LIFE AT 66 - HAPPY THANKSGIVING

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! How many times have we seen this today? 5, 50, 100? November is usually a "thankful month" with everyone posting on FaceBook a daily "thanks" and it goes on for the whole month. Well I did not post anything daily intentionally. You see, Im just THANKFUL!

Almost 6 years ago, I was diagnosed with stage IV cancer on my larynx. Squamous cell carcinoma. OH HOW I HATE those words. I dont know any other words that are more frightening than, "you have cancer". Im a big guy, Ive been around the block, Ive been to Viet Nam, but when I got to the car after that Dr said that to me and laid out a grim plan, WHICH I refused to go along with, I CRIED like a baby. Couldnt help it, it just came.

So where am I going with this? Im FOREVER THANKFUL that GOD healed me. I KNOW some are going to scoff at that, but its an UNDENIABLE fact. Some will say, "Well He did it with help from medicine", UH God DOES NOT need help, YES sometimes He does that, but I dont believe that in my case. I had our Pastor, Jeff Perry, pray for me when I first had the "official" word. I remember like it was yesterday. If you all have read my blogs in the past you pretty much know the story, but the short story is, that just a few days AFTER Pastor prayed for me, a PET scan showed NO evidence of the cancer. There had been only ONE chemo treatment, and the cancer was gone. NOT something that usually happens. YES I did the prescribed treatments, but it was gone almost before treatments.

So now you know the reason Im FOREVER THANKFUL! Actually thats only part of the reason, I have an amazing wife, an amazing daughter, an amazing son in law, and 2 grandsons that are off the chart. AND I have great friends.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, and be thankful EVERY day

LIVE AT 66 - FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS!  Have you ever wondered what that means?  I have, but for some reason never thought a LOT about it.  It quoted a lot, and with different connotations and different subjects.

This about this for a minute.  You are working in a job, maybe you like it a lot, or maybe not so much, and you just go in do your job and go home, and repeat the next day.  ONE day, you are just talking to one of your co-workers and out of the blue you have a chance to relay to them Gods LOVE to them.  FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS!  There are many other thoughts I could put with this, but if you are a Christian, one of our DUTIES as a Christian is to spread the word of God.  We are to show Gods love to others in everything we do.  That means we should be showing it to strangers, friends, FAMILY, and guess what, I fail at this daily.

What about your neighbors?  YEAH, I know Ive got some like that too.  Irritating, hard to even talk to, REALLY hard to even think about LIKING, much less loving, but in thinking about this, we really dont have a choice.  The Bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  WOW as Im sitting here writing this, its all hitting me like a ton of bricks.  WHY?  BECAUSE TOO MANY TIMES I DO NOT ACT LIKE THE CHRISTIAN I CLAIM TO BE.   FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS!!

How many times have you had a friend tell you something like "they had lost a job", or "they were not feeling well", or any number of things, and replied, I'll PRAY for you!  And didn't!  We all get busy, we forget, life is hard, we have our own problems, you name it, BUT you SAID you would pray, did you?  FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS!

I guess what Im trying to get across in this blog, is that THIS is the TIME.  TIME is growing short in this world.  If you look at the landscape of the world today, it can be a bit frightening.  We have people calling wrong right, and right wrong, we are seeing things happen in this world that I never dreamed I would see in my lifetime.  Abortion is evil, and yet people scream that its their right, its not a RIGHT to murder.  THIS is the TIME to stand up for JESUS!  THIS is the TIME to draw your line in the sand and STAND.  When you have done all to STAND, S T A N D!!!

LIFE AT 65 - THIS DATE 2012 WAS EASTER SUNDAY

EASTER!  Its a day of Resurrection celebrated by Christians around the world celebrate the RESURRECTION  of Jesus.  HOWEVER on this particular day, while celebrating that, JESUS showed up and healed me!!!  Yeah yeah, you say, REALLY Jesus healed you???   YES He did.  I had been diagnosed with that awful c word in January, and had started treatments a little later, and had a PET scan to verify that I did indeed have stage IV cancer on my larynx.  It was stage IV because it had gone to my lymph nodes.  NOT a good thing to hear.  I mean after all I was a young guy, 60 years old!  LOL, seriously, it was a shock to my system.

You might ask, HOW did you know you were healed?  BECAUSE Gods WORD is true, and it was a real answer to prayer.  NO I did not feel the earth shake, or see a visible visage of Jesus appear in front of me, but I did know, KINDA.  I had been singing the the Easter Choir, and after the 2nd service of three that I would be singing in, I came down to sit with my wife, and she was in tears.  I did not know if she had been particularly blessed by the choir that morning or if the worship was better than usual, or what exactly was going on.  I, being of the inquiring type, asked her what was the matter, and she was quick to reply, I BELIEVE YOU WERE JUST HEALED!  Probably the next most shocking thing I had heard in the past 3 months.  I was not sure what to say or do, but I had to believe.  Gods word is true.  I had been prayed for that morning by different people in the choir, and one in particular as standing next to me and laid hans on my shoulders.  YES prayer really works.  I will likely NEVER forget that day.

This was all further verified that day and that week.  I opened an email that afternoon from a friend who had sent it to an email address that I rarely checked, but her words astounded me.  She did the usual greeting stuff, then proceeded to tell me she had a dream about me being healed.  She saw a group of angels floating around my head appearing to be like sparkling lights.  OH BY THE WAY, my wife also said she saw lights dancing around my head.   NOW if this is starting to sound a bit Twilight Zone-ish, that week I had a PET scan that verified that I had NO evidence of cancer.  And a PET scan will pick it up.  I also had a first round of radiation.  NASTY stuff, but one thing they told be before going in the little tube, (its like a CAT scan machine, only puts out nasty radiation.), was that I should not feel anything or SEE anything.  Well guess what, I SAW things.  Im sure your imagination is running rampant right now, and YES it was..............dancing strobe type lights every time the radiation thing made its circle past my closed eyes.  When I told the technicians in charge they said that it was IMPOSSIBLE!  HA, silly people NOTHING is impossible with God.

Im really not sure WHERE the burst of faith came from in all of this, but I do know that I had and continue to have TOTAL FAITH that God would heal, and continues to heal.  I had to post this today because of the date.  5 years is a huge thing in the cancer world, most Dr's will tell you that the 5 year mark is meaningful in that once clear that long, you are clean.  I KNOW that on this date 5 years ago, God made it happen.  I did have to continue on with the radiation though I KNEW that I was already healed, but sometimes doctors want to make sure.

IF you are reading this and you are going thru cancer or any disease, it does not belong in your body.  God did not create disease but we do live in a fallen world and stuff happens, HOWEVER God is stronger that ANY disease.  NOW I cannot answer the ever present question about WHY some are healed and some are not.  Maybe when we get to Heaven we can ask that question.  I KNOW that He healed me, and I want to spread that word as much as I can.

Do you know that there are over 100 verses in the Bible on healing, but NONE that say God created illness?  NEVER FEAR!  NEVER DOUBT!  BE STRONG!  STAY STRONG!  LIVE STRONG!  DO NOT GIVE satan THE EDGE in anything.

LIFE STORIES AT 65 - 5 YEARS LATER

FIVE YEARS!   Yeah 5 years.  5 years ago today, I went to the ER because I could not swallow, barely talk, and had a sore throat.   NO big deal I thought.  Just a sore throat, it will pass.  I had been talking a lot the night before.  I had read off several hundred names of our fallen heros, in the rain, snow, and cold.  OF COURSE it was just a sore throat.  NOPE.  THANK YOU JESUS you had a resident physician in the ER that thought just because I had a sore throat, but he could not see anything with his little light, he ought to do a CAT scan.  THANK YOU JESUS he found "something" strange that did not belong there.  THANK YOU JESUS for untold faith that I found out of NO WHERE.

5 years ago today started this whole journey that this blog has been based on.  5 years ago started a whole new journey in my life and the lives of my wife and daughter, and her husband.  What a journey its been.  God has been faithful to HIS word.  EVEN when I have not been totally faithful to HIM, HE has been totally faithful to me.  Its been a very humbling experience.

5 years ago, I had a resident physician tell me he "thought" I had cancer in my throat.  Now keep in mind, Ive NEVER smoked.  Tried it a couple of times but did not care at all for it.  Ive never done drugs either.  Ive been the "proverbial good boy" and yet here I was.  I refused to believe it.  I refused to accept it.  I wanted PROOF!  LOL.  They put me in the hospital for the night because I could not swallow, and they wanted to keep an eye on me.  HARD night.  Pokes, sticks, IV,  prods, BP checks, virtually NO sleep.  Then MORNING, texted my wonderful wife to bring me a cinnamon roll from my favorite donut shop.  YAY, she did and I was able to swallow, and able to eat it.  The IV apparently loosened up my throat enough to swallow.

A little past 830 or so, an "associate" of a well known ENT came in and said he had looked at the results of the CAT scan, and in "his" opinion I had squamous cell carcinoma on my larynx.  In other words "cancer"  Those are very hard words to swallow on a Sunday morning.  Not to mention hard to  swallow ANYTHING.  Once again there was this surge of FAITH from no where, and once again refused to believe it.   Sent out a FB message on my page, and asked for prayer, little did I know, but prayers went out for me AROUND THE WORLD.  People I did not know, people I did know. Family, friends, unknown friends, total strangers, praying for "me".  This was all a TOTALLY humbling experience, yet I was still refusing to believe it.

A few days went by and I had a meeting the the "real" ENT, the head of that department at St Louis University, and he said that "in his opinion" I had cancer on my larynx, and they could fix it with a "little surgery".   First of of all that is no "little surgery" and second of all, I flat out refused that notion,  Once again a RUSH of faith.  OH Ive known God pretty much my whole life, BUT Ive never needed that kind of faith before.  NEVER before was I faced with a life and death decision.  NEVER before was I faced with making these kind of decisions.  Lose my voice or rely on God to keep it.  I chose the later, and today, I have my voice.  I had NO surgery, except for the biopsy, which by the way confirmed that I did indeed have squamous cell carcinoma.  NOT beginning stage, but stage IV only because it had spread to a few lymph nodes.

I did not get the final diagnosis, until February 17 of 2012, but strangely even then I was not concerned.  I will write more about that at a later date.  When I got out of the hospital that Sunday, things were kind of a blur.  What was I going to do, tell my daughter, friends, etc.  Its quite a shock to be told you have in all likely hood, cancer.

I remember sitting in my car in the parking garage of the ENT office and just sitting there, crying like a baby.  It was raining, a cold January rain very common in STL that time of year.  Just bawling like a baby.  I called my wife.  She could barely understand me I was crying so hard.  Her words were, "we will get thru this".  She was absolutely correct.

To this day, 5 years later, I do not give that word any credence.  I always will use a small c, and rarely spell it out.  Cancer is NOT of God!  Its an evil disease.  I did the treatments as prescribed, chemo and radiation, 35 treatments of radiation to my head and neck area.  God was with me every step.  I did not have the severe burns that they said I would.  I did not have the swelling they said I would.  I did not have a feeding tube they said I would absolutely have to have.  I did not have a breathing tube they said I would need.  GOD protected me every step of the way.   Chemo was disgusting, but here again NOT as bad a predicted.

5 YEARS!  GOD IS FAITHFUL!