch from God is our only hope for a cure.

We also talked with Linda Lavender concerning supplements.  I’ve started juicing and eating right again, and I’m seeking God for the path He wants me to take for my healing this time.

One thing God has revealed to me is that I am not to make any decision on my own.  Lowell and I are to be more of a team, and He will speak to us together.  There is not to be the tension between us over treatment that there was last time.  Lowell is as trusting of the alternative methods as I am, but I feel that God doesn’t want me to “convince” Lowell of ANY specific treatment.  I believe that somehow God will reveal to BOTH of us the pathway to healing He has chosen. 

I DO believe that He will heal me again.  I just have no clue whether it will be by faith alone or by my involvement in a treatment.  At this time Lowell and I agree that chemo and radiation are out. 

I find myself reading Smith Wigglesworth and the Gospels again and again.  Jesus was so able and willing to heal EVERY disease.  I believe that He is willing and able to heal me.  For now, I am waiting on His Word to me, and His timing.  My faith is strong, and my pain is minimal.  I wonder how long I’ll have to wait before He speaks?

 

December 14, 2002

I spoke at Chester Outreach Church last Sunday, and God’s Spirit was strong.  One man’s back was healed while we prayed for a lady.  (One young lady said she saw a glow around me.)  It’s wonderful to be used by God to touch someone on His behalf.

I’ve been reading a lot about treatments.  There no peace about any of them.  All I really want to do is read my Bible and my Smith Wigglesworth books, but I feel I haven’t done enough research yet. 

Lowell and I were talking about how great the price would be, no matter what path I choose.  Alternative methods = thousands of dollars.  We agreed that a “total faith walk” will be a hard road (“high price”) to walk (in the midst of darkness and pain).

Lowell quoted King David when he said, “I will make no sacrifice that costs me nothing.” (2 Samuel 24:24)

I desperately want to hear God’s direction and follow it.

Patricia (Reeves’) friend, Susan, felt God gave her Luke 23 and 24 for me.  I thought that was odd, since it is all about Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Pat hesitantly shared it with me.  It wasn’t what I wanted to hear – I didn’t want to hear anything about death, not even Jesus’.  And then Pat told me that I might have to die and be resurrected!  I don’t know what to think about that.  I’m just pondering it all in my heart.

 

December 15, 2002

This Sunday Dina (Ching) lead worship and used the phrase, “Resonate in us, Jesus.”

In my mind I saw a huge gong/drum being struck with a large mallet.  I sat down during the worship service and wrote, “In order for a drum to resonate, it must be struck with a blow.  The harder, more intense the blow, the greater the reach and depth of the resonation.  Satan can strike us with his most intense weapons, but if we are filled with the power and glory of God, the glow will bound off and the most amazing things will resonate from within us, for the glory of God.”

 

We were all trying to do our best to hear the voice of God, and not speak or behave in a presumptive manner.  None of us wanted to assume that some slight niggling would set us on a course from which there would be no return. 

People who believe like we do (that God speaks today using His Word, His Church, and His people) hope to hear God plainly speak His will, but there’s a risk attached to such a belief.  The risk is not hearing God’s voice.  Sometimes, while we’re trying to discern what God’s saying, we end up gravitating toward the loudest or most confident voice … or the voice that echoes our own strong desires.

There’s a very vocal group within the Christian ranks that proclaims, with no qualifications, “Whatever you wish to receive from God, ask for it and it’s yours.  Your mouth will determine what God will do because He loves faith and responds to it.  So … if you speak what you desire He is most anxious to grant you what you desire.”  There are sub-doctrines that spring from this proclamation:

·         Laying claim to God’s promises.  Like a prospector in the Old West, we’re told by some teachers to make a claim for what we want from God.   They preach, “Doesn’t God’s Word tell us that He delights to give His children the desires of their hearts?”  Yes, it does.  So they reason, “Therefore, ‘claim’ your healing!”  They also say, “While you’re at it, claim prosperity so that you’ll never have another financial need.  You are a King’s Kid!”

·         Ruling.  That teaching declares, “Didn’t God tell Adam and Eve to take dominion over the earth, and rule it on His behalf?  Therefore, as a ruler in the Kingdom, in faith proclaim your intentions and the situation must submit to the authority of God as delegated to you.”

·         Speaking the Word.  “Didn’t Jesus Himself say that if we speak to a mountain, and not doubt, it will move?  Doesn’t Hebrews 11 tell us that it is impossible to please God without faith, and that anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that God exists and that He rewards those who sincerely seek Him?  Didn’t Jesus say we would do even greater things than He did if we acted in faith, and sought to perform His will?  Didn’t He also speak to a fruitless fig tree, curse it, and when the disciples returned to the tree the next day, didn’t they find it withered from the roots up?”

I believe everything in that paragraph.  To each question, I would answer, “Yes.”

But I answer, “yes” with a qualification.  If I do any of the things listed above, and do NOT take into account God’s feelings about the object of my desire, or the subject I’m praying about … if I do not allow that I may be acting in my own interests and not in the interests of the King of the Universe, I would be a fool!

If speaking God’s Word was truly UN-qualified, the world would be in a greater state of chaos than it already is.  The Rocky Mountains might move to Virginia so Atlantic seaboard believers could be closer to some of this nation’s outstanding ski slopes.  Christians would be unintentionally competing for different results concerning the same situation.  Every prayer would be based on the perception of the prayee.  New Agers and Mormons would swell the ranks of the Christian Church because their search for god-like powers and stature would be over.  (They’d realize their dream of being God or gods.)  It would rain every day a Christian farmer would ask, and never rain for Christian golfers.  Every praying and believing child would never fail a test, even if they didn’t study.  Every faith-filled man and woman would have inexhaustible financial resources, even when they failed to tithe, manage their money well, or pay their bills.  No one with a church membership would face the prospect of bankruptcy – they’d posses a “get-out-of-debt-free” card with God’s signature on it.  Every believing but lazy churchman would never get fired.  Every angry Christian wife would have a husband living in fear every day of his life for his life – unless his prayer could somehow trump hers.

Of course there are qualifiers for every faith-filled statement I’ve suggested!  The Bible is full of balancing statements (qualifiers) for every claim we could make using the formulas above.  Jesus prayed, “Thy will be done, Father.”  He prayed, “Let this cup pass from Me.  Nevertheless … not My will but Thine be done.”  (Was Jesus not praying in faith?)  John, the Beloved Disciple and member of Christ’s inner inner-circle, wrote, “And we can be confident that He [God] will listen to us whenever we ask Him for anything in line with His will.  And if we know He is listening when we make our requests, we can be sure that He will give us what we ask for.”[260]

Do you hear the balance each of those qualifying statements brings to the subject of faith in action?  If there were only those three Scriptural examples they would be enough, but the Word of God contains scores more.  Funny how we miss them when we’re in crisis.

 

It was now Christmas time and being with Vicki’s family was just what we needed.  The Winsteads always celebrated Christmas with gusto, so being at their house this particular holiday helped take our minds off of the recent unsettling events.  The only person in our family that couldn’t attend was Brandon; flights out of Hawaii were pricey, and he needed to work.

This Christmas Santa brought a trampoline to Grammy and Papa’s house.  But … he didn’t bother setting it up before he took off with Rudolph, so before the grandbabies showed up it had to be put together.  Ed, my son Chris, and I took about 90 minutes to finish the project, but we needed someone to test our work. 

Enter Vicki and Wendy.  They climbed aboard and began, gingerly at first, bouncing up and down.  Soon caution was thrown to the wind as the sisters, laughing to the point of tears, tried throwing each other off balance.  Ed put an end to that! 

Wendy then commenced flipping and landing on her seat.

Supposedly older-and-wiser sister Vicki said, “I can’t be outdone by my little sister,” and started jumping and getting more air, leading up to her first attempt to do a flip.  Unfortunately she over-rotated, landed on her heels, and drove her knees into her chin.  She told us that she was okay.  The only damage was a bloody lip, but I noted that her neck and back had snapped abruptly, too.

Just a few days later we drove the twelve hours home, with Vicki resting semi-comfortably in a nest of blankets and folded coats on the back seat.  Two days later she wrote,

December 29, 2002

I’m hurting and I’m afraid.  The pain in my side and leg is SO much worse since Friday, when we drove back from Florida.

Saturday morning it was so bad it literally made me sick to my stomach and I couldn’t work.  I’m supposed to work one last week [at the bank], but I’m not sure I can stand this pain.  How could it get so bad so fast?  Is this temporary or will it only get worse?  I can barely walk up the stairs now.  I wasn’t prepared for it to happen this quickly.  I want to be strong and full of faith, but I just feel tired and lonely and full of fear.  Now, more than ever, I look to Philippians 1:20, 21 for strength:  “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.  For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

We had such a wonderful visit with my family.  I’m so grateful to God that I had very little pain the whole time I was there.  Both Gary and Sami, Wendy and Chris made such generous offers to PAY for any treatments I would pursue.  They’re all so precious to me, and we feel closer than we’ve ever been.

 

December 31, 2002

Dad said Gary went to the altar for prayer Sunday.  It’s the first time since his salvation he’s gone forward publicly, and I believe it’s a real beginning in his growth with God.  He and I had a long talk about his need to grow in his faith, and he was very open.  He and Chris (our son) talked a lot.  I believe this is the beginning of “much fruit” in his life.  Sami has grown so much, and now Gary will, too – I’m sure.

Thank You, God, for Your faithfulness!

 

On the last day of that year Vicki needed something to chase away the fears that were hanging on.  After searching her Bible and a few of her other spiritual resources she found what she was looking for.

“Be at peace.  Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life; rather look to them with full hope as they arise.  God, whose very own you are, will deliver you from out of them.  He has kept you hitherto, and He will lead you safely through all things; and when you cannot stand it, God will bury you in His arms.  Do not fear what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will care for you then and everyday.  He will either shield you from suffering, or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.  Be at peace and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.”  (St. Frances de Sales, 1567-1622)

 

January 7, 2003

Dr. Jones called last night to report that my CT scan from Saturday showed no growth in the tumor … and possible shrinkage.  This is good!  He said, “Humanly speaking, we would have expected it to grow.”

Thank You, Jesus!  We’ll try more juicing and supplements, wait a month, and go from there.  I’m having little or no pain for the last week, and I’m SO grateful. 

Saturday, the 4th, was my last day at the bank.  I’m officially STD for 26 weeks at full pay.  I’m so looking forward to spending more time with God.  I know He’ll lead me one step at a time.  I still believe strongly that He will heal me again, even though I haven’t heard a fresh word from Him yet.  I will believe and trust that this is His will and purpose until I hear otherwise.

I’ve been invited to the University of Mississippi to meet with Dr. Patrick Sewell.  He feels I may be a candidate for his surgical procedure – cryoablation[261] to kill parts of my tumor.  It will cost $22-25,000, and it is not considered curative.  I can go in two weeks, so I need to decide quickly.  I’ve spent much prayer time seeking God for direction.  If I’m going to doing anything for “intervention,” I want to choose the best option.  I’m also very drawn to Dr. Gonzalez in New York … or should I just give the nutritional program I’m on more time to work?

I refuse to act out of fear or desperation.  I need to hear from God.  He led me to these verses today:

Proverbs 14:12 – “There is a way that seems right to a man, but I the end it leads to death.”

Proverbs 16:3, 9 – “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed … In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.”

Proverbs 19:21 – “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

1 Corinthians 2:4, 5 – “My message and my preaching were not with persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”

Does God want me to trust ONLY in His power an not in the wisdom of man?  I KNOW He is able to heal me without man’s intervention, but is that the plan He has chosen for me?

The only phrase I heard from God today was, “Wait.”

I’m not sure what I’m to wait for, but I’ll keep listening … and juicing.

 

C. S. Lewis wondered rhetorically, “Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable?  Quite easily, I should think.  All nonsense questions are unanswerable.”

Vicki entered into another round of asking God questions.  Some bordered on the nonsensical, and that was okay.  Most were passionate inquiries that arose from nighttime divine appointments, her reading, and conversations with friends and doctors.

January 20, 2003

I feel God woke me at 12:30 AM.  The song popped into my mind – “On Christ, the solid Rock I stand.  All other ground is sinking sand.  All other ground is sinking sand.” 

Then I heard, “You have one foot on the Rock and the other one on the world.”  And I also heard, “It may get harder before it gets better.”

I remembered that Smith Wigglesworth referred to King Asa in 2 Chronicles 16.  In the latter part of that chapter Asa became ill and sought out physicians instead of the Lord, and he died two years later.  The verse just preceding his death says, “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.”

Is MY heart fully committed to Him?  Is my faith fully committed to Him?  Or is my hope dependent on my own efforts (juicing, supplements, etc.)? 

If I stopped it all, is Christ’s power sufficient to heal me?  Of course it is!  So is there some reason God would lead me to man’s wisdom for my healing?  Surely HE is ABLE to heal me if my faith is able to trust Him. 

In the first half of 2 Chronicles 16 God was displeased with King Asa for looking to another army (allies) to help save him from an invading enemy.  God wanted Asa to trust Him as he had during the first part of his reign.

Does God lead us to outside intervention, or does He ALLOW it when our faith is weak?  He certainly led me to Dr. Jones because I was unconscious when he came into my life … and he’s been so fantastic.  I’m certainly not doubting the Dr. Jones is a gift from God to me … but … I keep wondering, did He alone heal me last time?  Did God choose to use Dr. Jones, chemotherapy, or the adjustment to my diet and supplements I took and now take?  How can I know?

I think God will show me and tell me one day. 

In the meantime, I will seek Him and I will find Him.  2 Chronicles 15:15 says, “They sought God eagerly, and He was found by them.” 

I am confident that He will make things clear to me.  I will “wait” on Him until I am certain … and then I will obey with all my heart, soul, mind and strength.

2 Chronicles 15:12 – “They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord with all their heart and soul.”

“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness.  I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”[262]

 

Vicki was now asking huge questions.

Bryan Cloyd, the father of slain Virginia Tech student Austin Michelle Cloyd, was quoted as saying, “You have to go through extreme darkness to see certain truths.”  This is coming from a father who lost his 18-year-old daughter in the most deadly school shooting in American history.  She was one of the 32 students killed on April 16, 2007 on the Blacksburg, Virginia campus.  The perpetrator wounded many more, and the authorities studying the crime have yet to figure out why he did it.

Forty-seven year old Bryan said, “I’ve experienced emotions I’ve never experienced before.  There were deep periods of sorrow.  There were periods of extreme sadness.  I was probably clinically depressed.  Back in April I asked, ‘Is God there?  Is He on my side?  Is He on Austin’s side?  Or is he not there at all?  Is God all-powerful?’”[263]

These are the kind of fundamental questions asked when people are in crisis … and they get asked more than once – even by people of great faith.

In her book Why? Trusting God When You Don’t Understand,[264] Anne Graham Lotz (daughter of Billy Graham) writes, “Why?  Why does God let bad things happen to good people?  To innocent people?  To helpless people?  To defenseless people?  To children?  To me?  Sometimes His ways seem so hard to understand!”

Lotz wonders, “When He said, ‘In all things God works for the good,’ did you think He meant every story would have a happy ending?  When God said, ‘I will surely bless you,’ did you think He meant that He would make you healthy, wealthy, happy, and problem free?  Isn’t it amazing how we can misinterpret what He says?”[265]

Then Lotz asks us a few questions:  “Have you based your faith on what someone else has told you God wants to do for you … on what you have seen Him do for another person … on what you think is fair or loving … on what you think would be in the best interest of those involved … [or] on a doctor’s recommendation for treatment?  You and I must pray in faith, or our prayer will not be pleasing to God.  If your faith as you pray is based on anything other [her emphasis] than faith in God’s specific promise given to you [emphasis mine] in His Word, then your prayer is on a shaky foundation.”[266]

Philip Yancey said that the book of Job holds many keys to understanding God’s ways when it comes to the “riddles of suffering.”  Yancey observes, and you can, too, that nowhere in the book Job is it suggested that God lacks power, that He’s never good, or that suffering comes as a result of sin.  (On that last topic – that suffering comes because we have sinned in some way – Job’s three buddies declared emphatically, quoting the theology of the day, that Job must have sinned and therefore brought his loss and suffering upon himself.  Some “teachers” today believe we can live a sinless life and as a result never be sick and never suffer.  At the end of the book God told Job’s three “comforters” that they were dead wrong on that one, and that they needed to have righteous Job pray for them right then or they’d reap some pretty bad consequences of their own!)  God didn’t condemn Job for asking questions!  He didn’t rebuke Job for doubting.  He did address his ignorance, pointing out to Job that if God was powerful and smart enough to create heaven and earth, and fill it with all its wondrous creatures, God was powerful and smart enough to be trusted.

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places,” wrote Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961) in A Farewell to Arms.[267]   Suffering comes to us all.  No one is immune.  We may not know why we are suffering, or why our child or wife or friend is painfully dying, but how we handle it is our choice.  Hemingway said that many of us come through suffering and brokenness stronger and better.

When suffering is shared, the sufferer and the one that has come alongside the sufferer each benefit.  John Donne is famous for saying, “No man is an island,” but so few of us know the context of that truth.  Donne wrote in his Meditation XVII:  “All mankind is of one Author, and is of one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated ... As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon [Note:  calling worshippers to come to the church], calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all:  but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. ... No man is an island, entire of itself ... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

During January and February of 2003 Vicki and I entertained visiting friends, read books, listened to tapes, went to conferences, and talked about the future.

One night I realized we hadn’t set our goals for the year.  (See Chapter 5 – Learning the Choreography)  Vicki and I were lying in bed, replaying the day, and it dawned on me that we were looking backward, to the past, but we hadn’t set our minds on the future.  Since November we were doing our best just to handle the day-to-day challenges, too busy to talk about goals and mottos for the coming year.

After we prayed about setting goals for 2003, something hit me.  At the end of 2003 I wanted to be able to look back and confidently say, “We did it all.  We accomplished everything we were supposed to do in 2003.  We have spoken courageously to whomever we were meant to, gone to wherever God wanted us to go, and done some traveling together just for fun.”

I leaned up on my left arm and asked Vicki, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could lay our heads on our pillows every night and say to each other, ‘No Regrets?’” to which Vicki responded, “No regrets?  Of course!  That’s the way I want us to live this year!”

And so “No Regrets” became our 2003 motto.

Our imaginations were hard to turn off that night, and our conversation went late, but we were excited about the future again, and our part in it.

Vicki wrote in her journal:

February 3, 2003

Lowell and I went to Williamsburg, to the Pastors’ Retreat (sponsored by The Family Policy Council).  It was wonderful to hear how God is speaking to leaders all over the world, telling them to come to Richmond.  God is saying to people all over the world that He is going to move in and through Richmond, to touch the nation and beyond.  We’re all so excited to be a part of it.

 

At the Williamsburg event dozens of our pastor-friends gathered around us to pray and ask God to heal Vicki.  There was such love in the room.  Later some of those wonderful, godly men and women came to us with such tenderness and compassion showing on their faces to say that they felt, while we were all praying, that Vicki would be healed.  One friend said, “I spite of circumstances that may come, look to God with expectant hope.”

Afterward Vicki wrote,

I recalled in my Beth Moore study that a man gave up hope for a healing because “it was just too exhausting to maintain a spirit of expectation.”

God keeps emphasizing “hope and expectation” to me.  [A certain teacher] says we won’t see healings without expecting them.  “Faith is the substance of things HOPED for; the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1 ff)

“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed … being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.”  (Romans 4:18-21 NIV)

Lord, it’s easy to hope now … when I’m pain-free and feeling good.  Help me to keep both feet planted on You and Your promises to me if things get worse before they get better.  Teach me everything You have for me so that Your life and power can flow through me to others.  I KNOW that Your purposes have not yet been accomplished in my life, and that I WILL live and NOT die, and I will proclaim the works of the Lord to many.

 

We talked about some of the “prophecies” our friends had made.  We decided to approach the future with joy, enthusiasm for each day the Lord gave us, and anticipation that God was indeed speaking to us through our friends.  In the back of our minds we knew the love they had for us might influence what they were “hearing from God,” and how they were “listening to God.”  Once again we agreed to live one day at a time, and try not to force issues but let God lead us.  If what our friends were saying was true, we’d see it happen in His time.  And if things didn’t turn out the way our friends said they would, we’d chalk it up to “love talk.”

St. Paul told Christians, and I paraphrase, “Right now we can’t see everything clearly.  It’s like we’re looking at things in an unpolished mirror.  We can see some images, but we may have everything skewed.  We know just a part of what’s going on, and when we talk about it, we can only share the part we have … and sometimes even that might be distorted.”[268]

Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962) once said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”  That’s a good one!

Does God speak?  Yes!  Can we hear His voice?  Yes!  Does He use our friends’ voices to convey His intentions?  Yes!  Do our friends sometimes get it wrong?  Yes!  Do we get it wrong sometimes?  Yes! 

Just what you wanted to hear, right?

We all “see through a glass darkly.”